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FCNTL(2)		    BSD System Calls Manual		      FCNTL(2)

NAME
     fcntl — file control

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <fcntl.h>

     int
     fcntl(int fd, int cmd, ...);

DESCRIPTION
     The fcntl() system call provides for control over descriptors.  The argu‐
     ment fd is a descriptor to be operated on by cmd as described below.
     Depending on the value of cmd, fcntl() can take an additional third argu‐
     ment int arg.

     F_DUPFD	Return a new descriptor as follows:

		    ·	Lowest numbered available descriptor greater than or
			equal to arg.
		    ·	Same object references as the original descriptor.
		    ·	New descriptor shares the same file offset if the
			object was a file.
		    ·	Same access mode (read, write or read/write).
		    ·	Same file status flags (i.e., both file descriptors
			share the same file status flags).
		    ·	The close-on-exec flag associated with the new file
			descriptor is set to remain open across execve(2) sys‐
			tem calls.

     F_DUP2FD	It is functionally equivalent to

		      dup2(fd, arg)

		The F_DUP2FD constant is not portable, so it should not be
		used if portability is needed.	Use dup2() instead.

     F_GETFD	Get the close-on-exec flag associated with the file descriptor
		fd as FD_CLOEXEC.  If the returned value ANDed with FD_CLOEXEC
		is 0, the file will remain open across exec(), otherwise the
		file will be closed upon execution of exec() (arg is ignored).

     F_SETFD	Set the close-on-exec flag associated with fd to arg, where
		arg is either 0 or FD_CLOEXEC, as described above.

     F_GETFL	Get descriptor status flags, as described below (arg is
		ignored).

     F_SETFL	Set descriptor status flags to arg.

     F_GETOWN	Get the process ID or process group currently receiving SIGIO
		and SIGURG signals; process groups are returned as negative
		values (arg is ignored).

     F_SETOWN	Set the process or process group to receive SIGIO and SIGURG
		signals; process groups are specified by supplying arg as neg‐
		ative, otherwise arg is interpreted as a process ID.

     The flags for the F_GETFL and F_SETFL flags are as follows:

     O_NONBLOCK	  Non-blocking I/O; if no data is available to a read(2) sys‐
		  tem call, or if a write(2) operation would block, the read
		  or write call returns -1 with the error EAGAIN.

     O_APPEND	  Force each write to append at the end of file; corresponds
		  to the O_APPEND flag of open(2).

     O_DIRECT	  Minimize or eliminate the cache effects of reading and writ‐
		  ing.	The system will attempt to avoid caching the data you
		  read or write.  If it cannot avoid caching the data, it will
		  minimize the impact the data has on the cache.  Use of this
		  flag can drastically reduce performance if not used with
		  care.

     O_ASYNC	  Enable the SIGIO signal to be sent to the process group when
		  I/O is possible, e.g., upon availability of data to be read.

     Several commands are available for doing advisory file locking; they all
     operate on the following structure:

     struct flock {
	     off_t   l_start;	     /* starting offset */
	     off_t   l_len;	     /* len = 0 means until end of file */
	     pid_t   l_pid;	     /* lock owner */
	     short   l_type;	     /* lock type: read/write, etc. */
	     short   l_whence;	     /* type of l_start */
	     int     l_sysid;	     /* remote system id or zero for local */
     };
     The commands available for advisory record locking are as follows:

     F_GETLK	Get the first lock that blocks the lock description pointed to
		by the third argument, arg, taken as a pointer to a struct
		flock (see above).  The information retrieved overwrites the
		information passed to fcntl() in the flock structure.  If no
		lock is found that would prevent this lock from being created,
		the structure is left unchanged by this system call except for
		the lock type which is set to F_UNLCK.

     F_SETLK	Set or clear a file segment lock according to the lock
		description pointed to by the third argument, arg, taken as a
		pointer to a struct flock (see above).	F_SETLK is used to
		establish shared (or read) locks (F_RDLCK) or exclusive (or
		write) locks, (F_WRLCK), as well as remove either type of lock
		(F_UNLCK).  If a shared or exclusive lock cannot be set,
		fcntl() returns immediately with EAGAIN.

     F_SETLKW	This command is the same as F_SETLK except that if a shared or
		exclusive lock is blocked by other locks, the process waits
		until the request can be satisfied.  If a signal that is to be
		caught is received while fcntl() is waiting for a region, the
		fcntl() will be interrupted if the signal handler has not
		specified the SA_RESTART (see sigaction(2)).

     F_READAHEAD
		Set or clear the read ahead amount for sequential access to
		the third argument, arg, which is rounded up to the nearest
		block size.  A zero value in arg turns off read ahead.

     F_RDAHEAD	Equivalent to Darwin counterpart which sets read ahead amount
		of 128KB when the third argument, arg is non-zero.  A zero
		value in arg turns off read ahead.

     When a shared lock has been set on a segment of a file, other processes
     can set shared locks on that segment or a portion of it.  A shared lock
     prevents any other process from setting an exclusive lock on any portion
     of the protected area.  A request for a shared lock fails if the file
     descriptor was not opened with read access.

     An exclusive lock prevents any other process from setting a shared lock
     or an exclusive lock on any portion of the protected area.	 A request for
     an exclusive lock fails if the file was not opened with write access.

     The value of l_whence is SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, or SEEK_END to indicate that
     the relative offset, l_start bytes, will be measured from the start of
     the file, current position, or end of the file, respectively.  The value
     of l_len is the number of consecutive bytes to be locked.	If l_len is
     negative, l_start means end edge of the region.  The l_pid and l_sysid
     fields are only used with F_GETLK to return the process ID of the process
     holding a blocking lock and the system ID of the system that owns that
     process.  Locks created by the local system will have a system ID of
     zero.  After a successful F_GETLK request, the value of l_whence is
     SEEK_SET.

     Locks may start and extend beyond the current end of a file, but may not
     start or extend before the beginning of the file.	A lock is set to
     extend to the largest possible value of the file offset for that file if
     l_len is set to zero.  If l_whence and l_start point to the beginning of
     the file, and l_len is zero, the entire file is locked.  If an applica‐
     tion wishes only to do entire file locking, the flock(2) system call is
     much more efficient.

     There is at most one type of lock set for each byte in the file.  Before
     a successful return from an F_SETLK or an F_SETLKW request when the call‐
     ing process has previously existing locks on bytes in the region speci‐
     fied by the request, the previous lock type for each byte in the speci‐
     fied region is replaced by the new lock type.  As specified above under
     the descriptions of shared locks and exclusive locks, an F_SETLK or an
     F_SETLKW request fails or blocks respectively when another process has
     existing locks on bytes in the specified region and the type of any of
     those locks conflicts with the type specified in the request.

     This interface follows the completely stupid semantics of System V and
     IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (“POSIX.1”) that require that all locks associated
     with a file for a given process are removed when any file descriptor for
     that file is closed by that process.  This semantic means that applica‐
     tions must be aware of any files that a subroutine library may access.
     For example if an application for updating the password file locks the
     password file database while making the update, and then calls
     getpwnam(3) to retrieve a record, the lock will be lost because
     getpwnam(3) opens, reads, and closes the password database.  The database
     close will release all locks that the process has associated with the
     database, even if the library routine never requested a lock on the data‐
     base.  Another minor semantic problem with this interface is that locks
     are not inherited by a child process created using the fork(2) system
     call.  The flock(2) interface has much more rational last close semantics
     and allows locks to be inherited by child processes.  The flock(2) system
     call is recommended for applications that want to ensure the integrity of
     their locks when using library routines or wish to pass locks to their
     children.

     The fcntl(), flock(2), and lockf(3) locks are compatible.	Processes
     using different locking interfaces can cooperate over the same file
     safely.  However, only one of such interfaces should be used within the
     same process.  If a file is locked by a process through flock(2), any
     record within the file will be seen as locked from the viewpoint of
     another process using fcntl() or lockf(3), and vice versa.	 Note that
     fcntl(F_GETLK) returns -1 in l_pid if the process holding a blocking lock
     previously locked the file descriptor by flock(2).

