NAME
ioctl
—
control device
SYNOPSIS
#include
<sys/ioctl.h>
int
ioctl
(int
d, unsigned long
request, ...);
DESCRIPTION
The
ioctl
()
function 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 d must be an open file
descriptor. The third argument is called arg and
contains additional information needed by this device to perform the
requested function. arg is either an
int
or a pointer to a device-specific data
structure, depending upon the given request.
An ioctl
request has
encoded in it whether the argument is an “in” parameter or
“out” parameter, and the size of the third argument
(arg) in bytes. Macros and defines used in specifying
an ioctl request are located in the file
<sys/ioctl.h>
.
GENERIC IOCTLS
Some ioctls are applicable to any file descriptor. These include:
FIOCLEX
- Set close-on-exec flag. The file will be closed when execve(2) is invoked.
FIONCLEX
- Clear close-on-exec flag. The file will remain open across execve(2).
Some generic ioctls are not implemented for all types of file descriptors. These include:
FIONREAD
int *- Get the number of bytes that are immediately available for reading.
FIONBIO
int *- Set non-blocking I/O mode if the argument is non-zero. In non-blocking
mode, read(2) or
write(2) calls return -1 and set errno to
EAGAIN
immediately when no data is available. FIOASYNC
int *- Set asynchronous I/O mode if the argument is non-zero. In asynchronous
mode, the process or process group specified by
FIOSETOWN
will start receivingSIGIO
signals when data is available. TheSIGIO
signal will be delivered when data is available on the file descriptor. FIOSETOWN, FIOGETOWN
int *- Set/get the process or the process group (if negative) that should receive
SIGIO
signals when data is available.
RETURN VALUES
If an error has occurred, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
ioctl
() will fail if:
- [
EBADF
] - d is not a valid descriptor.
- [
ENOTTY
] - d is not associated with a character special device.
- [
ENOTTY
] - The specified request does not apply to the kind of object that the descriptor d references.
- [
EINVAL
] - request or arg is not valid.
- [
EFAULT
] - arg points outside the process's allocated address space.
SEE ALSO
cdio(1), chio(1), mt(1), execve(2), fcntl(2), intro(4), tty(4)
HISTORY
An ioctl
() function call appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX.