1.\" $OpenBSD: intro.2,v 1.73 2022/12/19 18:13:50 guenther Exp $ 2.\" $NetBSD: intro.2,v 1.6 1995/02/27 12:33:41 cgd Exp $ 3.\" 4.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1991, 1993 5.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 6.\" 7.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 8.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 9.\" are met: 10.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 11.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 12.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 13.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 14.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 15.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 16.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 17.\" without specific prior written permission. 18.\" 19.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 20.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 21.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 22.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 23.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 24.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 25.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 26.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 27.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 28.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 29.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 30.\" 31.\" @(#)intro.2 8.3 (Berkeley) 12/11/93 32.\" 33.Dd $Mdocdate: December 19 2022 $ 34.Dt INTRO 2 35.Os 36.Sh NAME 37.Nm intro , 38.Nm errno 39.Nd introduction to system calls and error numbers 40.Sh SYNOPSIS 41.In errno.h 42.Sh DESCRIPTION 43The manual pages in section 2 provide an overview of the system calls, 44their error returns, and other common definitions and concepts. 45.Pp 46Programs may be restricted to a subset of system calls with 47.Xr pledge 2 . 48.\".Pp 49.\".Sy System call restart 50.\".Pp 51.\"<more later...> 52.Sh DIAGNOSTICS 53Nearly all of the system calls provide an error number via the identifier 54.Va errno , 55which expands to an addressable location of type 56.Vt int . 57The address of 58.Va errno 59in each thread is guaranteed to be unique for the lifetime of the thread. 60Applications must use 61.Va errno 62as defined in 63.In errno.h 64and not attempt to use a custom definition. 65.Pp 66When a system call detects an error, it returns an integer value 67indicating failure (usually \-1) and sets the variable 68.Va errno 69accordingly. 70(This allows interpretation of the failure on receiving 71a \-1 and to take action accordingly.) 72Successful calls never set 73.Va errno ; 74once set, it remains until another error occurs. 75It should only be examined after an error. 76Note that a number of system calls overload the meanings of these 77error numbers, and that the meanings must be interpreted according 78to the type and circumstances of the call. 79.Pp 80The following is a complete list of the errors and their 81names as given in 82.In sys/errno.h . 83.Bl -hang -width Ds 84.It Er 0 Em "Undefined error: 0" . 85Not used. 86.It Er 1 EPERM Em "Operation not permitted" . 87An attempt was made to perform an operation limited to processes 88with appropriate privileges or to the owner of a file or other 89resources. 90.It Er 2 ENOENT Em "\&No such file or directory" . 91A component of a specified pathname did not exist, or the 92pathname was an empty string. 93.It Er 3 ESRCH Em "\&No such process" . 94No process could be found which corresponds to the given process ID. 95.It Er 4 EINTR Em "Interrupted system call" . 96An asynchronous signal (such as 97.Dv SIGINT 98or 99.Dv SIGQUIT ) 100was caught by the thread during the execution of an interruptible 101function. 102If the signal handler performs a normal return, the 103interrupted function call will seem to have returned the error condition. 104.It Er 5 EIO Em "Input/output error" . 105Some physical input or output error occurred. 106This error will not be reported until a subsequent operation on the same file 107descriptor and may be lost (overwritten) by any subsequent errors. 108.It Er 6 ENXIO Em "Device not configured" . 109Input or output on a special file referred to a device that did not 110exist, or made a request beyond the limits of the device. 111This error may also occur when, for example, a tape drive is not online or 112no disk pack is loaded on a drive. 