listen() - Unix, Linux System Call
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listen() - Unix, Linux System Call


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NAME

listen - listen for connections on a socket

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/socket.h>

int listen(int sockfd, int backlog);

DESCRIPTION

To accept connections, a socket is first created with socket(2), a willingness to accept incoming connections and a queue limit for incoming connections are specified with listen(), and then the connections are accepted with accept(2). The listen() call applies only to sockets of type SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_SEQPACKET.

The backlog parameter defines the maximum length the queue of pending connections may grow to. If a connection request arrives with the queue full the client may receive an error with an indication of ECONNREFUSED or, if the underlying protocol supports retransmission, the request may be ignored so that retries succeed.

NOTES

The behaviour of the backlog parameter on TCP sockets changed with Linux 2.2. Now it specifies the queue length for completely established sockets waiting to be accepted, instead of the number of incomplete connection requests. The maximum length of the queue for incomplete sockets can be set using the tcp_max_syn_backlog sysctl. When syncookies are enabled there is no logical maximum length and this sysctl setting is ignored. See tcp(7) for more information.

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

TagDescription
EADDRINUSE
  Another socket is already listening on the same port.
EBADF The argument sockfd is not a valid descriptor.
ENOTSOCK
  The argument sockfd is not a socket.
EOPNOTSUPP
  The socket is not of a type that supports the listen() operation.

CONFORMING TO

4.4BSD, POSIX.1-2001. The listen() function call first appeared in 4.2BSD.

BUGS

If the socket is of type AF_INET, and the backlog argument is greater than the constant SOMAXCONN (128 in Linux 2.0 & 2.2), it is silently truncated to SOMAXCONN.

SEE ALSO



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