     All locks associated with a file for a given process are removed when the
     process terminates.

     All locks obtained before a call to execve(2) remain in effect until the
     new program releases them.	 If the new program does not know about the
     locks, they will not be released until the program exits.

     A potential for deadlock occurs if a process controlling a locked region
     is put to sleep by attempting to lock the locked region of another
     process.  This implementation detects that sleeping until a locked region
     is unlocked would cause a deadlock and fails with an EDEADLK error.

RETURN VALUES
     Upon successful completion, the value returned depends on cmd as follows:

	   F_DUPFD    A new file descriptor.

	   F_DUP2FD   A file descriptor equal to arg.

	   F_GETFD    Value of flag (only the low-order bit is defined).

	   F_GETFL    Value of flags.

	   F_GETOWN   Value of file descriptor owner.

	   other      Value other than -1.

     Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the
     error.

ERRORS
     The fcntl() system call will fail if:

     [EAGAIN]		The argument cmd is F_SETLK, the type of lock (l_type)
			is a shared lock (F_RDLCK) or exclusive lock
			(F_WRLCK), and the segment of a file to be locked is
			already exclusive-locked by another process; or the
			type is an exclusive lock and some portion of the seg‐
			ment of a file to be locked is already shared-locked
			or exclusive-locked by another process.

     [EBADF]		The fd argument is not a valid open file descriptor.

			The argument cmd is F_DUP2FD, and arg is not a valid
			file descriptor.

			The argument cmd is F_SETLK or F_SETLKW, the type of
			lock (l_type) is a shared lock (F_RDLCK), and fd is
			not a valid file descriptor open for reading.

			The argument cmd is F_SETLK or F_SETLKW, the type of
			lock (l_type) is an exclusive lock (F_WRLCK), and fd
			is not a valid file descriptor open for writing.

     [EDEADLK]		The argument cmd is F_SETLKW, and a deadlock condition
			was detected.

     [EINTR]		The argument cmd is F_SETLKW, and the system call was
			interrupted by a signal.

     [EINVAL]		The cmd argument is F_DUPFD and arg is negative or
			greater than the maximum allowable number (see
			getdtablesize(2)).

			The argument cmd is F_GETLK, F_SETLK or F_SETLKW and
			the data to which arg points is not valid.

     [EMFILE]		The argument cmd is F_DUPFD or F_DUP2FD and the maxi‐
			mum number of file descriptors permitted for the
			process are already in use, or no file descriptors
			greater than or equal to arg are available.

     [ENOLCK]		The argument cmd is F_SETLK or F_SETLKW, and satisfy‐
			ing the lock or unlock request would result in the
			number of locked regions in the system exceeding a
			system-imposed limit.

     [EOPNOTSUPP]	The argument cmd is F_GETLK, F_SETLK or F_SETLKW and
			fd refers to a file for which locking is not sup‐
			ported.

     [EOVERFLOW]	The argument cmd is F_GETLK, F_SETLK or F_SETLKW and
			an off_t calculation overflowed.

     [EPERM]		The cmd argument is F_SETOWN and the process ID or
			process group given as an argument is in a different
			session than the caller.

     [ESRCH]		The cmd argument is F_SETOWN and the process ID given
			as argument is not in use.

     In addition, if fd refers to a descriptor open on a terminal device (as
     opposed to a descriptor open on a socket), a cmd of F_SETOWN can fail for
     the same reasons as in tcsetpgrp(3), and a cmd of F_GETOWN for the rea‐
     sons as stated in tcgetpgrp(3).

SEE ALSO
     close(2), dup2(2), execve(2), flock(2), getdtablesize(2), open(2),
     sigvec(2), lockf(3), tcgetpgrp(3), tcsetpgrp(3)

STANDARDS
     The F_DUP2FD constant is non portable.  It is provided for compatibility
     with AIX and Solaris.

HISTORY
     The fcntl() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

     The F_DUP2FD constant first appeared in FreeBSD 7.1.

BSD			      September 28, 2009			   BSD
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