1.\" $NetBSD: intro.2,v 1.42 2005/01/20 13:23:57 kleink Exp $ 2.\" 3.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1991, 1993 4.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 5.\" 6.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 7.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 8.\" are met: 9.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 11.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 13.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 14.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 15.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 16.\" without specific prior written permission. 17.\" 18.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 19.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 20.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 21.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 22.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 23.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 24.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 25.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 26.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 27.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 28.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 29.\" 30.\" @(#)intro.2 8.5 (Berkeley) 2/27/95 31.\" 32.Dd January 20, 2005 33.Dt INTRO 2 34.Os 35.Sh NAME 36.Nm intro , 37.Nm errno 38.Nd introduction to system calls and error numbers 39.Sh SYNOPSIS 40.In errno.h 41.Sh DESCRIPTION 42This section provides an overview of the system calls, 43their error returns, and other common definitions and concepts. 44.\".Pp 45.\".Sy System call restart 46.\".Pp 47.\"<more later...> 48.Sh DIAGNOSTICS 49Nearly all of the system calls provide an error number in the external 50variable 51.Va errno . 52.Va errno 53is implemented as a macro which expands to a modifiable lvalue of type 54.Fa int . 55.Pp 56When a system call detects an error, 57it returns an integer value 58indicating failure (usually \-1) 59and sets the variable 60.Va errno 61accordingly. 62(This allows interpretation of the failure on receiving 63a \-1 and to take action accordingly.) 64Successful calls never set 65.Va errno ; 66once set, it remains until another error occurs. 67It should only be examined after an error. 68Note that a number of system calls overload the meanings of these 69error numbers, and that the meanings must be interpreted according 70to the type and circumstances of the call. 71.Pp 72The manual page for each system call will list some of the common 73errno codes that system call can return, but that should not be 74considered an exhaustive list, i.e. 75a properly written program should be able to gracefully recover from 76any error that a system call might return. 77Documenting all the error codes that a system call can return in 78a more specification-like manner would take more resources than 79this project has available. 80.Pp 81The following is a complete list of the errors and their 82names as given in 83.Aq Pa errno.h . 84.Bl -hang -width Ds 85.It Er 0 Em "Error 0" . 86Not used. 87.It Er 1 EPERM Em "Operation not permitted" . 88An attempt was made to perform an operation limited to processes 89with appropriate privileges or to the owner of a file or other 90resources. 91.It Er 2 ENOENT Em "No such file or directory" . 92A component of a specified pathname did not exist, or the 93pathname was an empty string. 94.It Er 3 ESRCH Em "No such process" . 95No process could be found corresponding to that specified by the given 96process ID. 97.It Er 4 EINTR Em "Interrupted function call" . 98An asynchronous signal (such as 99.Dv SIGINT 100or 101.Dv SIGQUIT ) 102was caught by the process during the execution of an interruptible 103function. 104If the signal handler performs a normal return, the 105interrupted function call will seem to have returned the error condition. 106.It Er 5 EIO Em "Input/output error" . 107Some physical input or output error occurred. 108This error will not be reported until a subsequent operation on the same file 109descriptor and may be lost (over written) by any subsequent errors. 110.It Er 6 ENXIO Em "\&No such device or address" . 111Input or output on a special file referred to a device that did not 112exist, or 113made a request beyond the limits of the device. 114This error may also occur when, for example, 115a tape drive is not online or no disk pack is 116loaded on a drive. 117.It Er 7 E2BIG Em "Arg list too long" . 118The number of bytes used for the argument and environment 119list of the new process exceeded the current limit of 120.if t 2\u\s-218\s+2\d 121.if n 2**18 122bytes 123.Pf ( Dv ARG_MAX 124in 125.Aq Pa sys/syslimits.h ) . 126.It Er 8 ENOEXEC Em "Exec format error" . 127A request was made to execute a file 128that, although it has the appropriate permissions, 129was not in the format required for an 130executable file. 131.It Er 9 EBADF Em "Bad file descriptor" . 132A file descriptor argument was out of range, referred to no open file, 133had been revoked by 134.Xr revoke 2 , 135or a 136.Xr read 2 137(or 138.Xr write 2 ) 139request was made to a file that was 140only open for writing (or reading). 141.It Er 10 ECHILD Em "\&No child processes" . 142A 143.Xr wait 2 144or 145.Xr waitpid 2 146function was executed by a process that had no existing or unwaited-for 147child processes. 148.It Er 11 EDEADLK Em "Resource deadlock avoided" . 149An attempt was made to lock a system resource that 150would have resulted in a deadlock situation. 151.It Er 12 ENOMEM Em "Cannot allocate memory" . 152The new process image required more memory than was allowed by the hardware 153or by system-imposed memory management constraints. 154A lack of swap space is normally temporary; however, 155a lack of core is not. 156Soft limits may be increased to their corresponding hard limits. 157.It Er 13 EACCES Em "Permission denied" . 158An attempt was made to access a file in a way forbidden 159by its file access permissions. 160.It Er 14 EFAULT Em "Bad address" . 161The system detected an invalid address in attempting to 162use an argument of a call. 163The reliable detection of this error cannot be guaranteed and when not detected 164may result in the generation of a signal, indicating an address violation, 165which is sent to the process. 166.It Er 15 ENOTBLK Em "Not a block device" . 167A block device operation was attempted on a non-block device or file. 168.It Er 16 EBUSY Em "Resource busy" . 169An attempt to use a system resource which was in use at the time 170in a manner which would have conflicted with the request. 171.It Er 17 EEXIST Em "File exists" . 172An existing file was mentioned in an inappropriate context, 173for instance, as the new link name in a 174.Xr link 2 175function. 176.It Er 18 EXDEV Em "Improper link" . 177A hard link to a file on another file system 178was attempted. 179.It Er 19 ENODEV Em "Operation not supported by device" . 180An attempt was made to apply an inappropriate 181function to a device, 182for example, 183trying to read a write-only device such as a printer. 184.It Er 20 ENOTDIR Em "Not a directory" . 185A component of the specified pathname existed, but it was 186not a directory, when a directory was expected. 187.It Er 21 EISDIR Em "Is a directory" . 188An attempt was made to open a directory with write mode specified. 189.It Er 22 EINVAL Em "Invalid argument" . 190Some invalid argument was supplied. 191(For example, specifying an undefined signal to a 192.Xr signal 3 193or 194.Xr kill 2 195function). 196.It Er 23 ENFILE Em "Too many open files in system" . 197Maximum number of file descriptors allowable on the system 198has been reached and a requests for an open cannot be satisfied 199until at least one has been closed. 200.It Er 24 EMFILE Em "Too many open files" . 201\*[Lt]As released, the limit on the number of 202open files per process is 64.\*[Gt] 203The 204.Xr getrlimit 2 205call with the 206.Ar RLIMIT_NOFILE 207resource will obtain the current limit. 208.It Er 25 ENOTTY Em "Inappropriate ioctl for device" . 209A control function (see 210.Xr ioctl 2 ) 211was attempted for a file or 212special device for which the operation was inappropriate. 213.It Er 26 ETXTBSY Em "Text file busy" . 214The new process was a pure procedure (shared text) file 215which was open for writing by another process, or 216while the pure procedure file was being executed an 217.Xr open 2 218call requested write access. 219.It Er 27 EFBIG Em "File too large" . 220The size of a file exceeded the maximum. 221(The system-wide maximum file size is 222.if t 2\u\s-263\s+2\d 223.if n 2**63 224bytes. 225Each file system may impose a lower limit for files contained within it). 226.It Er 28 ENOSPC Em "Device out of space" . 227A 228.Xr write 2 229to an ordinary file, the creation of a 230directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory 231entry failed because no more disk blocks were available 232on the file system, or the allocation of an inode for a newly 233created file failed because no more inodes were available 234on the file system. 