send(2)



SEND(2)                    Linux Programmer's Manual                   SEND(2)

NAME
       send, sendto, sendmsg - send a message on a socket

SYNOPSIS
       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <sys/socket.h>

       ssize_t send(int sockfd, const void *buf, size_t len, int flags);

       ssize_t sendto(int sockfd, const void *buf, size_t len, int flags,
                      const struct sockaddr *dest_addr, socklen_t addrlen);

       ssize_t sendmsg(int sockfd, const struct msghdr *msg, int flags);

DESCRIPTION
       The system calls send(), sendto(), and sendmsg() are used to transmit a
       message to another socket.

       The send() call may be used only when the  socket  is  in  a  connected
       state  (so  that the intended recipient is known).  The only difference
       between send() and write(2) is the presence  of  flags.   With  a  zero
       flags  argument, send() is equivalent to write(2).  Also, the following
       call

           send(sockfd, buf, len, flags);

       is equivalent to

           sendto(sockfd, buf, len, flags, NULL, 0);

       The argument sockfd is the file descriptor of the sending socket.

       If sendto() is used on a connection-mode (SOCK_STREAM,  SOCK_SEQPACKET)
       socket,  the arguments dest_addr and addrlen are ignored (and the error
       EISCONN may be returned when they are not NULL and 0),  and  the  error
       ENOTCONN  is returned when the socket was not actually connected.  Oth-
       erwise, the address of the target is given by  dest_addr  with  addrlen
       specifying its size.  For sendmsg(), the address of the target is given
       by msg.msg_name, with msg.msg_namelen specifying its size.

       For send() and sendto(), the message is found in  buf  and  has  length
       len.   For  sendmsg(), the message is pointed to by the elements of the
       array msg.msg_iov.  The sendmsg() call also  allows  sending  ancillary
       data (also known as control information).

       If  the  message  is too long to pass atomically through the underlying
       protocol, the error EMSGSIZE is returned, and the message is not trans-
       mitted.

       No  indication  of failure to deliver is implicit in a send().  Locally
       detected errors are indicated by a return value of -1.

       When the message does not fit into  the  send  buffer  of  the  socket,
       send()  normally blocks, unless the socket has been placed in nonblock-
       ing I/O mode.  In nonblocking mode it would fail with the error  EAGAIN
       or  EWOULDBLOCK in this case.  The select(2) call may be used to deter-
       mine when it is possible to send more data.

   The flags argument
       The flags argument is the bitwise OR of zero or more of  the  following
       flags.

       MSG_CONFIRM (since Linux 2.3.15)
              Tell  the  link  layer that forward progress happened: you got a
              successful reply from the other side.  If the link layer doesn't
              get  this  it  will  regularly reprobe the neighbor (e.g., via a
              unicast ARP).  Valid only on SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_RAW sockets and
              currently  implemented  only  for IPv4 and IPv6.  See arp(7) for
              details.

       MSG_DONTROUTE
              Don't use a gateway to send out the packet, send to  hosts  only
              on  directly  connected  networks.  This is usually used only by
              diagnostic or routing programs.  This is defined only for proto-
              col families that route; packet sockets don't.

       MSG_DONTWAIT (since Linux 2.2)
              Enables nonblocking operation; if the operation would block, EA-
              GAIN or EWOULDBLOCK is returned.  This provides similar behavior
              to  setting the O_NONBLOCK flag (via the fcntl(2) F_SETFL opera-
              tion), but differs in that MSG_DONTWAIT is  a  per-call  option,
              whereas  O_NONBLOCK  is  a  setting on the open file description
              (see open(2)), which will affect  all  threads  in  the  calling
              process  and  as well as other processes that hold file descrip-
              tors referring to the same open file description.

       MSG_EOR (since Linux 2.2)
              Terminates a record (when this notion is supported, as for sock-
              ets of type SOCK_SEQPACKET).

       MSG_MORE (since Linux 2.4.4)
              The  caller  has  more data to send.  This flag is used with TCP
              sockets to obtain the same effect as the TCP_CORK socket  option
              (see tcp(7)), with the difference that this flag can be set on a
              per-call basis.

              Since Linux 2.6, this flag is also supported  for  UDP  sockets,
              and  informs the kernel to package all of the data sent in calls
              with this flag set into a single datagram which  is  transmitted
              only  when  a call is performed that does not specify this flag.
              (See also the UDP_CORK socket option described in udp(7).)

       MSG_NOSIGNAL (since Linux 2.2)
              Don't generate a SIGPIPE signal if the peer on a stream-oriented
              socket  has closed the connection.  The EPIPE error is still re-
              turned.  This provides similar behavior to using sigaction(2) to
              ignore SIGPIPE, but, whereas MSG_NOSIGNAL is a per-call feature,
              ignoring SIGPIPE sets  a  process  attribute  that  affects  all
              threads in the process.

