.\" Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California. .\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement .\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution. .\" .\" @(#)listen.2 6.1 (Berkeley) 05/15/85 .\" .TH LISTEN 2 "" .UC 5 .SH NAME listen \- listen for connections on a socket .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .ft B listen(s, backlog) int s, backlog; .fi .SH DESCRIPTION To accept connections, a socket is first created with .IR socket (2), a backlog for incoming connections is specified with .IR listen (2) and then the connections are accepted with .IR accept (2). The .I listen call applies only to sockets of type SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_PKTSTREAM. .PP The .I 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 will receive an error with an indication of ECONNREFUSED. .SH "RETURN VALUE A 0 return value indicates success; \-1 indicates an error. .SH "ERRORS The call fails if: .TP 20 [EBADF] The argument \fIs\fP is not a valid descriptor. .TP 20 [ENOTSOCK] The argument \fIs\fP is not a socket. .TP 20 [EOPNOTSUPP] The socket is not of a type that supports the operation \fIlisten\fP. .SH "SEE ALSO" accept(2), connect(2), socket(2) .SH BUGS The .I backlog is currently limited (silently) to 5.