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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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recv(2) System Calls Manual recv(2)
recv, recvfrom, recvmsg - receive a message from a socket
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <sys/socket.h>
ssize_t recv(size_t size;
int sockfd, void buf[size], size_t size,
int flags);
ssize_t recvfrom(size_t size;
int sockfd, void buf[restrict size], size_t size,
int flags,
struct sockaddr *_Nullable restrict src_addr,
socklen_t *_Nullable restrict addrlen);
ssize_t recvmsg(int sockfd, struct msghdr *msg, int flags);
The recv(), recvfrom(), and recvmsg() calls are used to receive
messages from a socket. They may be used to receive data on both
connectionless and connection-oriented sockets. This page first
describes common features of all three system calls, and then
describes the differences between the calls.
The only difference between recv() and read(2) is the presence of
flags. With a zero flags argument, recv() is generally equivalent
to read(2) (but see NOTES). Also, the following call
recv(sockfd, buf, size, flags);
is equivalent to
recvfrom(sockfd, buf, size, flags, NULL, NULL);
All three calls return the size of the message on successful
completion. If a message is too long to fit in the supplied
buffer, excess bytes may be discarded depending on the type of
socket the message is received from.
If no messages are available at the socket, the receive calls wait
for a message to arrive, unless the socket is nonblocking (see
fcntl(2)), in which case the value -1 is returned and errno is set
to EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK. The receive calls normally return any
data available, up to the requested amount, rather than waiting
for receipt of the full amount requested.
An application can use select(2), poll(2), or epoll(7) to
determine when more data arrives on a socket.
The flags argument
The flags argument is formed by ORing one or more of the following
values:
MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC (recvmsg() only; since Linux 2.6.23)
Set the close-on-exec flag for the file descriptor received
via a UNIX domain file descriptor using the SCM_RIGHTS
operation (described in unix(7)). This flag is useful for
the same reasons as the O_CLOEXEC flag of open(2).
MSG_DONTWAIT (since Linux 2.2)
Enables nonblocking operation; if the operation would
block, the call fails with the error EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK.
This provides similar behavior to setting the O_NONBLOCK
flag (via the fcntl(2) F_SETFL operation), but differs in
that MSG_DONTWAIT is a per-call option, whereas O_NONBLOCK
is a setting on the open file description (see open(2)),
which will affect all threads in the calling process as
well as other processes that hold file descriptors
referring to the same open file description.
MSG_ERRQUEUE (since Linux 2.2)
This flag specifies that queued errors should be received
from the socket error queue. The error is passed in an
ancillary message with a type dependent on the protocol
(for IPv4 IP_RECVERR). The user should supply a buffer of
sufficient size. See cmsg(3) and ip(7) for more
information. The payload of the original packet that
caused the error is passed as normal data via msg_iovec.
The original destination address of the datagram that
caused the error is supplied via msg_name.
The error is supplied in a sock_extended_err structure:
#define SO_EE_ORIGIN_NONE 0
#define SO_EE_ORIGIN_LOCAL 1
#define SO_EE_ORIGIN_ICMP 2
#define SO_EE_ORIGIN_ICMP6 3
struct sock_extended_err
{
uint32_t ee_errno; /* Error number */
uint8_t ee_origin; /* Where the error originated */
uint8_t ee_type; /* Type */
uint8_t ee_code; /* Code */
uint8_t ee_pad; /* Padding */
uint32_t ee_info; /* Additional information */
uint32_t ee_data; /* Other data */
/* More data may follow */
};
struct sockaddr *SO_EE_OFFENDER(struct sock_extended_err *);
ee_errno contains the errno number of the queued error.
ee_origin is the origin code of where the error originated.
The other fields are protocol-specific. The macro
SO_EE_OFFENDER returns a pointer to the address of the
network object where the error originated from given a
pointer to the ancillary message. If this address is not
known, the sa_family member of the sockaddr contains
AF_UNSPEC and the other fields of the sockaddr are
undefined. The payload of the packet that caused the error
is passed as normal data.
