Appendix B. UNIX Error Messages
Errors generated by the failure of a system call or library function, can be displayed using the perror or strerror library function calls (see "Managing Failures" Section 1.5, "Managing System Call Failures"). For example, the error messages returned by strerror on a Linux system can be displayed in their entirety using Program B.1.
Program B.1 Displaying strerror messages.
File : errors.cxx #include #include #include extern int sys_nerr; + using namespace std; int main( ){ for (int err=0; err < sys_nerr; ++err ) cout << err << ' ' << strerror(err) << endl; 10 return 0; }
As the output of the program will fill more than one screen, it may be helpful to redirect the output to either a file, for future reference, or to the more command to permit viewing of the output at a controlled pace. To compile the source file and capture the output of the program in a file called emessages , the command sequence is
linux$ g++ errors.cxx -o errors linux$ errors > emessages
If, after compilation, you want the program output to be piped to more , the command sequence is
linux$ errors more
Note that the error message returned by strerror (and perror ) in a C/C++ program is the same message that is returned by the Linux command-line utility called perror . A command-line sequence to determine the error message associated with error number 13 is
linux$ perror 13 Error code 13: Permission denied
A Bourne shell script that uses the command-line perror utility to display all error messages is shown in Program B.2.
Program B.2 Bourne shell script that uses perror to generate error messages.
File : errors_script #! /bin/bash err=0 while test $err -lt 125; do echo -n "$err " + perror -s $err err='expr $err + 1' done
Table B.1 lists the error number, its symbolic name , and the actual message generated by strerror .
Table B.1. Error messages.
Error # |
Symbolic Constant |
Message Generated by strerror |
---|---|---|
Success |
||
1 |
EPERM |
Operation not permitted |
2 |
ENOENT |
No such file or directory |
3 |
ESRCH |
No such process |
4 |
EINTR |
Interrupted system call |
5 |
EIO |
Input/output error |
6 |
ENXIO |
No such device or address |
7 |
E2BIG |
Argument list too long |
8 |
ENOEXEC |
exec format error |
9 |
EBADF |
Bad file descriptor |
10 |
ECHILD |
No child processes |
11 |
EAGAIN |
Resource temporarily unavailable |
12 |
ENOMEM |
Cannot allocate memory |
13 |
EACCES |
Permission denied |
14 |
EFAULT |
Bad address |
15 |
ENOTBLK |
Block device required |
16 |
EBUSY |
Device or resource busy |
17 |
EEXIST |
File exists |
18 |
EXDEV |
Invalid cross-device link |
19 |
ENODEV |
No such device |
20 |
ENOTDIR |
Not a directory |
21 |
EISDIR |
Is a directory |
22 |
EINVAL |
Invalid argument |
23 |
ENFILE |
Too many open files in system |
24 |
EMFILE |
Too many open files |
25 |
ENOTTY |
Inappropriate ioctl for device |
26 |
ETXTBSY |
Text file busy |
27 |
EFBIG |
File too large |
28 |
ENOSPC |
No space left on device |
29 |
ESPIPE |
Illegal seek |
30 |
EROFS |
Read-only file system |
31 |
EMLINK |
Too many links |
32 |
EPIPE |
Broken pipe |
33 |
EDOM |
Numerical argument out of domain |
34 |
ERANGE |
Numerical result out of range |
35 |
EDEADLK |
Resource deadlock avoided |
36 |
ENAMETOOLONG |
File name too long |
37 |
ENOLCK |
No locks available |
38 |
ENOSYS |
Function not implemented |
39 |
ENOTEMPTY |
Directory not empty |
40 |
ELOOP |
Too many levels of symbolic links |
41 |
EWOULDBLOCK |
Unknown error 41 |
42 |
ENOMSG |
No message of desired type |
43 |
EIDRM |
Identifier removed |
44 |
ECHRNG |
Channel number out of range |
45 |
EL2NSYNC |
Level 2 not synchronized |
46 |
EL3HLT |
Level 3 halted |
47 |
EL3RST |
Level 3 reset |
48 |
ELNRNG |
Link number out of range |
49 |
EUNATCH |
Protocol driver not attached |
50 |
ENOCSI |
No CSI structure available |
51 |
EL2HLT |
Level 2 halted |
52 |
EBADE |
Invalid exchange |
53 |
EBADR |
Invalid request descriptor |
54 |
EXFULL |
Exchange full |
55 |
ENOANO |
No anode |
56 |
EBADRQC |
Invalid request code |
57 |
EBADSLT |
Invalid slot |
58 |
EDEADLOCK |
Unknown error 58 |
59 |
EBFONT |
Bad font file format |
60 |
ENOSTR |
Device not a stream |
61 |
ENODATA |
No data available |
62 |
ETIME |
Timer expired |
63 |
ENOSR |
Out of streams resources |
64 |
ENONET |
Machine is not on the network |
65 |
ENOPKG |
Package not installed |
66 |
EREMOTE |
Object is remote |
67 |
ENOLINK |
Link has been severed |
68 |
EADV |
Advertise error |
69 |
ESRMNT |
Srmount error |
70 |
ECOMM |
Communication error on send |
71 |
EPROTO |
Protocol error |
72 |
EMULTIHOP |
Multihop attempted |
