xref: /illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man2/ioctl.2 (revision 66582b606a8194f7f3ba5b3a3a6dca5b0d346361)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. gratefully acknowledges The Open Group for
permission to reproduce portions of its copyrighted documentation.
Original documentation from The Open Group can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and The Open
Group, have given us permission to reprint portions of their
documentation.

In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
in the SunOS Reference Manual, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6,
Copyright (C) 2001-2004 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy
between these versions and the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html.

This notice shall appear on any product containing this material.

The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions
and limitations under the License.

When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]


Copyright 1989 AT&T
Portions Copyright (c) 1992, X/Open Company Limited All Rights Reserved
Copyright (c) 1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

IOCTL 2 "Feb 15, 1996"
NAME
ioctl - control device
SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stropts.h>

int ioctl(int fildes, int request, /* arg */ ...);
DESCRIPTION

The ioctl() function performs a variety of control functions on devices and streams. For non-streams files, the functions performed by this call are device-specific control functions. The request argument and an optional third argument with varying type are passed to the file designated by fildes and are interpreted by the device driver.

For streams files, specific functions are performed by the ioctl() function as described in streamio(7I).

The fildes argument is an open file descriptor that refers to a device. The request argument selects the control function to be performed and depends on the device being addressed. The arg argument represents a third argument that has additional information that is needed by this specific device to perform the requested function. The data type of arg depends upon the particular control request, but it is either an int or a pointer to a device-specific data structure.

In addition to device-specific and streams functions, generic functions are provided by more than one device driver (for example, the general terminal interface.) See termio(7I)).

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, the value returned depends upon the device control function, but must be a non-negative integer. Otherwise, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The ioctl() function will fail for any type of file if: EBADF

The fildes argument is not a valid open file descriptor.

EINTR

A signal was caught during the execution of the ioctl() function.

EINVAL

The stream or multiplexer referenced by fildes is linked (directly or indirectly) downstream from a multiplexer.

The ioctl() function will also fail if the device driver detects an error. In this case, the error is passed through ioctl() without change to the caller. A particular driver might not have all of the following error cases. Under the following conditions, requests to device drivers may fail and set errno to indicate the error EFAULT

The request argument requires a data transfer to or from a buffer pointed to by arg, but arg points to an illegal address.

EINVAL

The request or arg argument is not valid for this device.

EIO

Some physical I/O error has occurred.

ENOLINK

The fildes argument is on a remote machine and the link to that machine is no longer active.

ENOTTY

The fildes argument is not associated with a streams device that accepts control functions.

ENXIO

The request and arg arguments are valid for this device driver, but the service requested can not be performed on this particular subdevice.

ENODEV

The fildes argument refers to a valid streams device, but the corresponding device driver does not support the ioctl() function.

Streams errors are described in streamio(7I).

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Interface Stability Standard
SEE ALSO

attributes(5), standards(5), streamio(7I), termio(7I)