113.It Er 7 E2BIG Em "Argument list too long" . 114The number of bytes used for the argument and environment 115list of the new process exceeded the limit 116.Dv ARG_MAX . 117.It Er 8 ENOEXEC Em "Exec format error" . 118A request was made to execute a file that, although it has the appropriate 119permissions, was not in the format required for an executable file. 120.It Er 9 EBADF Em "Bad file descriptor" . 121A file descriptor argument was out of range, referred to no open file, 122or a read (write) request was made to a file that was only open for 123writing (reading). 124.It Er 10 ECHILD Em "\&No child processes" . 125A 126.Xr wait 2 , 127.Xr waitid 2 , 128or 129.Xr waitpid 2 130function was executed by a process that had no existing or unwaited-for 131child processes. 132.It Er 11 EDEADLK Em "Resource deadlock avoided" . 133An attempt was made to lock a system resource that 134would have resulted in a deadlock situation. 135.It Er 12 ENOMEM Em "Cannot allocate memory" . 136The new process image required more memory than was allowed by the hardware 137or by system-imposed memory management constraints. 138A lack of swap space is normally temporary; however, a lack of core is not. 139Soft limits may be increased to their corresponding hard limits. 140.It Er 13 EACCES Em "Permission denied" . 141An attempt was made to access a file in a way forbidden 142by its file access permissions. 143.It Er 14 EFAULT Em "Bad address" . 144The system detected an invalid address in attempting to 145use an argument of a call. 146.It Er 15 ENOTBLK Em "Block device required" . 147A block device operation was attempted on a non-block device or file. 148.It Er 16 EBUSY Em "Device busy" . 149An attempt to use a system resource which was in use at the time 150in a manner which would have conflicted with the request. 151.It Er 17 EEXIST Em "File exists" . 152An existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context, 153for instance, as the new link name in a 154.Xr link 2 155function. 156.It Er 18 EXDEV Em "Cross-device link" . 157A hard link to a file on another file system was attempted. 158.It Er 19 ENODEV Em "Operation not supported by device" . 159An attempt was made to apply an inappropriate function to a device, 160for example, trying to read a write-only device such as a printer. 161.It Er 20 ENOTDIR Em "Not a directory" . 162A component of the specified pathname existed, but it was 163not a directory, when a directory was expected. 164.It Er 21 EISDIR Em "Is a directory" . 165An attempt was made to open a directory with write mode specified. 166.It Er 22 EINVAL Em "Invalid argument" . 167Some invalid argument was supplied. 168(For example, specifying an undefined signal to a 169.Xr signal 3 170or 171.Xr kill 2 172function). 173.It Er 23 ENFILE Em "Too many open files in system" . 174Maximum number of file descriptors allowable on the system 175has been reached and a request for an open cannot be satisfied 176until at least one has been closed. 177The 178.Xr sysctl 2 179variable 180.Va kern.maxfiles 181contains the current limit. 182.It Er 24 EMFILE Em "Too many open files" . 183The maximum number of file descriptors allowable for this process 184has been reached and a request for an open cannot be satisfied 185until at least one has been closed. 186.Xr getdtablesize 3 187will obtain the current limit. 188.It Er 25 ENOTTY Em "Inappropriate ioctl for device" . 189A control function (see 190.Xr ioctl 2 ) 191was attempted for a file or 192special device for which the operation was inappropriate. 193.It Er 26 ETXTBSY Em "Text file busy" . 194An attempt was made either to execute a pure procedure (shared text) 195file which was open for writing by another process, 196or to open with write access a pure procedure file that is currently 197being executed. 198.It Er 27 EFBIG Em "File too large" . 199The size of a file exceeded the maximum. 200(The system-wide maximum file size is 2**63 bytes. 201Each file system may impose a lower limit for files contained within it.) 202.It Er 28 ENOSPC Em "\&No space left on device" . 203A 204.Xr write 2 205to an ordinary file, the creation of a directory or symbolic link, 206or the creation of a directory entry failed because no more disk 207blocks were available on the file system, or the allocation of an 208inode for a newly created file failed because no more inodes were 209available on the file system. 