NAME

       inotify_init, inotify_init1 - initialize an inotify instance

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/inotify.h>

       int inotify_init(void);
       int inotify_init1(int flags);

DESCRIPTION

       For an overview of the inotify API, see inotify(7).

       inotify_init() initializes a new inotify instance and returns a file descriptor associated
       with a new inotify event queue.

       If flags is 0, then inotify_init1() is the same as inotify_init().  The  following  values
       can be bitwise ORed in flags to obtain different behavior:

       IN_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.

       IN_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.

RETURN VALUE

       On success, these system calls return a new file descriptor.  On error,  -1  is  returned,
       and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       EINVAL (inotify_init1()) An invalid value was specified in flags.

       EMFILE The user limit on the total number of inotify instances has been reached.

       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.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory is available.

VERSIONS

       inotify_init()  first  appeared  in  Linux  2.6.13;  library support was added to glibc in
       version 2.4.  inotify_init1() was added in Linux 2.6.27;  library  support  was  added  to
       glibc in version 2.9.

CONFORMING TO

       These system calls are Linux-specific.

SEE ALSO

       inotify_add_watch(2), inotify_rm_watch(2), inotify(7)

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part of release 5.10 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.