73 |
EDOTDOT |
RFS-specific error |
74 |
EBADMSG |
Bad message |
75 |
EOVERFLOW |
Value too large for defined data type |
76 |
ENOTUNIQ |
Name not unique on network |
77 |
EBADFD |
File descriptor in bad state |
78 |
EREMCHG |
Remote address changed |
79 |
ELIBACC |
Can not access a needed shared library |
80 |
ELIBBAD |
Accessing a corrupted shared library |
81 |
ELIBSCN |
.lib section in a.out corrupted |
82 |
ELIBMAX |
Attempting to link in too many shared libraries |
83 |
ELIBEXEC |
Cannot exec a shared library directly |
84 |
EILSEQ |
Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character |
85 |
ERESTART |
Interrupted system call should be restarted |
86 |
ESTRPIPE |
Streams pipe error |
87 |
EUSERS |
Too many users |
88 |
ENOTSOCK |
Socket operation on nonsocket |
89 |
EDESTADDRREQ |
Destination address required |
90 |
EMSGSIZE |
Message too long |
91 |
EPROTOTYPE |
Protocol wrong type for socket |
92 |
ENOPROTOOPT |
Protocol not available |
93 |
EPROTONOSUPPORT |
Protocol not supported |
94 |
ESOCKTNOSUPPORT |
Socket type not supported |
95 |
EOPNOTSUPP |
Operation not supported |
96 |
EPFNOSUPPORT |
Protocol family not supported |
97 |
EAFNOSUPPORT |
Address family not supported by protocol |
98 |
EADDRINUSE |
Address already in use |
99 |
EADDRNOTAVAIL |
Cannot assign requested address |
100 |
ENETDOWN |
Network is down |
101 |
ENETUNREACH |
Network is unreachable |
102 |
ENETRESET |
Network dropped connection on reset |
103 |
ECONNABORTED |
Software caused connection abort |
104 |
ECONNRESET |
Connection reset by peer |
105 |
ENOBUFS |
No buffer space available |
106 |
EISCONN |
Transport endpoint is already connected |
107 |
ENOTCONN |
Transport endpoint is not connected |
108 |
ESHUTDOWN |
Cannot send after transport endpoint shutdown |
109 |
ETOOMANYREFS |
Too many references: cannot splice |
110 |
ETIMEDOUT |
Connection timed out |
111 |
ECONNREFUSED |
Connection refused |
112 |
EHOSTDOWN |
Host is down |
113 |
EHOSTUNREACH |
No route to host |
114 |
EALREADY |
Operation already in progress |
115 |
EINPROGRESS |
Operation now in progress |
116 |
ESTALE |
Stale NFS file handle |
117 |
EUCLEAN |
Structure needs cleaning |
118 |
ENOTNAM |
Not a XENIX named type file |
119 |
ENAVAIL |
No XENIX semaphores available |
120 |
EISNAM |
Is a named type file |
121 |
EREMOTEIO |
Remote I/O error |
122 |
EDQUOT |
Disk quota exceeded |
123 |
ENOMEDIUM |
No medium found |
124 |
EMEDIUMTYPE |
Wrong medium type |
Keep in mind that in C/C++ programs it is always best to reference a specific error by its symbolic constant, as the underlying numeric value for an error can change from one implementation of UNIX to another (and even from one version of the same implementation to the next ). For example, in Solaris 2.8 (EBADRInvalid request descriptor) is associated with error number 51; in Red Hat Linux 7.3 this same error is associated with error number 53. Likewise, EIDRMIdentifier removed, is error number 43 in Red Hat Linux 7.3 but is error number 37 in Solaris 2.8.
In addition to error messages the command-line perror utility returns MyISAM/ISAM [1] table-handler error codes and messages. These codes and their associated messages are shown in Table B.2. Again, as with other error messages, these are mostly system-dependent.
[1] ISAM is short for Indexed Sequential Access Method a technique for storing and retrieving data.
Table B.2. MyISAM/ISAM Error Messages.
Error # |
MyISAM/ISAM Message Generated by perror |
---|---|
120 |
Didn't find key on read or update |
121 |
Duplicate key on write or update |
122 |
|
123 |
Someone has changed the row since it was read |
124 |
|
126 |
Index file is crashed/wrong file format |
127 |
Record file is crashed |
131 |
Command not supported by database |
132 |
Old database file |
133 |
No record read before update |
134 |
Record was already deleted (or record file crashed) |
135 |
No more room in record file |
136 |
No more room in index file |
137 |
No more records (read after end of file) |
138 |
Unsupported extension used for table |
139 |
Too big row (>= 16 M) |
140 |
Wrong create options |
141 |
Duplicate unique key or constraint on write or update |
142 |
Unknown character set used |
143 |
Conflicting table definition between MERGE and mapped table |
144 |
Table is crashed and last repair failed |
145 |
Table was marked as crashed and should be repaired |
146 |
Lock timed out; retry transaction |
147 |
Lock table is full; restart program with a larger lock table |
148 |
Updates are not allowed under a read-only transaction |
149 |
Lock deadlock; retry transaction |