210.It Er 29 ESPIPE Em "Illegal seek" . 211An 212.Xr lseek 2 213function was issued on a socket, pipe or FIFO. 214.It Er 30 EROFS Em "Read-only file system" . 215An attempt was made to modify a file or create a directory 216on a file system that was read-only at the time. 217.It Er 31 EMLINK Em "Too many links" . 218The maximum allowable number of hard links to a single file has been 219exceeded (see 220.Xr pathconf 2 221for how to obtain this value). 222.It Er 32 EPIPE Em "Broken pipe" . 223A write on a pipe, socket or FIFO 224for which there is no process to read the data. 225.It Er 33 EDOM Em "Numerical argument out of domain" . 226A numerical input argument was outside the defined domain of 227the mathematical function. 228.It Er 34 ERANGE Em "Result too large" . 229A result of the function was too large to fit in the 230available space (perhaps exceeded precision). 231.It Er 35 EAGAIN Em "Resource temporarily unavailable" . 232This is a temporary condition and later calls to the 233same routine may complete normally. 234.It Er 36 EINPROGRESS Em "Operation now in progress" . 235An operation that takes a long time to complete (such as a 236.Xr connect 2 ) 237was attempted on a non-blocking object (see 238.Xr fcntl 2 ) . 239.It Er 37 EALREADY Em "Operation already in progress" . 240An operation was attempted on a non-blocking object that already 241had an operation in progress. 242.It Er 38 ENOTSOCK Em "Socket operation on non-socket" . 243Self-explanatory. 244.It Er 39 EDESTADDRREQ Em "Destination address required" . 245A required address was omitted from an operation on a socket. 246.It Er 40 EMSGSIZE Em "Message too long" . 247A message sent on a socket was larger than the internal message buffer 248or some other network limit. 249.It Er 41 EPROTOTYPE Em "Protocol wrong type for socket" . 250A protocol was specified that does not support the semantics of the 251socket type requested. 252For example, you cannot use the Internet UDP protocol with type 253.Dv SOCK_STREAM . 254.It Er 42 ENOPROTOOPT Em "Protocol not available" . 255A bad option or level was specified in a 256.Xr getsockopt 2 257or 258.Xr setsockopt 2 259call. 260.It Er 43 EPROTONOSUPPORT Em "Protocol not supported" . 261The protocol has not been configured into the 262system or no implementation for it exists. 263.It Er 44 ESOCKTNOSUPPORT Em "Socket type not supported" . 264The support for the socket type has not been configured into the 265system or no implementation for it exists. 266.It Er 45 EOPNOTSUPP Em "Operation not supported" . 267The attempted operation is not supported for the type of object referenced. 268Usually this occurs when a file descriptor refers to a file or socket 269that cannot support this operation, for example, trying to 270.Em accept 271a connection on a datagram socket. 272.It Er 46 EPFNOSUPPORT Em "Protocol family not supported" . 273The protocol family has not been configured into the 274system or no implementation for it exists. 275.It Er 47 EAFNOSUPPORT Em "Address family not supported by protocol family" . 276An address incompatible with the requested protocol was used. 277For example, you shouldn't necessarily expect to be able to use 278NS addresses with Internet protocols. 279.It Er 48 EADDRINUSE Em "Address already in use" . 280Only one usage of each address is normally permitted. 281.It Er 49 EADDRNOTAVAIL Em "Can't assign requested address" . 282Normally results from an attempt to create a socket with an 283address not on this machine. 284.It Er 50 ENETDOWN Em "Network is down" . 285A socket operation encountered a dead network. 286.It Er 51 ENETUNREACH Em "Network is unreachable" . 287A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network. 288.It Er 52 ENETRESET Em "Network dropped connection on reset" . 289The host you were connected to crashed and rebooted. 290.It Er 53 ECONNABORTED Em "Software caused connection abort" . 291A connection abort was caused internal to your host machine. 292.It Er 54 ECONNRESET Em "Connection reset by peer" . 293A connection was forcibly closed by a peer. 294This normally results from a loss of the connection on the remote socket 295due to a timeout or a reboot. 296.It Er 55 ENOBUFS Em "\&No buffer space available" . 297An operation on a socket or pipe was not performed because 298the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full. 299.It Er 56 EISCONN Em "Socket is already connected" . 