LISTEN(2)                                                            LISTEN(2)


NAME
     listen - listen for connections on a socket

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

     int listen (int s, int backlog);

DESCRIPTION
     To accept connections, a socket is first created with socket(2), a
     willingness to accept incoming connections and a queue limit for incoming
     connections are specified with listen(2), and then each new connection is
     accepted with accept(2).  The listen call applies only to sockets of type
     SOCK_STREAM.

     The backlog parameter defines the maximum length the queue of pending
     connections.  If a connection request arrives with the queue full the
     client may receive an error with an indication of ECONNREFUSED, or, if
     the underlying protocol supports retransmission, the request may be
     ignored so that retries may succeed.

RETURN VALUE
     A 0 return value indicates success; -1 indicates an error.

ERRORS
     The call fails if:

     [EBADF]             The argument s is not a valid descriptor.

     [ENOTSOCK]          The argument s is not a socket.

     [EOPNOTSUPP]        The socket is not of a type that supports the
                         operation listen.

SEE ALSO
     accept(2), connect(2), socket(2)

NOTES
     The backlog is currently limited (silently) to 1000.

     The system actually enforces the limit of pending connections as
               ((3 * backlog) / 2) + 1
     For example, a backlog of 32 will allow 49 outstanding connections.

     ABI-compliant versions of the above call can be obtained from
     libsocket.so.


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