For local errors, no address is passed (this can be checked
with the cmsg_len member of the cmsghdr). For error
receives, the MSG_ERRQUEUE flag is set in the msghdr.
After an error has been passed, the pending socket error is
regenerated based on the next queued error and will be
passed on the next socket operation.
MSG_OOB
This flag requests receipt of out-of-band data that would
not be received in the normal data stream. Some protocols
place expedited data at the head of the normal data queue,
and thus this flag cannot be used with such protocols.
MSG_PEEK
This flag causes the receive operation to return data from
the beginning of the receive queue without removing that
data from the queue. Thus, a subsequent receive call will
return the same data.
MSG_TRUNC (since Linux 2.2)
For raw (AF_PACKET), Internet datagram (since Linux
2.4.27/2.6.8), netlink (since Linux 2.6.22), and UNIX
datagram as well as sequenced-packet (since Linux 3.4)
sockets: return the real size of the packet or datagram,
even when it was longer than the passed buffer.
For use with Internet stream sockets, see tcp(7).
MSG_WAITALL (since Linux 2.2)
This flag requests that the operation block until the full
request is satisfied. However, the call may still return
less data than requested if a signal is caught, an error or
disconnect occurs, or the next data to be received is of a
different type than that returned. This flag has no effect
for datagram sockets.
recvfrom()
recvfrom() places the received message into the buffer buf. The
caller must specify the size of the buffer in size.
If src_addr is not NULL, and the underlying protocol provides the
source address of the message, that source address is placed in
the buffer pointed to by src_addr. In this case, addrlen is a
value-result argument. Before the call, it should be initialized
to the size of the buffer associated with src_addr. Upon return,
addrlen is updated to contain the actual size of the source
address. The returned address is truncated if the buffer provided
is too small; in this case, addrlen will return a value greater
than was supplied to the call.
If the caller is not interested in the source address, src_addr
and addrlen should be specified as NULL.
recv()
The recv() call is normally used only on a connected socket (see
connect(2)). It is equivalent to the call:
recvfrom(fd, buf, size, flags, NULL, NULL);
recvmsg()
The recvmsg() call uses a msghdr structure to minimize the number
of directly supplied arguments. This structure is defined as
follows in <sys/socket.h>:
struct msghdr {
void *msg_name; /* Optional address */
socklen_t msg_namelen; /* Size of address */
struct iovec *msg_iov; /* Scatter/gather array */
size_t msg_iovlen; /* # elements in msg_iov */
void *msg_control; /* Ancillary data, see below */
size_t msg_controllen; /* Ancillary data buffer size */
int msg_flags; /* Flags on received message */
};
The msg_name field points to a caller-allocated buffer that is
used to return the source address if the socket is unconnected.
The caller should set msg_namelen to the size of this buffer
before this call; upon return from a successful call, msg_namelen
will contain the size of the returned address. If the application
does not need to know the source address, msg_name can be
specified as NULL.
The fields msg_iov and msg_iovlen describe scatter-gather
locations, as discussed in readv(2).
The field msg_control, which has size msg_controllen, points to a
buffer for other protocol control-related messages or
miscellaneous ancillary data. When recvmsg() is called,
msg_controllen should contain the size of the available buffer in
msg_control; upon return from a successful call it will contain
the size of the control message sequence.
The messages are of the form:
struct cmsghdr {
size_t cmsg_len; /* Data byte count, including header
(type is socklen_t in POSIX) */
int cmsg_level; /* Originating protocol */
int cmsg_type; /* Protocol-specific type */
/* followed by
unsigned char cmsg_data[]; */
};
Ancillary data should be accessed only by the macros defined in
cmsg(3).
As an example, Linux uses this ancillary data mechanism to pass
extended errors, IP options, or file descriptors over UNIX domain
sockets. For further information on the use of ancillary data in
various socket domains, see unix(7) and ip(7).