235.It Er 29 ESPIPE Em "Illegal seek" . 236An 237.Xr lseek 2 238function was issued on a socket, pipe or 239.Tn FIFO . 240.It Er 30 EROFS Em "Read-only file system" . 241An attempt was made to modify a file or directory 242was made 243on a file system that was read-only at the time. 244.It Er 31 EMLINK Em "Too many links" . 245The number of hard links to a single file has exceeded the maximum. 246(The system-wide maximum number of hard links is 32767. 247Each file system may impose a lower limit for files contained within it). 248.It Er 32 EPIPE Em "Broken pipe" . 249A write on a pipe, socket or 250.Tn FIFO 251for which there is no process 252to read the data. 253.It Er 33 EDOM Em "Numerical argument out of domain" . 254A numerical input argument was outside the defined domain of the mathematical 255function. 256.It Er 34 ERANGE Em "Result too large or too small" . 257The result of the function is too large or too small to be represented 258in the available space. 259.It Er 35 EAGAIN Em "Resource temporarily unavailable" . 260This is a temporary condition and later calls to the 261same routine may complete normally. 262.It Er 36 EINPROGRESS Em "Operation now in progress" . 263An operation that takes a long time to complete (such as 264a 265.Xr connect 2 ) 266was attempted on a non-blocking object (see 267.Xr fcntl 2 ) . 268.It Er 37 EALREADY Em "Operation already in progress" . 269An operation was attempted on a non-blocking object that already 270had an operation in progress. 271.It Er 38 ENOTSOCK Em "Socket operation on non-socket" . 272Self-explanatory. 273.It Er 39 EDESTADDRREQ Em "Destination address required" . 274A required address was omitted from an operation on a socket. 275.It Er 40 EMSGSIZE Em "Message too long" . 276A message sent on a socket was larger than the internal message buffer 277or some other network limit. 278.It Er 41 EPROTOTYPE Em "Protocol wrong type for socket" . 279A protocol was specified that does not support the semantics of the 280socket type requested. 281For example, you cannot use the 282.Tn ARPA 283Internet 284.Tn UDP 285protocol with type 286.Dv SOCK_STREAM . 287.It Er 42 ENOPROTOOPT Em "Protocol not available" . 288A bad option or level was specified in a 289.Xr getsockopt 2 290or 291.Xr setsockopt 2 292call. 293.It Er 43 EPROTONOSUPPORT Em "Protocol not supported" . 294The protocol has not been configured into the 295system or no implementation for it exists. 296.It Er 44 ESOCKTNOSUPPORT Em "Socket type not supported" . 297The support for the socket type has not been configured into the 298system or no implementation for it exists. 299.It Er 45 EOPNOTSUPP Em "Operation not supported" . 300The attempted operation is not supported for the type of object referenced. 301Usually this occurs when a file descriptor refers to a file or socket 302that cannot support this operation, 303for example, trying to 304.Em accept 305a connection on a datagram socket. 306.It Er 46 EPFNOSUPPORT Em "Protocol family not supported" . 307The protocol family has not been configured into the 308system or no implementation for it exists. 309.It Er 47 EAFNOSUPPORT Em "Address family not supported by protocol family" . 310An address incompatible with the requested protocol was used. 311For example, you shouldn't necessarily expect to be able to use 312.Tn NS 313addresses with 314.Tn ARPA 315Internet protocols. 316.It Er 48 EADDRINUSE Em "Address already in use" . 317Only one usage of each address is normally permitted. 318.It Er 49 EADDRNOTAVAIL Em "Cannot assign requested address" . 319Normally results from an attempt to create a socket with an 320address not on this machine. 321.It Er 50 ENETDOWN Em "Network is down" . 322A socket operation encountered a dead network. 323.It Er 51 ENETUNREACH Em "Network is unreachable" . 324A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network. 325.It Er 52 ENETRESET Em "Network dropped connection on reset" . 326The host you were connected to crashed and rebooted. 327.It Er 53 ECONNABORTED Em "Software caused connection abort" . 328A connection abort was caused internal to your host machine. 329.It Er 54 ECONNRESET Em "Connection reset by peer" . 330A connection was forcibly closed by a peer. 331This normally results from a loss of the connection on the remote 332socket due to a timeout or a reboot. 333.It Er 55 ENOBUFS Em "\&No buffer space available" . 