300A 301.Xr connect 2 302request was made on an already connected socket; or, a 303.Xr sendto 2 304or 305.Xr sendmsg 2 306request on a connected socket specified a destination 307when already connected. 308.It Er 57 ENOTCONN Em "Socket is not connected" . 309A request to send or receive data was disallowed because 310the socket was not connected and (when sending on a datagram socket) 311no address was supplied. 312.It Er 58 ESHUTDOWN Em "Can't send after socket shutdown" . 313A request to send data was disallowed because the socket 314had already been shut down with a previous 315.Xr shutdown 2 316call. 317.It Er 59 ETOOMANYREFS Em "Too many references: can't splice" . 318Not used in 319.Ox . 320.It Er 60 ETIMEDOUT Em "Operation timed out" . 321A 322.Xr connect 2 323or 324.Xr send 2 325request failed because the connected party did not 326properly respond after a period of time. 327(The timeout period is dependent on the communication protocol.) 328.It Er 61 ECONNREFUSED Em "Connection refused" . 329No connection could be made because the target machine actively 330refused it. 331This usually results from trying to connect to a service that is 332inactive on the foreign host. 333.It Er 62 ELOOP Em "Too many levels of symbolic links" . 334A pathname lookup involved more than 32 335.Pq Dv SYMLOOP_MAX 336symbolic links. 337.It Er 63 ENAMETOOLONG Em "File name too long" . 338A component of a pathname exceeded 255 339.Pq Dv NAME_MAX 340characters, or an entire pathname (including the terminating NUL) 341exceeded 1024 342.Pq Dv PATH_MAX 343bytes. 344.It Er 64 EHOSTDOWN Em "Host is down" . 345A socket operation failed because the destination host was down. 346.It Er 65 EHOSTUNREACH Em "\&No route to host" . 347A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host. 348.It Er 66 ENOTEMPTY Em "Directory not empty" . 349A directory with entries other than 350.Ql \&. 351and 352.Ql \&.. 353was supplied to a remove directory or rename call. 354.It Er 67 EPROCLIM Em "Too many processes" . 355.It Er 68 EUSERS Em "Too many users" . 356The quota system ran out of table entries. 357.It Er 69 EDQUOT Em "Disk quota exceeded" . 358A 359.Xr write 2 360to an ordinary file, the creation of a directory or symbolic link, 361or the creation of a directory entry failed because the user's quota 362of disk blocks was exhausted, or the allocation of an inode for a newly 363created file failed because the user's quota of inodes was exhausted. 364.It Er 70 ESTALE Em "Stale NFS file handle" . 365An attempt was made to access an open file on an NFS filesystem which 366is now unavailable as referenced by the file descriptor. 367This may indicate the file was deleted on the NFS server or some other 368catastrophic event occurred. 369.It Er 72 EBADRPC Em "RPC struct is bad" . 370Exchange of 371.Xr rpc 3 372information was unsuccessful. 373.It Er 73 ERPCMISMATCH Em "RPC version wrong" . 374The version of 375.Xr rpc 3 376on the remote peer is not compatible with the local version. 377.It Er 74 EPROGUNAVAIL Em "RPC program not available" . 378The requested 379.Xr rpc 3 380program is not registered on the remote host. 381.It Er 75 EPROGMISMATCH Em "Program version wrong" . 382The requested version of the 383.Xr rpc 3 384program is not available on the remote host. 385.It Er 76 EPROCUNAVAIL Em "Bad procedure for program" . 386An 387.Xr rpc 3 388call was attempted for a procedure which doesn't exist 389in the remote program. 390.It Er 77 ENOLCK Em "\&No locks available" . 391A system-imposed limit on the number of simultaneous file 392locks was reached. 393.It Er 78 ENOSYS Em "Function not implemented" . 394Attempted a system call that is not available on this 395system. 396.It Er 79 EFTYPE Em "Inappropriate file type or format" . 397The file contains invalid data or set to invalid modes. 398.It Er 80 EAUTH Em "Authentication error" . 399Attempted to use an invalid authentication ticket to mount a 400NFS filesystem. 401.It Er 81 ENEEDAUTH Em "Need authenticator" . 402An authentication ticket must be obtained before the given 403NFS filesystem may be mounted. 404.It Er 82 EIPSEC Em "IPsec processing failure" . 405IPsec subsystem error. 406Not used in 407.Ox . 408.It Er 83 ENOATTR Em "Attribute not found" . 409A UFS Extended Attribute is not found for the specified pathname. 410.It Er 84 EILSEQ Em "Illegal byte sequence" . 411An illegal sequence of bytes was used when using wide characters. 