redhat man page for bind

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

NAME
       bind - bind a name to a socket

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

       int bind(int sockfd, struct sockaddr *my_addr, socklen_t addrlen);

DESCRIPTION
       bind gives the socket sockfd the local address my_addr.	my_addr is addrlen bytes long.	Traditionally, this is called "assigning a name to
       a socket."  When a socket is created with socket(2), it exists in a name space (address family) but has no name assigned.

       It is normally necessary to assign a local address using bind before a SOCK_STREAM socket may receive connections (see accept(2)).

       The rules used in name binding vary between address families.  Consult the manual entries  in  Section  7  for  detailed  information.  For
       AF_INET	see  ip(7),  for  AF_UNIX  see	unix(7),  for  AF_APPLETALK see ddp(7), for AF_PACKET see packet(7), for AF_X25 see x25(7) and for
       AF_NETLINK see netlink(7).

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EBADF  sockfd is not a valid descriptor.

       EINVAL The socket is already bound to an address.  This may change in the future: see linux/unix/sock.c for details.

       EACCES The address is protected, and the user is not the super-user.

       ENOTSOCK
	      Argument is a descriptor for a file, not a socket.

       The following errors are specific to UNIX domain (AF_UNIX) sockets:

       EINVAL The addrlen is wrong, or the socket was not in the AF_UNIX family.

       EROFS  The socket inode would reside on a read-only file system.

       EFAULT my_addr points outside the user's accessible address space.

       ENAMETOOLONG
	      my_addr is too long.

       ENOENT The file does not exist.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOTDIR
	      A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

       EACCES Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving my_addr.

BUGS
       The transparent proxy options are not described.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.4BSD (the bind function first appeared in BSD 4.2).  SVr4 documents additional EADDRNOTAVAIL, EADDRINUSE, and ENOSR  general  error
       conditions, and additional EIO and EISDIR Unix-domain error conditions.

NOTE
       The  third argument of bind is in reality an int (and this is what BSD 4.* and libc4 and libc5 have).  Some POSIX confusion resulted in the
       present socklen_t. See also accept(2).

SEE ALSO
       accept(2), connect(2), listen(2), socket(2), getsockname(2), ip(7), socket(7)

Linux 2.2							    1998-10-03								   BIND(2)