334An operation on a socket or pipe was not performed because 335the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full. 336.It Er 56 EISCONN Em "Socket is already connected" . 337A 338.Xr connect 2 339request was made on an already connected socket; or, 340a 341.Xr sendto 2 342or 343.Xr sendmsg 2 344request on a connected socket specified a destination 345when already connected. 346.It Er 57 ENOTCONN Em "Socket is not connected" . 347An request to send or receive data was disallowed because 348the socket was not connected and (when sending on a datagram socket) 349no address was supplied. 350.It Er 58 ESHUTDOWN Em "Cannot send after socket shutdown" . 351A request to send data was disallowed because the socket 352had already been shut down with a previous 353.Xr shutdown 2 354call. 355.It Er 60 ETIMEDOUT Em "Operation timed out" . 356A 357.Xr connect 2 358or 359.Xr send 2 360request failed because the connected party did not 361properly respond after a period of time. 362(The timeout period is dependent on the communication protocol). 363.It Er 61 ECONNREFUSED Em "Connection refused" . 364No connection could be made because the target machine actively 365refused it. 366This usually results from trying to connect 367to a service that is inactive on the foreign host. 368.It Er 62 ELOOP Em "Too many levels of symbolic links" . 369A path name lookup involved more than 32 370.Pq Dv MAXSYMLINKS 371symbolic links. 372.It Er 63 ENAMETOOLONG Em "File name too long" . 373A component of a path name exceeded 255 374.Pq Dv MAXNAMELEN 375characters, or an entire 376path name exceeded 1023 377.Pq Dv MAXPATHLEN Ns \-1 378characters. 379.It Er 64 EHOSTDOWN Em "Host is down" . 380A socket operation failed because the destination host was down. 381.It Er 65 EHOSTUNREACH Em "No route to host" . 382A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host. 383.It Er 66 ENOTEMPTY Em "Directory not empty" . 384A directory with entries other than 385.Ql \&. 386and 387.Ql \&.. 388was supplied to a remove directory or rename call. 389.It Er 67 EPROCLIM Em "Too many processes" . 390.It Er 68 EUSERS Em "Too many users" . 391The quota system ran out of table entries. 392.It Er 69 EDQUOT Em "Disc quota exceeded" . 393A 394.Xr write 2 395to an ordinary file, the creation of a 396directory or symbolic link, or the creation of a directory 397entry failed because the user's quota of disk blocks was 398exhausted, or the allocation of an inode for a newly 399created file failed because the user's quota of inodes 400was exhausted. 401.It Er 70 ESTALE Em "Stale NFS file handle" . 402An attempt was made to access an open file (on an 403.Tn NFS 404filesystem) 405which is now unavailable as referenced by the file descriptor. 406This may indicate the file was deleted on the 407.Tn NFS 408server or some other catastrophic event occurred. 409.It Er 72 EBADRPC Em "RPC struct is bad" . 410Exchange of 411.Tn RPC 412information was unsuccessful. 413.It Er 73 ERPCMISMATCH Em "RPC version wrong" . 414The version of 415.Tn RPC 416on the remote peer is not compatible with 417the local version. 418.It Er 74 EPROGUNAVAIL Em "RPC prog. not avail" . 419The requested program is not registered on the remote host. 420.It Er 75 EPROGMISMATCH Em "Program version wrong" . 421The requested version of the program is not available 422on the remote host 423.Pq Tn RPC . 424.It Er 76 EPROCUNAVAIL Em "Bad procedure for program" . 425An 426.Tn RPC 427call was attempted for a procedure which doesn't exist 428in the remote program. 429.It Er 77 ENOLCK Em "No locks available" . 430A system-imposed limit on the number of simultaneous file 431locks was reached. 432.It Er 78 ENOSYS Em "Function not implemented" . 433Attempted a system call that is not available on this 434system. 435.It Er 79 EFTYPE Em "Inappropriate file type or format" . 436Attempted a file operation on a file of a type for which it was invalid. 437.It Er 80 EAUTH Em "Authentication error" . 438Attempted to use an invalid authentication ticket to mount an 439.Tn NFS 440filesystem. 441.It Er 81 ENEEDAUTH Em "Need authenticator" . 442An authentication ticket must be obtained before the given 443.Tn NFS 444filesystem may be mounted. 445.It Er 82 EIDRM Em "Identifier removed" . 446An IPC identifier was removed while the current process was waiting on it. 447.It Er 83 ENOMSG Em "No message of the desired type" . 448An IPC message queue does not contain a message of the desired type, 449or a message catalog does not contain the requested message. 450.It Er 84 EOVERFLOW Em "Value too large to be stored in data type" . 