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NAME

       errno - number of last error

SYNOPSIS

       #include <errno.h>

DESCRIPTION

       The <errno.h> header file defines the integer variable errno, which is set by system calls
       and some library functions in the event of an error to indicate what went wrong.

   errno
       The value in errno is significant only when the return value  of  the  call  indicated  an
       error  (i.e.,  -1  from  most  system  calls;  -1  or NULL from most library functions); a
       function that succeeds is allowed to change errno.  The value of errno  is  never  set  to
       zero by any system call or library function.

       For  some  system calls and library functions (e.g., getpriority(2)), -1 is a valid return
       on success.  In such cases, a successful return can be distinguished from an error  return
       by  setting  errno  to  zero  before the call, and then, if the call returns a status that
       indicates that an error may have occurred, checking to see if errno has a nonzero value.

       errno is defined by the ISO C standard to be a modifiable lvalue of type int, and must not
       be  explicitly  declared;  errno may be a macro.  errno is thread-local; setting it in one
       thread does not affect its value in any other thread.

   Error numbers and names
       Valid error numbers are all positive numbers.  The <errno.h> header file defines  symbolic
       names for each of the possible error numbers that may appear in errno.

       All  the error names specified by POSIX.1 must have distinct values, with the exception of
       EAGAIN and EWOULDBLOCK, which may be the same.  On Linux, these two have the same value on
       all architectures.

       The error numbers that correspond to each symbolic name vary across UNIX systems, and even
       across different architectures on Linux.  Therefore, numeric values are  not  included  as
       part  of  the  list  of error names below.  The perror(3) and strerror(3) functions can be
       used to convert these names to corresponding textual error messages.

       On any particular Linux system, one can obtain a list of all symbolic error names and  the
       corresponding error numbers using the errno(1) command (part of the moreutils package):

           $ errno -l
           EPERM 1 Operation not permitted
           ENOENT 2 No such file or directory
           ESRCH 3 No such process
           EINTR 4 Interrupted system call
           EIO 5 Input/output error
           ...

       The  errno(1)  command can also be used to look up individual error numbers and names, and
       to search for errors using strings  from  the  error  description,  as  in  the  following
       examples:

           $ errno 2
           ENOENT 2 No such file or directory
           $ errno ESRCH
           ESRCH 3 No such process
           $ errno -s permission
           EACCES 13 Permission denied

   List of error names
       In the list of the symbolic error names below, various names are marked as follows:

       *  POSIX.1-2001:  The  name  is  defined  by POSIX.1-2001, and is defined in later POSIX.1
          versions, unless otherwise indicated.

       *  POSIX.1-2008: The name is defined in POSIX.1-2008,  but  was  not  present  in  earlier
          POSIX.1 standards.

       *  C99: The name is defined by C99.

       Below is a list of the symbolic error names that are defined on Linux:

       E2BIG           Argument list too long (POSIX.1-2001).

       EACCES          Permission denied (POSIX.1-2001).

       EADDRINUSE      Address already in use (POSIX.1-2001).

       EADDRNOTAVAIL   Address not available (POSIX.1-2001).

       EAFNOSUPPORT    Address family not supported (POSIX.1-2001).

       EAGAIN          Resource  temporarily  unavailable  (may be the same value as EWOULDBLOCK)
                       (POSIX.1-2001).

       EALREADY        Connection already in progress (POSIX.1-2001).

       EBADE           Invalid exchange.

       EBADF           Bad file descriptor (POSIX.1-2001).

       EBADFD          File descriptor in bad state.

       EBADMSG         Bad message (POSIX.1-2001).

       EBADR           Invalid request descriptor.

       EBADRQC         Invalid request code.

       EBADSLT         Invalid slot.

       EBUSY           Device or resource busy (POSIX.1-2001).

       ECANCELED       Operation canceled (POSIX.1-2001).

       ECHILD          No child processes (POSIX.1-2001).

       ECHRNG          Channel number out of range.

       ECOMM           Communication error on send.

       ECONNABORTED    Connection aborted (POSIX.1-2001).

