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SENDFILE(2)              DragonFly System Calls Manual             SENDFILE(2)


NAME

     sendfile -- send a file to a socket


LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)


SYNOPSIS

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

     int
     sendfile(int fd, int s, off_t offset, size_t nbytes,
         struct sf_hdtr *hdtr, off_t *sbytes, int flags);


DESCRIPTION

     Sendfile() sends a regular file specified by descriptor fd out a stream
     socket specified by descriptor s.

     The offset argument specifies where to begin in the file.  The nbytes
     argument specifies how many bytes of the file should be sent, with 0 hav-
     ing the special meaning of send until the end of file has been reached.

     An optional header and/or trailer can be sent before and after the file
     data by specifying a pointer to a struct sf_hdtr, which has the following
     structure:

           struct sf_hdtr {
                   struct iovec *headers;  /* pointer to header iovecs */
                   int hdr_cnt;            /* number of header iovecs */
                   struct iovec *trailers; /* pointer to trailer iovecs */
                   int trl_cnt;            /* number of trailer iovecs */
           };

     The headers and trailers pointers, if non-NULL, point to arrays of struct
     iovec structures.  See the writev() system call for information on the
     iovec structure.  The number of iovecs in these arrays is specified by
     hdr_cnt and trl_cnt.

     If non-NULL, the system will write the total number of bytes sent on the
     socket to the variable pointed to by sbytes.

     The flags argument is currently undefined and should be specified as 0.

     When using a socket marked for non-blocking I/O, sendfile() may send
     fewer bytes than requested.  In this case, the number of bytes success-
     fully written is returned in *sbytes (if specified), and the error EAGAIN
     is returned.


IMPLEMENTATION NOTES

     The DragonFly implementation of sendfile() is "zero-copy", meaning that
     it has been optimized so that copying of the file data is avoided.


RETURN VALUES

     The sendfile() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the
     value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
     error.


ERRORS

     [EBADF]            fd is not a valid file descriptor.

     [EBADF]            s is not a valid socket descriptor.

     [ENOTSOCK]         s is not a socket.

     [EINVAL]           fd is not a regular file.

     [EINVAL]           s is not a SOCK_STREAM type socket.

     [EINVAL]           offset is negative or out of range.

     [ENOTCONN]         s points to an unconnected socket.

     [EPIPE]            The socket peer has closed the connection.

     [EIO]              An error occurred while reading from fd.

     [EFAULT]           An invalid address was specified for a parameter.

     [EAGAIN]           The socket is marked for non-blocking I/O and not all
                        data was sent due to the socket buffer being filled.
                        If specified, the number of bytes successfully sent
                        will be returned in *sbytes.


SEE ALSO

     open(2), send(2), socket(2), writev(2)


HISTORY

     sendfile() first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.  This manual page first
     appeared in FreeBSD 3.1.


AUTHORS

     sendfile() and this manual page were written by David Greenman
     <dg@root.com>.

DragonFly 3.5                  November 5, 1998                  DragonFly 3.5

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