451A numerical result of the function was too large to be stored in the 452caller-provided space. 453.It Er 85 EILSEQ Em "Illegal byte sequence" . 454A wide character/multibyte character encoding error occurred. 455.It Er 86 ENOTSUP Em "Not supported" . 456An attempt was made to set or change a parameter to an unsupported 457value. 458.It Er 87 ECANCELED Em "Operation canceled" . 459The requested operation was canceled. 460.It Er 88 EBADMSG Em "Bad or corrupt message" . 461A message in the specified message catalog did not satisfy implementation 462defined criteria, or a STREAMS operation encountered an invalid message or 463a file descriptor at the STREAM head. 464.It Er 89 ENODATA Em "No message available" . 465No message is available on the STREAM head read queue 466.It Er 90 ENOSR Em "No STREAM resources" . 467Buffers could not be allocated due to insufficient STREAMs memory resources. 468.It Er 91 ENOSTR Em "Not a STREAM" . 469A STREAM is not associated with the specified file descriptor. 470.It Er 92 ETIME Em "STREAM ioctl timeout" . 471The timer set for a STREAMS 472.Xr ioctl 2 473operation has expired. 474.It Er 93 ENOATTR Em "Attribute not found" . 475The specified extended attribute does not exist. 476.El 477.Sh DEFINITIONS 478.Bl -tag -width Ds 479.It Process ID 480Each active process in the system is uniquely identified by a non-negative 481integer called a process ID. 482The range of this ID is from 0 to 30000. 483.It Parent process ID 484A new process is created by a currently active process; (see 485.Xr fork 2 ) . 486The parent process ID of a process is initially the process ID of its creator. 487If the creating process exits, 488the parent process ID of each child is set to the ID of a system process, 489.Xr init 8 . 490.It Process Group 491Each active process is a member of a process group that is identified by 492a non-negative integer called the process group ID. 493This is the process ID of the group leader. 494This grouping permits the signaling of related processes (see 495.Xr termios 4 ) 496and the job control mechanisms of 497.Xr csh 1 . 498.It Session 499A session is a set of one or more process groups. 500A session is created by a successful call to 501.Xr setsid 2 , 502which causes the caller to become the only member of the only process 503group in the new session. 504.It Session leader 505A process that has created a new session by a successful call to 506.Xr setsid 2 , 507is known as a session leader. 508Only a session leader may acquire a terminal as its controlling terminal (see 509.Xr termios 4 ) . 510.It Controlling process 511A session leader with a controlling terminal is a controlling process. 512.It Controlling terminal 513A terminal that is associated with a session is known as the controlling 514terminal for that session and its members. 515.It "Terminal Process Group ID" 516A terminal may be acquired by a session leader as its controlling terminal. 517Once a terminal is associated with a session, any of the process groups 518within the session may be placed into the foreground by setting 519the terminal process group ID to the ID of the process group. 520This facility is used 521to arbitrate between multiple jobs contending for the same terminal. 522(See 523.Xr csh 1 524and 525.Xr tty 4 526for more information on job control.) 527.It "Orphaned Process Group" 528A process group is considered to be 529.Em orphaned 530if it is not under the control of a job control shell. 531More precisely, a process group is orphaned 532when none of its members has a parent process that is in the same session 533as the group, 534but is in a different process group. 535Note that when a process exits, the parent process for its children 536is changed to be 537.Xr init 8 , 538which is in a separate session. 539Not all members of an orphaned process group are necessarily orphaned 540processes (those whose creating process has exited). 541The process group of a session leader is orphaned by definition. 542.It "Real User ID and Real Group ID" 543Each user on the system is identified by a positive integer 544termed the real user ID. 545.Pp 546Each user is also a member of one or more groups. 547One of these groups is distinguished from others and 548used in implementing accounting facilities. 