       ECONNREFUSED    Connection refused (POSIX.1-2001).

       ECONNRESET      Connection reset (POSIX.1-2001).

       EDEADLK         Resource deadlock avoided (POSIX.1-2001).

       EDEADLOCK       On most architectures, a  synonym  for  EDEADLK.   On  some  architectures
                       (e.g.,  Linux  MIPS,  PowerPC,  SPARC),  it is a separate error code "File
                       locking deadlock error".

       EDESTADDRREQ    Destination address required (POSIX.1-2001).

       EDOM            Mathematics argument out of domain of function (POSIX.1, C99).

       EDQUOT          Disk quota exceeded (POSIX.1-2001).

       EEXIST          File exists (POSIX.1-2001).

       EFAULT          Bad address (POSIX.1-2001).

       EFBIG           File too large (POSIX.1-2001).

       EHOSTDOWN       Host is down.

       EHOSTUNREACH    Host is unreachable (POSIX.1-2001).

       EHWPOISON       Memory page has hardware error.

       EIDRM           Identifier removed (POSIX.1-2001).

       EILSEQ          Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character (POSIX.1, C99).

                       The text shown here is the glibc error description; in POSIX.1, this error
                       is described as "Illegal byte sequence".

       EINPROGRESS     Operation in progress (POSIX.1-2001).

       EINTR           Interrupted function call (POSIX.1-2001); see signal(7).

       EINVAL          Invalid argument (POSIX.1-2001).

       EIO             Input/output error (POSIX.1-2001).

       EISCONN         Socket is connected (POSIX.1-2001).

       EISDIR          Is a directory (POSIX.1-2001).

       EISNAM          Is a named type file.

       EKEYEXPIRED     Key has expired.

       EKEYREJECTED    Key was rejected by service.

       EKEYREVOKED     Key has been revoked.

       EL2HLT          Level 2 halted.

       EL2NSYNC        Level 2 not synchronized.

       EL3HLT          Level 3 halted.

       EL3RST          Level 3 reset.

       ELIBACC         Cannot access a needed shared library.

       ELIBBAD         Accessing a corrupted shared library.

       ELIBMAX         Attempting to link in too many shared libraries.

       ELIBSCN         .lib section in a.out corrupted

       ELIBEXEC        Cannot exec a shared library directly.

       ELNRANGE        Link number out of range.

       ELOOP           Too many levels of symbolic links (POSIX.1-2001).

       EMEDIUMTYPE     Wrong medium type.

       EMFILE          Too  many  open  files  (POSIX.1-2001).   Commonly caused by exceeding the
                       RLIMIT_NOFILE resource limit  described  in  getrlimit(2).   Can  also  be
                       caused by exceeding the limit specified in /proc/sys/fs/nr_open.

       EMLINK          Too many links (POSIX.1-2001).

       EMSGSIZE        Message too long (POSIX.1-2001).

       EMULTIHOP       Multihop attempted (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENAMETOOLONG    Filename too long (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENETDOWN        Network is down (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENETRESET       Connection aborted by network (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENETUNREACH     Network unreachable (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENFILE          Too  many open files in system (POSIX.1-2001).  On Linux, this is probably
                       a result of encountering the /proc/sys/fs/file-max limit (see proc(5)).

       ENOANO          No anode.

       ENOBUFS         No buffer space available (POSIX.1 (XSI STREAMS option)).

       ENODATA         No message is available on the STREAM head read queue (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENODEV          No such device (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOENT          No such file or directory (POSIX.1-2001).

                       Typically, this error results when a specified pathname does not exist, or
                       one  of  the  components  in  the  directory prefix of a pathname does not
                       exist, or the specified pathname is a dangling symbolic link.

       ENOEXEC         Exec format error (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOKEY          Required key not available.

       ENOLCK          No locks available (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOLINK         Link has been severed (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOMEDIUM       No medium found.

       ENOMEM          Not enough space/cannot allocate memory (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOMSG          No message of the desired type (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENONET          Machine is not on the network.

       ENOPKG          Package not installed.