412.It Er 85 ENOMEDIUM Em "\&No medium found" . 413Attempted to use a removable media device with no medium present. 414.It Er 86 EMEDIUMTYPE Em "Wrong medium type" . 415Attempted to use a removable media device with incorrect or incompatible 416medium. 417.It Er 87 EOVERFLOW Em "Value too large to be stored in data type" . 418A numerical result of the function was too large to be stored in the 419caller provided space. 420.It Er 88 ECANCELED Em "Operation canceled" . 421The requested operation was canceled. 422.It Er 89 EIDRM Em "Identifier removed" . 423An IPC identifier was removed while the current thread was waiting on it. 424.It Er 90 ENOMSG Em "\&No message of desired type". 425An IPC message queue does not contain a message of the desired type, 426or a message catalog does not contain the requested message. 427.It Er 91 ENOTSUP Em "Not supported" . 428The operation has requested an unsupported value. 429.It Er 92 EBADMSG Em "Bad message" . 430A corrupted message was detected. 431.It Er 93 ENOTRECOVERABLE Em "State not recoverable" . 432The state protected by a robust mutex is not recoverable. 433.It Er 94 EOWNERDEAD Em "Previous owner died" . 434The owner of a robust mutex terminated while holding the mutex lock. 435.It Er 95 EPROTO Em "Protocol error" . 436A device-specific protocol error occurred. 437.El 438.Sh DEFINITIONS 439.Bl -tag -width Ds 440.It Process 441A process is a collection of one or more threads, 442plus the resources shared by those threads such as process ID, 443address space, 444user IDs and group IDs, 445and root directory and current working directory. 446.It Process ID 447Each active process in the system is uniquely identified by a non-negative 448integer called a process ID. 449The range of this ID is from 0 to 99999. 450.It Parent Process ID 451A new process is created by a currently active process; (see 452.Xr fork 2 ) . 453The parent process ID of a process is initially the process ID of its creator. 454If the creating process exits, 455the parent process ID of each child is set to the ID of a system process, 456.Xr init 8 . 457.It Process Group 458Each active process is a member of a process group that is identified by 459a non-negative integer called the process group ID. 460This is the process ID of the group leader. 461This grouping permits the signaling of related processes (see 462.Xr termios 4 ) 463and the job control mechanisms of 464.Xr ksh 1 465and 466.Xr csh 1 . 467.It Session 468A session is a set of one or more process groups. 469A session is created by a successful call to 470.Xr setsid 2 , 471which causes the caller to become the only member of the only process 472group in the new session. 473.It Session Leader 474A process that has created a new session by a successful call to 475.Xr setsid 2 , 476is known as a session leader. 477Only a session leader may acquire a terminal as its controlling terminal (see 478.Xr termios 4 ) . 479.It Controlling Process 480A session leader with a controlling terminal is a controlling process. 481.It Controlling Terminal 482A terminal that is associated with a session is known as the controlling 483terminal for that session and its members. 484.It Terminal Process Group ID 485A terminal may be acquired by a session leader as its controlling terminal. 486Once a terminal is associated with a session, any of the process groups 487within the session may be placed into the foreground by setting 488the terminal process group ID to the ID of the process group. 489This facility is used 490to arbitrate between multiple jobs contending for the same terminal; 491(see 492.Xr ksh 1 , 493.Xr csh 1 , 494and 495.Xr tty 4 ) . 496.It Orphaned Process Group 497A process group is considered to be 498.Em orphaned 499if it is not under the control of a job control shell. 500More precisely, a process group is orphaned 501when none of its members has a parent process that is in the same session 502as the group, 503but is in a different process group. 504Note that when a process exits, the parent process for its children 505is changed to be 506.Xr init 8 , 507which is in a separate session. 508Not all members of an orphaned process group are necessarily orphaned 509processes (those whose creating process has exited). 510The process group of a session leader is orphaned by definition. 