549The positive integer corresponding to this distinguished group is 550termed the real group ID. 551.Pp 552All processes have a real user ID and real group ID. 553These are initialized from the equivalent attributes 554of the process that created it. 555.It "Effective User Id, Effective Group Id, and Group Access List" 556Access to system resources is governed by two values: 557the effective user ID, and the group access list. 558The first member of the group access list is also known as the 559effective group ID. 560(In POSIX.1, the group access list is known as the set of supplementary 561group IDs, and it is unspecified whether the effective group ID is 562a member of the list.) 563.Pp 564The effective user ID and effective group ID are initially the 565process's real user ID and real group ID respectively. 566Either may be modified through execution of a set-user-ID or 567set-group-ID file (possibly by one its ancestors) (see 568.Xr execve 2 ) . 569By convention, the effective group ID (the first member of the group access 570list) is duplicated, so that the execution of a set-group-ID program 571does not result in the loss of the original (real) group ID. 572.Pp 573The group access list is a set of group IDs 574used only in determining resource accessibility. 575Access checks are performed as described below in 576.Qq File Access Permissions . 577.It "Saved Set User ID and Saved Set Group ID" 578When a process executes a new file, the effective user ID is set 579to the owner of the file if the file is set-user-ID, and the effective 580group ID (first element of the group access list) is set to the group 581of the file if the file is set-group-ID. 582The effective user ID of the process is then recorded as the saved set-user-ID, 583and the effective group ID of the process is recorded as the saved set-group-ID. 584These values may be used to regain those values as the effective user 585or group ID after reverting to the real ID (see 586.Xr setuid 2 ) . 587(In POSIX.1, the saved set-user-ID and saved set-group-ID are optional, 588and are used in setuid and setgid, but this does not work as desired 589for the super-user.) 590.It Super-user 591A process is recognized as a 592.Em super-user 593process and is granted special privileges if its effective user ID is 0. 594.It Special Processes 595The processes with process IDs of 0 and 1 are special. 596Process 0 is the scheduler. 597Process 1 is the initialization process 598.Xr init 8 , 599and is the ancestor (parent) of every other process in the system. 600It is used to control the process structure. 601The kernel will allocate other kernel threads to handle certain 602periodic tasks or device related tasks, such as: 603.Bl -tag -width pagedaemon 604.It Sy acctwatch 605System accounting disk watcher, see 606.Xr acct 2 , 607.Xr acct 5 . 608.It Sy aiodoned 609Asynchronous I/O done handler, see 610.Xr uvm 9 . 611.It Sy atabusX 612ATA bus handler, see 613.Xr ata 4 . 614.It Sy cardslotX 615CardBus slot watcher thread, see 616.Xr cardslot 4 . 617.It Sy cryptoret 618The software crypto daemon. 619.It Sy fssbsX 620File system snapshot thread, see 621.Xr fss 4 . 622.It Sy ioflush 623The in-kernel periodic flush the buffer cache to disk task, 624which replaces the old 625.Sy update 626program. 627.It Sy nfsio , nfskqpoll 628NFS handing daemons. 629.It Sy lfs_writer 630Log filesystem writer. 631.It Sy pagedaemon 632The page daemon. 633.It Sy raidX , raidioX , raid_parity , raid_recon , raid_reconip , raid_copyback 634Raid framework related threads, see 635.Xr raid 4 . 636.It Sy scsibusX 637SCSI bus handler, see 638.Xr scsi 4 . 639.It Sy smbiodX , smbkq 640SMBFS handling daemon, see 641.Xr netsmb 4 . 642.It Sy swdmover 643The software data mover I/O thread, see 644.Xr dmoverio 4 . 645.It Sy sysmon 646The systems monitoring framework daemon. 647.It Sy usbX , usbtask 648USB bus handler, see 649.Xr usb 4 . 650.El 651.Pp 652There are more machine-dependent kernel threads allocated by 653different drivers. 654See the specific driver manual pages for more information. 655.It Descriptor 656An integer assigned by the system when a file is referenced 657by 658.Xr open 2 659or 660.Xr dup 2 , 661or when a socket is created by 662.Xr pipe 2 , 663.Xr socket 2 , 664or 665.Xr socketpair 2 , 666which uniquely identifies an access path to that file or socket from 667a given process or any of its children. 668.It File Name 669Names consisting of up to 255 670.Pq Dv MAXNAMELEN 671characters may be used to name 672an ordinary file, special file, or directory. 673.Pp 674These characters may be selected from the set of all 675.Tn ASCII 676character 677excluding 0 (NUL) and the 678.Tn ASCII 679code for 680.Ql \&/ 681(slash). 682(The parity bit, bit 7, must be 0). 