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Name
open, creat - open and possibly
create a file or device
Synopsis
#include <sys/types.h>#include <sys/stat.h>#include <fcntl.h>
int open(const char *pathname, int flags);int open(const char *pathname,
int flags, mode_t mode);int creat(const char *pathname, mode_t mode);
Description
The
open() system call is used to convert a pathname into a file descriptor
(a small, non-negative integer for use in subsequent I/O as with read, write,
etc.). When the call is successful, the file descriptor returned will be
the lowest file descriptor not currently open for the process. This call
creates a new open file, not shared with any other process. (But shared
open files may arise via the fork(2)
system call.) The new file descriptor
is set to remain open across exec functions (see fcntl(2)
). The file offset
is set to the beginning of the file.
The parameter flags is one of O_RDONLY,
O_WRONLY or O_RDWR which request opening the file read-only, write-only or
read/write, respectively, bitwise-or'd with zero or more of the following:
- O_CREAT
- If the file does not exist it will be created. The owner (user ID)
of the file is set to the effective user ID of the process. The group ownership
(group ID) is set either to the effective group ID of the process or to
the group ID of the parent directory (depending on filesystem type and
mount options, and the mode of the parent directory, see, e.g., the mount
options bsdgroups and sysvgroups of the ext2 filesystem, as described in
mount(8)
).
- O_EXCL
- When used with O_CREAT, if the file already exists it
is an error and the open will fail. In this context, a symbolic link exists,
regardless of where its points to. O_EXCL is broken on NFS file systems,
programs which rely on it for performing locking tasks will contain a race
condition. The solution for performing atomic file locking using a lockfile
is to create a unique file on the same fs (e.g., incorporating hostname and
pid), use link(2)
to make a link to the lockfile. If link() returns 0, the
lock is successful. Otherwise, use stat(2)
on the unique file to check
if its link count has increased to 2, in which case the lock is also successful.
- O_NOCTTY
- If pathname refers to a terminal device -- see tty(4)
-- it will not
become the process's controlling terminal even if the process does not have
one.
- O_TRUNC
- If the file already exists and is a regular file and the open
mode allows writing (i.e., is O_RDWR or O_WRONLY) it will be truncated to
length 0. If the file is a FIFO or terminal device file, the O_TRUNC flag
is ignored. Otherwise the effect of O_TRUNC is unspecified. (On many Linux
versions it will be ignored; on other versions it will return an error.)
- O_APPEND
- The file is opened in append mode. Before each write, the file
pointer is positioned at the end of the file, as if with lseek. O_APPEND
may lead to corrupted files on NFS file systems if more than one process
appends data to a file at once. This is because NFS does not support appending
to a file, so the client kernel has to simulate it, which can't be done
without a race condition.
- O_NONBLOCK or O_NDELAY
- When possible, the file
is opened in non-blocking mode. Neither the open nor any subsequent operations
on the file descriptor which is returned will cause the calling process
to wait. For the handling of FIFOs (named pipes), see also fifo(4)
. This
mode need not have any effect on files other than FIFOs.
- O_SYNC
- The file
is opened for synchronous I/O. Any writes on the resulting file descriptor
will block the calling process until the data has been physically written
to the underlying hardware. See RESTRICTIONS below, though.
- O_NOFOLLOW
- If
pathname is a symbolic link, then the open fails. This is a FreeBSD extension,
which was added to Linux in version 2.1.126. Symbolic links in earlier components
of the pathname will still be followed. The headers from glibc 2.0.100 and
later include a definition of this flag; kernels before 2.1.126 will ignore
it if used.
- O_DIRECTORY
- If pathname is not a directory, cause the open to
fail. This flag is Linux-specific, and was added in kernel version 2.1.126,
to avoid denial-of-service problems if opendir(3)
is called on a FIFO or
tape device, but should not be used outside of the implementation of opendir.
- O_DIRECT
- Try to minimize cache effects of the I/O to and from this file.
In general this will degrade performance, but it is useful in special situations,
such as when applications do their own caching. File I/O is done directly
to/from user space buffers. The I/O is synchronous, i.e., at the completion
of the read(2)
or write(2)
system call, data is guaranteed to have been
transferred. Transfer sizes, and the alignment of user buffer and file offset
must all be multiples of the logical block size of the file system.
This flag is supported on a number of Unix-like systems; support was added
under Linux in kernel version 2.4.10.
A semantically similar interface for block devices is described in raw(8)
.
- O_ASYNC
- Generate a signal (SIGIO by default, but this can be changed via
fcntl(2)
) when input or output becomes possible on this file descriptor.