511.It Thread 512A thread is a preemptively scheduled flow of control within a process, 513with its own set of register values, 514floating point environment, 515thread ID, 516signal mask, 517pending signal set, 518alternate signal stack, 519thread control block address, 520resource utilization, 521errno variable location, 522and values for thread-specific keys. 523A process initially has just one thread, 524a duplicate of the thread in the parent process that created this process. 525.It Real User ID and Real Group ID 526Each user on the system is identified by a positive integer 527termed the real user ID. 528.Pp 529Each user is also a member of one or more groups. 530One of these groups is distinguished from others and 531used in implementing accounting facilities. 532The positive integer corresponding to this distinguished group is termed 533the real group ID. 534.Pp 535All processes have a real user ID and real group ID. 536These are initialized from the equivalent attributes 537of the process that created it. 538.It "Effective User ID, Effective Group ID, and Group Access List" 539Access to system resources is governed by two values: 540the effective user ID, and the group access list. 541The first member of the group access list is also known as the 542effective group ID. 543(In POSIX.1, the group access list is known as the set of supplementary 544group IDs, and it is unspecified whether the effective group ID is 545a member of the list.) 546.Pp 547The effective user ID and effective group ID are initially the 548process's real user ID and real group ID respectively. 549Either may be modified through execution of a set-user-ID or set-group-ID 550file (possibly by one of its ancestors) (see 551.Xr execve 2 ) . 552By convention, the effective group ID (the first member of the group access 553list) is duplicated, so that the execution of a set-group-ID program 554does not result in the loss of the original (real) group ID. 555.Pp 556The group access list is a set of group IDs 557used only in determining resource accessibility. 558Access checks are performed as described below in 559.Dq File Access Permissions . 560.It Saved Set User ID and Saved Set Group ID 561When a process executes a new file, the effective user ID is set 562to the owner of the file if the file is set-user-ID, and the effective 563group ID (first element of the group access list) is set to the group 564of the file if the file is set-group-ID. 565The effective user ID of the process is then recorded as the saved set-user-ID, 566and the effective group ID of the process is recorded as the saved set-group-ID. 567These values may be used to regain those values as the effective user 568or group ID after reverting to the real ID (see 569.Xr setuid 2 ) . 570(In POSIX.1, the saved set-user-ID and saved set-group-ID are optional, 571and are used in setuid and setgid, but this does not work as desired 572for the superuser.) 573.It Superuser 574A process is recognized as a 575.Em superuser 576process and is granted special privileges if its effective user ID is 0. 577.It Special Processes 578The processes with process IDs of 0 and 1 are special. 579Process 0 is the scheduler. 580Process 1 is the initialization process 581.Xr init 8 , 582and is the ancestor of every other process in the system. 583It is used to control the process structure. 584.It Descriptor 585An integer assigned by the system when a file is referenced 586by 587.Xr open 2 588or 589.Xr dup 2 , 590or when a socket is created by 591.Xr pipe 2 , 592.Xr socket 2 593or 594.Xr socketpair 2 , 595which uniquely identifies an access path to that file or socket from 596a given process or any of its children. 597.It File Name 598Names consisting of up to 255 599.Pq Dv NAME_MAX 600characters may be used to name 601an ordinary file, special file, or directory. 602.Pp 603These characters may be arbitrary eight-bit values, 604excluding 0 (NUL) and the ASCII code for 605.Ql \&/ 606(slash). 607.Pp 608Note that it is generally unwise to use 609.Ql \&* , 610.Ql \&? , 611.Ql \&[ 612or 613.Ql \&] 614as part of 615file names because of the special meaning attached to these characters 616by the shell. 617.Pp 618Note also that 619.Dv NAME_MAX 620is an upper limit fixed by the kernel, meant to be used for sizing buffers. 621Some filesystems may have additional restrictions. 622These can be queried using 623.Xr pathconf 2 624and 625.Xr fpathconf 2 . 