Manpages - inotify_init.2

inotify_init, inotify_init1 - initialize an inotify instance

  #include <sys/inotify.h>

  int inotify_init(void);
  int inotify_init1(int flags);

For an overview of the inotify API, see *inotify*(7).

*inotify_init*() initializes a new inotify instance and returns a file descriptor associated with a new inotify event queue.

If flags is 0, then *inotify_init1*() is the same as *inotify_init*(). The following values can be bitwise ORed in flags to obtain different behavior:

IN_NONBLOCK

Set the O_NONBLOCK file status flag on the open file description (see *open*(2)) referred to by the new file descriptor. Using this flag saves extra calls to *fcntl*(2) to achieve the same result.

IN_CLOEXEC

Set the close-on-exec (FD_CLOEXEC) flag on the new file descriptor. See the description of the O_CLOEXEC flag in *open*(2) for reasons why this may be useful.

On success, these system calls return a new file descriptor. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

EINVAL

(*inotify_init1*()) An invalid value was specified in flags.

EMFILE

The user limit on the total number of inotify instances has been reached.

EMFILE

The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.

ENFILE

The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

ENOMEM

Insufficient kernel memory is available.

*inotify_init*() first appeared in Linux 2.6.13; library support was added to glibc in version 2.4. *inotify_init1*() was added in Linux 2.6.27; library support was added to glibc in version 2.9.

These system calls are Linux-specific.

*inotify_add_watch*(2), *inotify_rm_watch*(2), *inotify*(7)

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