ACCEPT(2)

NAME
accept, accept4 - accept a connection on a socket

LIBRARY
libc

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
int
accept(int s, struct sockaddr *addr, socklen_t *addrlen);
int
accept4(int s, struct sockaddr * restrict addr, socklen_t * restrict addrlen, int flags);

DESCRIPTION
The argument s is a socket that has been created with socket(2), bound to an address with bind(2), and is listening for connections after a listen(2). The accept() system call extracts the first connection request on the queue of pending connections, creates a new socket, and allocates a new file descriptor for the socket which inherits the state of the O_NONBLOCK and O_ASYNC properties, socket buffer settings, socket options, and the destination of SIGIO and SIGURG signals from the original socket s.

The accept4() system call is similar, but the O_NONBLOCK property of the new socket is instead determined by the SOCK_NONBLOCK flag in the flags argument, the O_ASYNC property is cleared, the signal destination is cleared and the close-on-exec flag on the new file descriptor can be set via the SOCK_CLOEXEC flag in the flags argument. Similarly, the O_CLOFORK property can be set via the SOCK_CLOFORK flag in the flags argument.

If no pending connections are present on the queue, and the socket is not marked as non-blocking, accept() blocks the caller until a connection is present. If the socket is marked non-blocking and no pending connections are present on the queue, accept() returns an error as described below. The accepted socket may not be used to accept more connections. The original socket s remains open.

The argument addr is a result parameter that is filled-in with the address of the connecting entity, as known to the communications layer. The exact format of the addr parameter is determined by the domain in which the communication is occurring. To ensure that the returned address fits, *addr should have a size of at least sizeof(struct sockaddr_storage). The addrlen is a value-result parameter; it should initially contain the amount of space pointed to by addr; on return it will contain the actual length (in bytes) of the address returned. These system calls are used with connection-based socket types, currently with SOCK_STREAM and SOCK_SEQPACKET.

It is possible to select(2) a socket for the purposes of doing an accept() by selecting it for read.

For certain protocols which require an explicit confirmation, such as ISO or DATAKIT, accept() can be thought of as merely dequeueing the next connection request and not implying confirmation. Confirmation can be implied by a normal read or write on the new file descriptor, and rejection can be implied by closing the new socket.

For some applications, performance may be enhanced by using an accept_filter(9) to pre-process incoming connections.

RETURN VALUES
These calls returns -1 on error. If they succeed, they return a non-negative integer that is a descriptor for the accepted socket.

ERRORS
The accept() and accept4() system calls will fail if:

[EBADF]
    The descriptor is invalid.

[EINTR]
    The accept() operation was interrupted.

[EMFILE]
    The per-process descriptor table is full.

[ENFILE]
    The system file table is full.

[ENOTSOCK]
    The descriptor references a file, not a socket.

[EINVAL]
    listen(2) has not been called on the socket descriptor.

[EFAULT]
    The addr parameter is not in a writable part of the user address space.

[EWOULDBLOCK]
    The socket is marked non-blocking and no connections are present to be accepted.

[ECONNABORTED]
    A connection arrived, but it was closed while waiting on the listen queue.

The accept4() system call will also fail if:

[EINVAL]
    The flags argument is invalid.

SEE ALSO
bind(2), connect(2), getpeername(2), listen(2), select(2), socket(2), accept_filter(9)

HISTORY
The accept() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

The accept4() system call appeared in DragonFly 4.3.

The SOCK_CLOFORK flag appeared in FreeBSD 15.0 and DragonFly 6.5.