GSP
Quick Navigator

Search Site

Unix VPS
A - Starter
B - Basic
C - Preferred
D - Commercial
MPS - Dedicated
Previous VPSs
* Sign Up! *

Support
Contact Us
Online Help
Handbooks
Domain Status
Man Pages

FAQ
Virtual Servers
Pricing
Billing
Technical

Network
Facilities
Connectivity
Topology Map

Miscellaneous
Server Agreement
Year 2038
Credits
 

USA Flag

 

 

Man Pages
IOCTL(2) FreeBSD System Calls Manual IOCTL(2)

ioctl
control device

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

#include <sys/ioctl.h>

int
ioctl(int fd, unsigned long request, ...);

The ioctl() system call manipulates the underlying device parameters of special files. In particular, many operating characteristics of character special files (e.g. terminals) may be controlled with ioctl() requests. The argument fd must be an open file descriptor.

The third argument to ioctl() is traditionally named char *argp. Most uses of ioctl(), however, require the third argument to be a caddr_t or an int.

An ioctl() request has encoded in it whether the argument is an “in” argument or “out” argument, and the size of the argument argp in bytes. Macros and defines used in specifying an ioctl request are located in the file <sys/ioctl.h>.

Some generic ioctls are not implemented for all types of file descriptors. These include:
Get the number of bytes that are immediately available for reading.
Get the number of bytes in the descriptor's send queue. These bytes are data which has been written to the descriptor but which are being held by the kernel for further processing. The nature of the required processing depends on the underlying device. For TCP sockets, these bytes have not yet been acknowledged by the other side of the connection.
Get the free space in the descriptor's send queue. This value is the size of the send queue minus the number of bytes being held in the queue. Note: while this value represents the number of bytes that may be added to the queue, other resource limitations may cause a write not larger than the send queue's space to be blocked. One such limitation would be a lack of network buffers for a write to a network connection.

If an error has occurred, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

The ioctl() system call will fail if:
[]
The fd argument is not a valid descriptor.
[]
The fd argument is not associated with a character special device.
[]
The specified request does not apply to the kind of object that the descriptor fd references.
[]
The request or argp argument is not valid.
[]
The argp argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

execve(2), fcntl(2), intro(4), tty(4)

The ioctl() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
September 11, 2013 FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE

Search for    or go to Top of page |  Section 2 |  Main Index

Powered by GSP Visit the GSP FreeBSD Man Page Interface.
Output converted with ManDoc.