NAME

       inotify_init, inotify_init1 - initialize an inotify instance

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/inotify.h>

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

DESCRIPTION

       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 new open file description.  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.

       ENFILE The system limit on the total number of file descriptors 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 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project,    and    information    about    reporting    bugs,    can    be    found     at
       http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.