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 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.

       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 4.04 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 http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.