INOTIFY_INIT(2)                     Linux Programmer's Manual                     INOTIFY_INIT(2)



NAME
       inotify_init, inotify_init1 - initialize an inotify instance

SYNOPSIS
       #include <sys/inotify.h>

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

DESCRIPTION
       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 new open file description.  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 use‐
                   ful.

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

ERRORS
       EINVAL (inotify_init1()) An invalid value was specified in flags.

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

       ENFILE The system limit on the total number of file descriptors has been reached.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory is available.

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

CONFORMING TO
       These system calls are Linux-specific.

SEE ALSO
       inotify_add_watch(2), inotify_rm_watch(2), inotify(7)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                       2014-03-28                            INOTIFY_INIT(2)