FCNTL(2)

NAME
fcntl - manipulate file descriptor

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

int fcntl(int fd, int cmd);
int fcntl(int fd, int cmd, long arg);
int fcntl(int fd, int cmd, struct flock * lock);

DESCRIPTION
fcntl performs one of various miscellaneous operations on fd. The operation in question is determined by cmd:

F_DUPFD
    Makes arg be a copy of fd, closing fd first if necessary.

    The same functionality can be more easily achieved by using dup2(2).

    The old and new descriptors may be used interchangeably. They share locks, file position pointers and flags; for example, if the file position is modified by using lseek on one of the descriptors, the position is also changed for the other.

    The two descriptors do not share the close-on-exec flag, however. The close-on-exec flag of the copy is off, meaning that it will be closed on exec.

    On success, the new descriptor is returned.

F_GETFD
    Read the close-on-exec flag. If the FD_CLOEXEC bit is 0, the file will remain open across exec, otherwise it will be closed.

F_SETFD
    Set the close-on-exec flag to the value specified by the FD_CLOEXEC bit of arg.

F_GETFL
    Read the descriptor's flags (all flags (as set by open(2)) are returned).

F_SETFL
    Set the descriptor's flags to the value specified by arg. Only O_APPEND, O_NONBLOCK and O_ASYNC may be set; the other flags are unaffected.

    The flags are shared between copies (made with dup(2), fork(2), etc.) of the same file descriptor.

    The flags and their semantics are described in open(2).

F_GETLK, F_SETLK and F_SETLKW are used to manage discretionary file locks. The third argument lock is a pointer to a struct flock (that may be overwritten by this call).

F_GETLK
    Return the flock structure that prevents us from obtaining the lock, or set the l_type field of the lock to F_UNLCK if there is no obstruction.

F_SETLK
    The lock is set (when l_type is F_RDLCK or F_WRLCK) or cleared (when it is F_UNLCK). If the lock is held by someone else, this call returns -1 and sets errno to EACCES or EAGAIN.

F_SETLKW
    Like F_SETLK, but instead of returning an error we wait for the lock to be released. If a signal that is to be caught is received while fcntl is waiting, it is interrupted and (after the signal handler has returned) returns immediately (with return value -1 and errno set to EINTR).

F_GETOWN, F_SETOWN, F_GETSIG and F_SETSIG are used to manage I/O availability signals:

F_GETOWN
    Get the process ID or process group currently receiving SIGIO and SIGURG signals for events on file descriptor fd. Process groups are returned as negative values.

F_SETOWN
    Set the process ID or process group that will receive SIGIO and SIGURG signals for events on file descriptor fd. Process groups are specified using negative values. (F_SETSIG can be used to specify a different signal instead of SIGIO). If you set the O_ASYNC status flag on a file descriptor (either by providing this flag with the open(2) call, or by using the F_SETFL command of fcntl), a SIGIO signal is sent whenever input or output becomes possible on that file descriptor.

    The process or process group to receive the signal can be selected by using the F_SETOWN command to the fcntl function. If the file descriptor is a socket, this also selects the recipient of SIGURG signals that are delivered when out-of-band data arrives on that socket. (SIGURG is sent in any situation where select(2) would report the socket as having an "exceptional condition".) If the file descriptor corresponds to a terminal device, then SIGIO signals are sent to the foreground process group of the terminal.

F_GETSIG
    Get the signal sent when input or output becomes possible. A value of zero means SIGIO is sent. Any other value (including SIGIO) is the signal sent instead, and in this case additional info is available to the signal handler if installed with SA_SIGINFO.

F_SETSIG
    Sets the signal sent when input or output becomes possible. A value of zero means to send the default SIGIO signal. Any other value (including SIGIO) is the signal to send instead, and in this case additional info is available to the signal handler if installed with SA_SIGINFO.

    By using F_SETSIG with a non-zero value, and setting SA_SIGINFO for the signal handler (see sigaction(2)), extra information about I/O events is passed to the handler in a siginfo_t structure. If the si_code field indicates the source is SI_SIGIO, the si_fd field gives the file descriptor associated with the event. Otherwise, there is no indication which file descriptors are pending, and you should use the usual mechanisms (select(2), poll(2), read(2) with O_NONBLOCK set etc.) to determine which file descriptors are available for I/O.

    By selecting a POSIX.1b real time signal (value >= SIGRTMIN), multiple I/O events may be queued using the same signal numbers. (Queuing is dependent on available memory). Extra information is available if SA_SIGINFO is set for the signal handler, as above.

Using these mechanisms, a program can implement fully asynchronous I/O without using select(2) or poll(2) most of the time.

The use of O_ASYNC, F_GETOWN, F_SETOWN is specific to BSD and Linux. F_GETSIG and F_SETSIG are Linux-specific. POSIX has asynchronous I/O and the aio_sigevent structure to achieve similar things; these are also available in Linux as part of the GNU C Library (Glibc).

RETURN VALUE
For a successful call, the return value depends on the operation:

F_DUPFD
    The new descriptor.

F_GETFD
    Value of flag.

F_GETFL
    Value of flags.

F_GETOWN
    Value of descriptor owner.

F_GETSIG
    Value of signal sent when read or write becomes possible, or zero for traditional SIGIO behaviour.

All other commands
    Zero.

On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EACCES
    Operation is prohibited by locks held by other processes.

EAGAIN
    Operation is prohibited because the file has been memory-mapped by another process.

EBADF
    fd is not an open file descriptor.

EDEADLK
    It was detected that the specified F_SETLKW command would cause a deadlock.

EFAULT
    lock is outside your accessible address space.

EINTR
    For F_SETLKW, the command was interrupted by a signal. For F_GETLK and F_SETLK, the command was interrupted by a signal before the lock was checked or acquired. Most likely when locking a remote file (e.g. locking over NFS), but can sometimes happen locally.

EINVAL
    For F_DUPFD, arg is negative or is greater than the maximum allowable value. For F_SETSIG, arg is not an allowable signal number.

EMFILE
    For F_DUPFD, the process already has the maximum number of file descriptors open.

ENOLCK
    Too many segment locks open, lock table is full, or a remote locking protocol failed (e.g. locking over NFS).

EPERM
    Attempted to clear the O_APPEND flag on a file that has the append-only attribute set.

NOTES
The errors returned by dup2 are different from those returned by F_DUPFD.

CONFORMING TO
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3. Only the operations F_DUPFD, F_GETFD, F_SETFD, F_GETFL, F_SETFL, F_GETLK, F_SETLK and F_SETLKW are specified in POSIX.1. F_GETOWN and F_SETOWN are BSDisms not supported in SVr4; F_GETSIG and F_SETSIG are specific to Linux. The flags legal for F_GETFL/F_SETFL are those supported by open(2) and vary between these systems; O_APPEND, O_NONBLOCK, O_RDONLY, and O_RDWR are specified in POSIX.1. SVr4 supports several other options and flags not documented here.

SVr4 documents additional EIO, ENOLINK and EOVERFLOW error conditions.

SEE ALSO
dup2(2), open(2), socket(2), flock(2)