The msg_flags field in the msghdr is set on return of recvmsg().
It can contain several flags:
MSG_EOR
indicates end-of-record; the data returned completed a
record (generally used with sockets of type
SOCK_SEQPACKET).
MSG_TRUNC
indicates that the trailing portion of a datagram was
discarded because the datagram was larger than the buffer
supplied.
MSG_CTRUNC
indicates that some control data was discarded due to lack
of space in the buffer for ancillary data.
MSG_OOB
is returned to indicate that expedited or out-of-band data
was received.
MSG_ERRQUEUE
indicates that no data was received but an extended error
from the socket error queue.
MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC (since Linux 2.6.23)
indicates that MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC was specified in the flags
argument of recvmsg().
These calls return the number of bytes received, or -1 if an error
occurred. In the event of an error, errno is set to indicate the
error.
When a stream socket peer has performed an orderly shutdown, the
return value will be 0 (the traditional "end-of-file" return).
Datagram sockets in various domains (e.g., the UNIX and Internet
domains) permit zero-size datagrams. When such a datagram is
received, the return value is 0.
The value 0 may also be returned if the requested number of bytes
to receive from a stream socket was 0.
These are some standard errors generated by the socket layer.
Additional errors may be generated and returned from the
underlying protocol modules; see their manual pages.
EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK
The socket is marked nonblocking and the receive operation
would block, or a receive timeout had been set and the
timeout expired before data was received. POSIX.1 allows
either error to be returned for this case, and does not
require these constants to have the same value, so a
portable application should check for both possibilities.
EBADF The argument sockfd is an invalid file descriptor.
ECONNREFUSED
A remote host refused to allow the network connection
(typically because it is not running the requested
service).
EFAULT The receive buffer pointer(s) point outside the process's
address space.
EINTR The receive was interrupted by delivery of a signal before
any data was available; see signal(7).
EINVAL Invalid argument passed.
ENOMEM Could not allocate memory for recvmsg().
ENOTCONN
The socket is associated with a connection-oriented
protocol and has not been connected (see connect(2) and
accept(2)).
ENOTSOCK
The file descriptor sockfd does not refer to a socket.
According to POSIX.1, the msg_controllen field of the msghdr
structure should be typed as socklen_t, and the msg_iovlen field
should be typed as int, but glibc currently types both as size_t.
POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001, 4.4BSD (first appeared in 4.2BSD).
POSIX.1 describes only the MSG_OOB, MSG_PEEK, and MSG_WAITALL
flags.
If a zero-size datagram is pending, read(2) and recv() with a
flags argument of zero provide different behavior. In this
circumstance, read(2) has no effect (the datagram remains
pending), while recv() consumes the pending datagram.
See recvmmsg(2) for information about a Linux-specific system call
that can be used to receive multiple datagrams in a single call.
An example of the use of recvfrom() is shown in getaddrinfo(3).
fcntl(2), getsockopt(2), read(2), recvmmsg(2), select(2),
shutdown(2), socket(2), cmsg(3), sockatmark(3), ip(7), ipv6(7),
socket(7), tcp(7), udp(7), unix(7)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-06-28 recv(2)
Pages that refer to this page: getpeername(2), io_uring_enter2(2), io_uring_enter(2), recvmmsg(2), select(2), select_tut(2), send(2), socket(2), socketcall(2), syscalls(2), cmsg(3), getifaddrs(3), getnameinfo(3), if_nameindex(3), io_uring_prep_recv(3), io_uring_prep_recvmsg(3), io_uring_prep_recvmsg_multishot(3), io_uring_prep_recv_multishot(3), rtime(3), size_t(3type), sockatmark(3), ddp(7), ip(7), mctp(7), netlink(7), packet(7), raw(7), sctp(7), signal(7), signal-safety(7), socket(7), tcp(7), udp(7), unix(7), vsock(7)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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