683.Pp 684Note that it is generally unwise to use 685.Ql \&* , 686.Ql \&? , 687.Ql \&[ 688or 689.Ql \&] 690as part of 691file names because of the special meaning attached to these characters 692by the shell. 693.It Pathname 694A path name is a 695.Tn NUL Ns -terminated 696character string starting with an 697optional slash 698.Ql \&/ , 699followed by zero or more directory names separated 700by slashes, optionally followed by a file name. 701The total length of a path name must be less than 1024 702.Pq Dv MAXPATHLEN 703characters. 704.Pp 705If a path name begins with a slash, the path search begins at the 706.Em root 707directory. 708Otherwise, the search begins from the current working directory. 709A slash by itself names the root directory. 710An empty string is not a valid pathname. 711.It Directory 712A directory is a special type of file that contains entries 713that are references to other files. 714Directory entries are called links. 715By convention, a directory contains at least two links, 716.Ql \&. 717and 718.Ql \&.. , 719referred to as 720.Em dot 721and 722.Em dot-dot 723respectively. 724Dot refers to the directory itself and dot-dot refers to its parent directory. 725.It "Root Directory and Current Working Directory" 726Each process has associated with it a concept of a root directory 727and a current working directory for the purpose of resolving path 728name searches. 729A process's root directory need not be the root 730directory of the root file system. 731.It File Access Permissions 732Every file in the file system has a set of access permissions. 733These permissions are used in determining whether a process 734may perform a requested operation on the file (such as opening 735a file for writing). 736Access permissions are established at the time a file is created. 737They may be changed at some later time through the 738.Xr chmod 2 739call. 740.Pp 741File access is broken down according to whether a file may be: read, 742written, or executed. 743Directory files use the execute permission to control if the 744directory may be searched. 745.Pp 746File access permissions are interpreted by the system as 747they apply to three different classes of users: the owner 748of the file, those users in the file's group, anyone else. 749Every file has an independent set of access permissions for 750each of these classes. 751When an access check is made, the system decides if permission should be 752granted by checking the access information applicable to the caller. 753.Pp 754Read, write, and execute/search permissions on 755a file are granted to a process if: 756.Pp 757The process's effective user ID is that of the super-user. 758(Note: even the super-user cannot execute a non-executable file). 759.Pp 760The process's effective user ID matches the user ID of the owner 761of the file and the owner permissions allow the access. 762.Pp 763The process's effective user ID does not match the user ID of the 764owner of the file, and either the process's effective 765group ID matches the group ID 766of the file, or the group ID of the file is in 767the process's group access list, 768and the group permissions allow the access. 769.Pp 770Neither the effective user ID nor effective group ID 771and group access list of the process 772match the corresponding user ID and group ID of the file, 773but the permissions for ``other users'' allow access. 774.Pp 775Otherwise, permission is denied. 776.It Sockets and Address Families 777A socket is an endpoint for communication between processes. 778Each socket has queues for sending and receiving data. 779.Pp 780Sockets are typed according to their communications properties. 781These properties include whether messages sent and received 782at a socket require the name of the partner, whether communication 783is reliable, the format used in naming message recipients, etc. 784.Pp 785Each instance of the system supports some 786collection of socket types; consult 787.Xr socket 2 788for more information about the types available and 789their properties. 790.Pp 791Each instance of the system supports some number of sets of 792communications protocols. 793Each protocol set supports addresses of a certain format. 794An Address Family is the set of addresses for a specific group of protocols. 795Each socket has an address 796chosen from the address family in which the socket was created. 797.El 798.Sh SEE ALSO 799.Xr intro 3 , 800.Xr perror 3 801.Sh HISTORY 802An 803.Nm intro 804manual page appeared in 805.At v6 . 806