       ENOPROTOOPT     Protocol not available (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOSPC          No space left on device (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOSR           No STREAM resources (POSIX.1 (XSI STREAMS option)).

       ENOSTR          Not a STREAM (POSIX.1 (XSI STREAMS option)).

       ENOSYS          Function not implemented (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTBLK         Block device required.

       ENOTCONN        The socket is not connected (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTDIR         Not a directory (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTEMPTY       Directory not empty (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTRECOVERABLE State not recoverable (POSIX.1-2008).

       ENOTSOCK        Not a socket (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTSUP         Operation not supported (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTTY          Inappropriate I/O control operation (POSIX.1-2001).

       ENOTUNIQ        Name not unique on network.

       ENXIO           No such device or address (POSIX.1-2001).

       EOPNOTSUPP      Operation not supported on socket (POSIX.1-2001).

                       (ENOTSUP and EOPNOTSUPP have the same value on  Linux,  but  according  to
                       POSIX.1 these error values should be distinct.)

       EOVERFLOW       Value too large to be stored in data type (POSIX.1-2001).

       EOWNERDEAD      Owner died (POSIX.1-2008).

       EPERM           Operation not permitted (POSIX.1-2001).

       EPFNOSUPPORT    Protocol family not supported.

       EPIPE           Broken pipe (POSIX.1-2001).

       EPROTO          Protocol error (POSIX.1-2001).

       EPROTONOSUPPORT Protocol not supported (POSIX.1-2001).

       EPROTOTYPE      Protocol wrong type for socket (POSIX.1-2001).

       ERANGE          Result too large (POSIX.1, C99).

       EREMCHG         Remote address changed.

       EREMOTE         Object is remote.

       EREMOTEIO       Remote I/O error.

       ERESTART        Interrupted system call should be restarted.

       ERFKILL         Operation not possible due to RF-kill.

       EROFS           Read-only filesystem (POSIX.1-2001).

       ESHUTDOWN       Cannot send after transport endpoint shutdown.

       ESPIPE          Invalid seek (POSIX.1-2001).

       ESOCKTNOSUPPORT Socket type not supported.

       ESRCH           No such process (POSIX.1-2001).

       ESTALE          Stale file handle (POSIX.1-2001).

                       This error can occur for NFS and for other filesystems.

       ESTRPIPE        Streams pipe error.

       ETIME           Timer expired (POSIX.1 (XSI STREAMS option)).

                       (POSIX.1 says "STREAM ioctl(2) timeout".)

       ETIMEDOUT       Connection timed out (POSIX.1-2001).

       ETOOMANYREFS    Too many references: cannot splice.

       ETXTBSY         Text file busy (POSIX.1-2001).

       EUCLEAN         Structure needs cleaning.

       EUNATCH         Protocol driver not attached.

       EUSERS          Too many users.

       EWOULDBLOCK     Operation would block (may be same value as EAGAIN) (POSIX.1-2001).

       EXDEV           Improper link (POSIX.1-2001).

       EXFULL          Exchange full.

NOTES

       A common mistake is to do

           if (somecall() == -1) {
               printf("somecall() failed\n");
               if (errno == ...) { ... }
           }

       where errno no longer needs to have the value it had upon return from somecall() (i.e., it
       may have been changed by the printf(3)).  If the value of errno should be preserved across
       a library call, it must be saved:

           if (somecall() == -1) {
               int errsv = errno;
               printf("somecall() failed\n");
               if (errsv == ...) { ... }
           }

       Note  that  the  POSIX  threads  APIs do not set errno on error.  Instead, on failure they
       return an error number as the function result.  These error numbers have the same meanings
       as the error numbers returned in errno by other APIs.

       On  some  ancient  systems, <errno.h> was not present or did not declare errno, so that it
       was necessary to declare errno manually (i.e., extern int errno).  Do  not  do  this.   It
       long  ago ceased to be necessary, and it will cause problems with modern versions of the C
       library.

SEE ALSO

       errno(1), err(3), error(3), perror(3), strerror(3)

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/.

                                            2020-11-01                                   ERRNO(3)