socket(2) — Linux manual page

NAME \| LIBRARY \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| RETURN VALUE \| ERRORS \| STANDARDS \| HISTORY \| EXAMPLES \| SEE ALSO \| COLOPHON

 socket(2)                  System Calls Manual                  socket(2)

NAME top

        socket - create an endpoint for communication

LIBRARY top

        Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS top

        #include <sys/socket.h>         int socket(int domain, int type, int protocol);

DESCRIPTION top

socket() creates an endpoint for communication and returns a file descriptor that refers to that endpoint. The file descriptor returned by a successful call will be the lowest-numbered file descriptor not currently open for the process. The domain argument specifies a communication domain; this selects the protocol family which will be used for communication. These families are defined in <sys/socket.h>. The formats currently understood by the Linux kernel include: Name Purpose Man page AF_UNIX Local communication unix(7) AF_LOCAL Synonym for AF_UNIX AF_INET IPv4 Internet protocols ip(7) AF_AX25 Amateur radio AX.25 protocol ax25(4) AF_IPX IPX - Novell protocols AF_APPLETALK AppleTalk ddp(7) AF_X25 ITU-T X.25 / ISO/IEC 8208 protocol x25(7) AF_INET6 IPv6 Internet protocols ipv6(7) AF_DECnet DECet protocol sockets AF_KEY Key management protocol, originally developed for usage with IPsec AF_NETLINK Kernel user interface device netlink(7) AF_PACKET Low-level packet interface packet(7) AF_RDS Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol rds(7) rds-rdma(7) AF_PPPOX Generic PPP transport layer, for setting up L2 tunnels (L2TP and PPPoE) AF_LLC Logical link control (IEEE 802.2 LLC) protocol AF_IB InfiniBand native addressing AF_MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching AF_CAN Controller Area Network automotive bus protocol AF_TIPC TIPC, "cluster domain sockets" protocol AF_BLUETOOTH Bluetooth low-level socket protocol AF_ALG Interface to kernel crypto API AF_VSOCK VSOCK (originally "VMWare VSockets") vsock(7) protocol for hypervisor-guest communication AF_KCM KCM (kernel connection multiplexer) interface AF_XDP XDP (express data path) interface Further details of the above address families, as well as information on several other address families, can be found in address_families(7). The socket has the indicated type, which specifies the communication semantics. Currently defined types are: SOCK_STREAM Provides sequenced, reliable, two-way, connection-based byte streams. An out-of-band data transmission mechanism may be supported. SOCK_DGRAM Supports datagrams (connectionless, unreliable messages of a fixed maximum length). SOCK_SEQPACKET Provides a sequenced, reliable, two-way connection-based data transmission path for datagrams of fixed maximum length; a consumer is required to read an entire packet with each input system call. SOCK_RAW Provides raw network protocol access. SOCK_RDM Provides a reliable datagram layer that does not guarantee ordering. SOCK_PACKET Obsolete and should not be used in new programs; see packet(7). Some socket types may not be implemented by all protocol families. Since Linux 2.6.27, the type argument serves a second purpose: in addition to specifying a socket type, it may include the bitwise OR of any of the following values, to modify the behavior of socket(): SOCK_NONBLOCK Set the O_NONBLOCK file status flag on the open file description (see open(2)) referred to by the new file descriptor. Using this flag saves extra calls to fcntl(2) to achieve the same result. SOCK_CLOEXEC Set the close-on-exec (FD_CLOEXEC) flag on the new file descriptor. See the description of the O_CLOEXEC flag in open(2) for reasons why this may be useful. The protocol specifies a particular protocol to be used with the socket. Normally only a single protocol exists to support a particular socket type within a given protocol family, in which case protocol can be specified as 0. However, it is possible that many protocols may exist, in which case a particular protocol must be specified in this manner. The protocol number to use is specific to the “communication domain” in which communication is to take place; see protocols(5). See getprotoent(3) on how to map protocol name strings to protocol numbers. Sockets of type SOCK_STREAM are full-duplex byte streams. They do not preserve record boundaries. A stream socket must be in a connected state before any data may be sent or received on it. A connection to another socket is created with a connect(2) call. Once connected, data may be transferred using read(2) and write(2) calls or some variant of the send(2) and recv(2) calls. When a session has been completed a close(2) may be performed. Out-of- band data may also be transmitted as described in send(2) and received as described in recv(2). The communications protocols which implement a SOCK_STREAM ensure that data is not lost or duplicated. If a piece of data for which the peer protocol has buffer space cannot be successfully transmitted within a reasonable length of time, then the connection is considered to be dead. When SO_KEEPALIVE is enabled on the socket the protocol checks in a protocol-specific manner if the other end is still alive. A SIGPIPE signal is raised if a process sends or receives on a broken stream; this causes naive processes, which do not handle the signal, to exit. SOCK_SEQPACKET sockets employ the same system calls as SOCK_STREAM sockets. The only difference is that read(2) calls will return only the amount of data requested, and any data remaining in the arriving packet will be discarded. Also all message boundaries in incoming datagrams are preserved. SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_RAW sockets allow sending of datagrams to correspondents named in sendto(2) calls. Datagrams are generally received with recvfrom(2), which returns the next datagram along with the address of its sender. SOCK_PACKET is an obsolete socket type to receive raw packets directly from the device driver. Use packet(7) instead. An fcntl(2) F_SETOWN operation can be used to specify a process or process group to receive a SIGURG signal when the out-of-band data arrives or SIGPIPE signal when a SOCK_STREAM connection breaks unexpectedly. This operation may also be used to set the process or process group that receives the I/O and asynchronous notification of I/O events via SIGIO. Using F_SETOWN is equivalent to an ioctl(2) call with the FIOSETOWN or SIOCSPGRP argument. When the network signals an error condition to the protocol module (e.g., using an ICMP message for IP) the pending error flag is set for the socket. The next operation on this socket will return the error code of the pending error. For some protocols it is possible to enable a per-socket error queue to retrieve detailed information about the error; see IP_RECVERR in ip(7). The operation of sockets is controlled by socket level options. These options are defined in <sys/socket.h>. The functions setsockopt(2) and getsockopt(2) are used to set and get options.

