NAME

       inotify_init, inotify_init1 - initialize an inotify instance

LIBRARY

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

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.

STANDARDS

       Linux.

HISTORY

       inotify_init()
              Linux 2.6.13, glibc 2.4.

       inotify_init1()
              Linux 2.6.27, glibc 2.9.

SEE ALSO

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