626.It Pathname 627A pathname is a NUL-terminated 628character string starting with an 629optional slash 630.Ql \&/ , 631followed by zero or more directory names separated 632by slashes, optionally followed by a file name. 633The total length of a pathname must be less than 1024 634.Pq Dv PATH_MAX 635characters. 636Additional restrictions may apply, depending upon the filesystem, to be 637queried with 638.Xr pathconf 2 639or 640.Xr fpathconf 2 641if needed. 642.Pp 643If a pathname begins with a slash, the path search begins at the 644.Em root 645directory. 646Otherwise, the search begins from the current working directory. 647A slash by itself names the root directory. 648An empty pathname is invalid. 649.It Directory 650A directory is a special type of file that contains entries 651that are references to other files. 652Directory entries are called links. 653By convention, a directory contains at least two links, 654.Ql \&. 655and 656.Ql \&.. , 657referred to as 658.Em dot 659and 660.Em dot-dot 661respectively. 662Dot refers to the directory itself and dot-dot refers to its 663parent directory. 664.It "Root Directory and Current Working Directory" 665Each process has associated with it a concept of a root directory 666and a current working directory for the purpose of resolving path 667name searches. 668A process's root directory need not be the root directory of 669the root file system. 670.It File Access Permissions 671Every file in the file system has a set of access permissions. 672These permissions are used in determining whether a process 673may perform a requested operation on the file (such as opening 674a file for writing). 675Access permissions are established at the time a file is created. 676They may be changed at some later time through the 677.Xr chmod 2 678call. 679.Pp 680File access is broken down according to whether a file may be: read, 681written, or executed. 682Directory files use the execute permission to control if the directory 683may be searched. 684.Pp 685File access permissions are interpreted by the system as 686they apply to three different classes of users: the owner 687of the file, those users in the file's group, anyone else. 688Every file has an independent set of access permissions for 689each of these classes. 690When an access check is made, the system decides if permission should be 691granted by checking the access information applicable to the caller. 692.Pp 693Read, write, and execute/search permissions on 694a file are granted to a process if: 695.Pp 696The process's effective user ID is that of the superuser. 697(Note: even the superuser cannot execute a non-executable file.) 698.Pp 699The process's effective user ID matches the user ID of the owner 700of the file and the owner permissions allow the access. 701.Pp 702The process's effective user ID does not match the user ID of the 703owner of the file, and either the process's effective 704group ID matches the group ID 705of the file, or the group ID of the file is in 706the process's group access list, 707and the group permissions allow the access. 708.Pp 709Neither the effective user ID nor effective group ID 710and group access list of the process 711match the corresponding user ID and group ID of the file, 712but the permissions for 713.Dq other users 714allow access. 715.Pp 716Otherwise, permission is denied. 717.It Sockets and Address Families 718A socket is an endpoint for communication between processes. 719Each socket has queues for sending and receiving data. 720.Pp 721Sockets are typed according to their communications properties. 722These properties include whether messages sent and received 723at a socket require the name of the partner, whether communication 724is reliable, the format used in naming message recipients, etc. 725.Pp 726Each instance of the system supports some 727collection of socket types; consult 728.Xr socket 2 729for more information about the types available and 730their properties. 731.Pp 732Each instance of the system supports some number of sets of 733communications protocols. 734Each protocol set supports addresses of a certain format. 735An Address Family is the set of addresses for a specific group of protocols. 736Each socket has an address chosen from the address family in which the 737socket was created. 738.El 739.Sh SEE ALSO 740.Xr pledge 2 , 741.Xr intro 3 , 742.Xr perror 3 743.Sh HISTORY 744An 745.Nm 746manual for section 2 first appeared in 747.At v5 . 748