listen - listen for connections on a socket
#include <sys/socket.h>
int listen(int s, int backlog);
To accept connections, a socket is first created with socket(2), a
willingness to accept incoming connections and a queue limit for incoming
connections are specified with listen, and then the connections are
accepted with accept(2). The listen call applies only to sockets of
type SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_SEQPACKET.
The backlog parameter defines the maximum length the queue of pending
connections may grow to. If a connection request arrives with the
queue full the client may receive an error with an indication of ECON-
NREFUSED or, if the underlying protocol supports retransmission, the
request may be ignored so that retries succeed.
The behaviour of the backlog parameter on TCP sockets changed with
Linux 2.2. Now it specifies the queue length for completely established
sockets waiting to be accepted, instead of the number of incomplete
connection requests. The maximum length of the queue for incomplete
sockets can be set using the tcp_max_syn_backlog sysctl. When
syncookies are enabled there is no logical maximum length and this
sysctl setting is ignored. See tcp(7) for more information.
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
set appropriately.
EADDRINUSE
Another socket is already listening on the same port.
EBADF The argument s is not a valid descriptor.
ENOTSOCK [Toc] [Back]
The argument s is not a socket.
EOPNOTSUPP [Toc] [Back]
The socket is not of a type that supports the listen operation.
Single Unix, 4.4BSD, POSIX 1003.1g draft. The listen function call
first appeared in 4.2BSD.
If the socket is of type AF_INET, and the backlog argument is greater
than the constant SOMAXCONN (128 in Linux 2.0 & 2.2), it is silently
truncated to SOMAXCONN. Don't rely on this value in portable applications
since BSD (and some BSD-derived systems) limit the backlog to 5.
accept(2), connect(2), socket(2)
BSD Man Page 1993-07-23 LISTEN(2)
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