This feature is only available for terminals, pseudo-terminals, and sockets.
See fcntl(2)
for further details.
- O_LARGEFILE
- On 32-bit systems that support
the Large Files System, allow files whose sizes cannot be represented in
31 bits to be opened.
Some of these optional flags can be altered using
fcntl after the file has been opened.
The argument mode specifies the permissions
to use in case a new file is created. It is modified by the process's umask
in the usual way: the permissions of the created file are (mode & ~umask).
Note that this mode only applies to future accesses of the newly created
file; the open call that creates a read-only file may well return a read/write
file descriptor.
The following symbolic constants are provided for mode:
- S_IRWXU
- 00700 user (file owner) has read, write and execute permission
- S_IRUSR (S_IREAD)
- 00400 user has read permission
- S_IWUSR (S_IWRITE)
- 00200
user has write permission
- S_IXUSR (S_IEXEC)
- 00100 user has execute permission
- S_IRWXG
- 00070 group has read, write and execute permission
- S_IRGRP
- 00040
group has read permission
- S_IWGRP
- 00020 group has write permission
- S_IXGRP
- 00010 group has execute permission
- S_IRWXO
- 00007 others have read, write
and execute permission
- S_IROTH
- 00004 others have read permission
- S_IWOTH
- 00002 others have write permisson
- S_IXOTH
- 00001 others have execute permission
mode must be specified when O_CREAT is in the flags, and is ignored otherwise.
creat is equivalent to open with flags equal to O_CREAT|O_WRONLY|O_TRUNC.
Return Value
open and creat return the new file descriptor, or -1 if an error
occurred (in which case, errno is set appropriately). Note that open can
open device special files, but creat cannot create them - use mknod(2)
instead.
On NFS file systems with UID mapping enabled, open may return a file descriptor
but e.g. read(2)
requests are denied with EACCES. This is because the client
performs open by checking the permissions, but UID mapping is performed
by the server upon read and write requests.
If the file is newly created,
its atime, ctime, mtime fields are set to the current time, and so are
the ctime and mtime fields of the parent directory. Otherwise, if the file
is modified because of the O_TRUNC flag, its ctime and mtime fields are
set to the current time.
Errors
- EEXIST
- pathname already exists and O_CREAT
and O_EXCL were used.
- EISDIR
- pathname refers to a directory and the access
requested involved writing (that is, O_WRONLY or O_RDWR is set).
- EACCES
- The requested access to the file is not allowed, or one of the directories
in pathname did not allow search (execute) permission, or the file did
not exist yet and write access to the parent directory is not allowed.
- ENAMETOOLONG
- pathname was too long.
- ENOENT
- O_CREAT is not set and the named file does
not exist. Or, a directory component in pathname does not exist or is a
dangling symbolic link.
- ENOTDIR
- A component used as a directory in pathname
is not, in fact, a directory, or O_DIRECTORY was specified and pathname
was not a directory.
- ENXIO
- O_NONBLOCK | O_WRONLY is set, the named file is
a FIFO and no process has the file open for reading. Or, the file is a device
special file and no corresponding device exists.
- ENODEV
- pathname refers
to a device special file and no corresponding device exists. (This is a
Linux kernel bug - in this situation ENXIO must be returned.)
- EROFS
- pathname
refers to a file on a read-only filesystem and write access was requested.
- ETXTBSY
- pathname refers to an executable image which is currently being
executed and write access was requested.
- EFAULT
- pathname points outside
your accessible address space.
- ELOOP
- Too many symbolic links were encountered
in resolving pathname, or O_NOFOLLOW was specified but pathname was a symbolic
link.
- ENOSPC
- pathname was to be created but the device containing pathname
has no room for the new file.
- ENOMEM
- Insufficient kernel memory was available.
- EMFILE
- The process already has the maximum number of files open.
- ENFILE
- The limit on the total number of files open on the system has been reached.
Conforming to
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3 The O_NOFOLLOW and O_DIRECTORY
flags are Linux-specific. One may have to define the _GNU_SOURCE macro to
get their definitions.
Restrictions
There are many infelicities in the protocol
underlying NFS, affecting amongst others O_SYNC and O_NDELAY.
POSIX provides
for three different variants of synchronised I/O, corresponding to the
flags O_SYNC, O_DSYNC and O_RSYNC. Currently (2.1.130) these are all synonymous
under Linux.
See Also
read(2)
, write(2)
, fcntl(2)
, close(2)
, link(2)
, mknod(2)
,
mount(2)
, stat(2)
, umask(2)
, unlink(2)
, socket(2)
, fopen(3)
, fifo(4)
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