POSIX_FALLOCATE(3)					     Linux Programmer's Manual						POSIX_FALLOCATE(3)

NAME

       posix_fallocate - allocate file space

SYNOPSIS

       #include <fcntl.h>

       int posix_fallocate(int fd, off_t offset, off_t len);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       posix_fallocate():
	   _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L

DESCRIPTION

       The function posix_fallocate() ensures that disk space is allocated for the file referred to by the file descriptor fd for the bytes in the
       range starting at offset and continuing for len bytes.  After a successful call to posix_fallocate(), subsequent writes	to  bytes  in  the
       specified range are guaranteed not to fail because of lack of disk space.

       If the size of the file is less than offset+len, then the file is increased to this size; otherwise the file size is left unchanged.

RETURN VALUE

       posix_fallocate() returns zero on success, or an error number on failure.  Note that errno is not set.

ERRORS

       EBADF  fd is not a valid file descriptor, or is not opened for writing.

       EFBIG  offset+len exceeds the maximum file size.

       EINTR  A signal was caught during execution.

       EINVAL offset was less than 0, or len was less than or equal to 0, or the underlying filesystem does not support the operation.

       ENODEV fd does not refer to a regular file.

       ENOSPC There is not enough space left on the device containing the file referred to by fd.

       ESPIPE fd refers to a pipe.

VERSIONS

       posix_fallocate() is available since glibc 2.1.94.

ATTRIBUTES

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

       +------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
       |Interface	  | Attribute	  | Value		    |
       +------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
       |posix_fallocate() | Thread safety | MT-Safe (but see NOTES) |
       +------------------+---------------+-------------------------+
CONFORMING TO

       POSIX.1-2001.

       POSIX.1-2008  says  that  an implementation shall give the EINVAL error if len was 0, or offset was less than 0.  POSIX.1-2001 says that an
       implementation shall give the EINVAL error if len is less than 0, or offset was less than 0, and may give the error if len equals zero.

NOTES

       In the glibc implementation, posix_fallocate() is implemented using the fallocate(2) system call, which	is  MT-safe.   If  the	underlying
       filesystem does not support fallocate(2), then the operation is emulated with the following caveats:

       * The emulation is inefficient.

       * There is a race condition where concurrent writes from another thread or process could be overwritten with null bytes.

       * There	is a race condition where concurrent file size increases by another thread or process could result in a file whose size is smaller
	 than expected.

       * If fd has been opened with the O_APPEND or O_WRONLY flags, the function fails with the error EBADF.

       In general, the emulation is not MT-safe.  On Linux, applications may use fallocate(2) if they cannot tolerate the emulation  caveats.	In
       general,  this is only recommended if the application plans to terminate the operation if EOPNOTSUPP is returned, otherwise the application
       itself will need to implement a fallback with all the same problems as the emulation provided by glibc.

SEE ALSO

       fallocate(1), fallocate(2), lseek(2), posix_fadvise(2)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 4.15 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 https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU
								    2017-09-15							POSIX_FALLOCATE(3)