       MSG_OOB
              Sends  out-of-band  data  on  sockets  that  support this notion
              (e.g., of type SOCK_STREAM); the underlying protocol  must  also
              support out-of-band data.

   sendmsg()
       The definition of the msghdr structure employed by sendmsg() is as fol-
       lows:

           struct msghdr {
               void         *msg_name;       /* Optional address */
               socklen_t     msg_namelen;    /* Size of address */
               struct iovec *msg_iov;        /* Scatter/gather array */
               size_t        msg_iovlen;     /* # elements in msg_iov */
               void         *msg_control;    /* Ancillary data, see below */
               size_t        msg_controllen; /* Ancillary data buffer len */
               int           msg_flags;      /* Flags (unused) */
           };

       The msg_name field is used on an unconnected socket to specify the tar-
       get  address  for a datagram.  It points to a buffer containing the ad-
       dress; the msg_namelen field should be set to the size of the  address.
       For a connected socket, these fields should be specified as NULL and 0,
       respectively.

       The msg_iov and msg_iovlen fields specify scatter-gather locations,  as
       for writev(2).

       You  may  send  control  information using the msg_control and msg_con-
       trollen members.  The maximum control  buffer  length  the  kernel  can
       process  is  limited per socket by the value in /proc/sys/net/core/opt-
       mem_max; see socket(7).

       The msg_flags field is ignored.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, these calls return the number of bytes sent.  On error,  -1
       is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS
       These  are  some  standard errors generated by the socket layer.  Addi-
       tional errors may be generated and returned from the underlying  proto-
       col modules; see their respective manual pages.

       EACCES (For  UNIX  domain  sockets,  which  are identified by pathname)
              Write permission is denied on the destination  socket  file,  or
              search  permission is denied for one of the directories the path
              prefix.  (See path_resolution(7).)

              (For UDP sockets)  An  attempt  was  made  to  send  to  a  net-
              work/broadcast address as though it was a unicast address.

       EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK
              The  socket  is  marked  nonblocking and the requested operation
              would block.  POSIX.1-2001 allows either error  to  be  returned
              for  this case, and does not require these constants to have the
              same value, so a portable application should check for both pos-
              sibilities.

       EAGAIN (Internet  domain  datagram  sockets)  The socket referred to by
              sockfd had not previously been bound to an address and, upon at-
              tempting to bind it to an ephemeral port, it was determined that
              all port numbers in the ephemeral port range  are  currently  in
              use.     See   the   discussion   of   /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_lo-
              cal_port_range in ip(7).

       EALREADY
              Another Fast Open is in progress.

       EBADF  sockfd is not a valid open file descriptor.

       ECONNRESET
              Connection reset by peer.

       EDESTADDRREQ
              The socket is not connection-mode, and no peer address is set.

       EFAULT An invalid user space address was specified for an argument.

       EINTR  A signal occurred before any  data  was  transmitted;  see  sig-
              nal(7).

       EINVAL Invalid argument passed.

       EISCONN
              The connection-mode socket was connected already but a recipient
              was specified.  (Now either this error is returned, or  the  re-
              cipient specification is ignored.)

       EMSGSIZE
              The  socket  type  requires that message be sent atomically, and
              the size of the message to be sent made this impossible.

       ENOBUFS
              The output queue for a network interface was full.  This  gener-
              ally  indicates  that the interface has stopped sending, but may
              be caused by transient congestion.  (Normally, this does not oc-
              cur  in  Linux.  Packets are just silently dropped when a device
              queue overflows.)

       ENOMEM No memory available.

       ENOTCONN
              The socket is not connected, and no target has been given.

       ENOTSOCK
              The file descriptor sockfd does not refer to a socket.

       EOPNOTSUPP
              Some bit in the flags argument is inappropriate for  the  socket
              type.

       EPIPE  The  local  end  has  been  shut  down  on a connection oriented
              socket.  In this case, the process will also receive  a  SIGPIPE
              unless MSG_NOSIGNAL is set.

CONFORMING TO
       4.4BSD, SVr4, POSIX.1-2001.  These interfaces first appeared in 4.2BSD.

       POSIX.1-2001   describes   only   the   MSG_OOB   and   MSG_EOR  flags.
       POSIX.1-2008 adds a specification  of  MSG_NOSIGNAL.   The  MSG_CONFIRM
       flag is a Linux extension.

NOTES
       According  to  POSIX.1-2001,  the  msg_controllen  field  of the msghdr
       structure should be typed as socklen_t, but glibc currently types it as
       size_t.

       See sendmmsg(2) for information about a Linux-specific system call that
       can be used to transmit multiple datagrams in a single call.

BUGS
       Linux may return EPIPE instead of ENOTCONN.

EXAMPLES
       An example of the use of sendto() is shown in getaddrinfo(3).

SEE ALSO
       fcntl(2), getsockopt(2), recv(2), select(2), sendfile(2),  sendmmsg(2),
       shutdown(2),  socket(2),  write(2), cmsg(3), ip(7), ipv6(7), socket(7),
       tcp(7), udp(7), unix(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 5.07 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest    version    of    this    page,    can     be     found     at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                             2020-06-09                           SEND(2)

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