sendmsg()

Send a message and its header to a socket

Synopsis:

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

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

Arguments:

s
The descriptor for the socket; see socket().
msg
A pointer to the message that you want to send. For a description of the msghdr structure, see recvmsg().
flags
A combination of the following:

Library:

libsocket

Use the -l socket option to qcc to link against this library.

Description:

The sendmsg() function is used to transmit a message to another socket. You can use send() only when the socket is in a connected state; you can use sendmsg() at any time.

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

If no message space is available at the socket to hold the message to be transmitted, then sendmsg() normally blocks, unless the socket has been placed in nonblocking I/O mode. You can use select() to determine when it's possible to send more data.

Returns:

The number of bytes sent, or -1 if an error occurs (errno is set).

Errors:

EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or write access to the named socket is denied.
EAGAIN
The socket's file descriptor is marked O_NONBLOCK, and the requested operation would block.
EAFNOSUPPORT
Addresses in the specified address family cannot be used with this socket.
EBADF
An invalid descriptor was specified.
ECONNRESET
A connection was forcibly closed by a peer.
EDESTADDRREQ
The socket isn't connection-mode and doesn't have its peer address set, and no destination address was specified.
EFAULT
An invalid user space address was specified for a parameter.
EHOSTUNREACH
The destination host can't be reached (probably because the host is down, or a remote router can't reach it).
EINTR
A signal interrupted sendmsg() before any data was transmitted.
EINVAL
The sum of the iov_len values overflows an ssize_t.
EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the filesystem.
EISCONN
A destination address was specified and the socket is already connected.
EMSGSIZE
The message is too large to be sent all at once (as the socket requires), or the msg_iovlen member of the msghdr structure pointed to by message is less than or equal to 0 or is greater than IOV_MAX.
ENETDOWN
The local network interface used to reach the destination is down.
ENETUNREACH
No route to the network is present.
ENOBUFS
The system couldn't allocate an internal buffer. The operation may succeed when buffers become available.
ENOMEM
Insufficient memory was available to fulfill the request.
ENOTCONN
The socket is connection-mode but isn't connected.
ENOTSOCK
The argument s isn't a socket.
EOPNOTSUPP
The s argument is associated with a socket that doesn't support one or more of the values set in flags.
EPIPE
The socket is shut down for writing, or the socket is connection-mode and is no longer connected. In the latter case, and if the socket is of type SOCK_STREAM, a SIGPIPE signal is generated to the calling thread.
EWOULDBLOCK
The socket is marked nonblocking and the requested operation would block.

If the address family of the socket is AF_UNIX, sendmsg() fails if:

EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the filesystem.
ELOOP
A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during resolution of the pathname in the socket address, or more than SYMLOOP_MAX symbolic links were encountered during the resolution of the pathname in the socket address.
ENAMETOOLONG
A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX characters, or an entire pathname exceeded PATH_MAX characters, or pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate result whose length exceeds PATH_MAX.
ENOENT
A component of the pathname doesn't name an existing file, or the path name is an empty string.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix of the pathname in the socket address isn't a directory.

Classification:

POSIX 1003.1

Safety:
Cancellation point Yes
Interrupt handler No
Signal handler No
Thread Yes

See also:

getsockopt(), ioctl(), recv(), select(), send(), sendto(), socket(), write()