RETURN VALUE top

        On success, a file descriptor for the new socket is returned.  On        error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS top

        EACCES Permission to create a socket of the specified type and/or               protocol is denied.         EAFNOSUPPORT               The implementation does not support the specified address               family.         EINVAL Unknown protocol, or protocol family not available.         EINVAL Invalid flags in type.         EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file               descriptors has been reached.         ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has               been reached.         ENOBUFS or ENOMEM               Insufficient memory is available.  The socket cannot be               created until sufficient resources are freed.         EPROTONOSUPPORT               The protocol type or the specified protocol is not               supported within this domain.         Other errors may be generated by the underlying protocol modules.

STANDARDS top

        POSIX.1-2008.         SOCK_NONBLOCK and SOCK_CLOEXEC are Linux-specific.

HISTORY top

        POSIX.1-2001, 4.4BSD.         socket() appeared in 4.2BSD.  It is generally portable to/from        non-BSD systems supporting clones of the BSD socket layer        (including System V variants).         The manifest constants used under 4.x BSD for protocol families        are PF_UNIX, PF_INET, and so on, while AF_UNIX, AF_INET, and so on        are used for address families.  However, already the BSD man page        promises: "The protocol family generally is the same as the        address family", and subsequent standards use AF_* everywhere.

EXAMPLES top

        An example of the use of socket() is shown in getaddrinfo(3).

COLOPHON top

        This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library        user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about        the project can be found at         ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩.  If you have a bug report        for this manual page, see        ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.        This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz        fetched from        ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on        2025-08-11.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML        version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-        to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or        improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not        part of the original manual page), send a mail to        [email protected]  Linux man-pages 6.15            2025-05-17                      socket(2)

Pages that refer to this page: lsfd(1), accept(2), bind(2), bpf(2), connect(2), fcntl(2), getsockname(2), getsockopt(2), io_uring_enter2(2), io_uring_enter(2), listen(2), mknod(2), open(2), recv(2), recvmmsg(2), seccomp_unotify(2), send(2), sendfile(2), sendmmsg(2), shutdown(2), socketcall(2), socketpair(2), syscalls(2), audit_open(3), getaddrinfo(3), getifaddrs(3), getnameinfo(3), if_nameindex(3), if_nametoindex(3), io_uring_prep_socket(3), io_uring_prep_socket_direct(3), io_uring_prep_socket_direct_alloc(3), pcap_set_protocol_linux(3pcap), pmda(3), pmdaconnect(3), sockaddr(3type), systemd.exec(5), address_families(7), ddp(7), ip(7), packet(7), raw(7), sctp(7), signal-safety(7), socket(7), tcp(7), unix(7), vsock(7), x25(7)