gethostname(3) BSD Library Functions Manual gethostname(3)
NAME
gethostname, sethostname -- get/set name of current host
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
gethostname(char *name, size_t namelen);
int
sethostname(const char *name, int namelen);
DESCRIPTION
The gethostname() function returns the standard host name for the current
processor, as previously set by sethostname(). The namelen argument
specifies the size of the name array. The returned name is null-termi-
nated, unless insufficient space is provided.
The sethostname() function sets the name of the host machine to be name,
which has length namelen. This call is restricted to the super-user and
is normally used only when the system is bootstrapped.
Host names are limited in length to {sysconf(_SC_HOST_NAME_MAX)} charac-
ters, not including the trailing null, currently 255.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the
value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
error.
ERRORS
The following errors may be returned by these calls:
[EFAULT] The name or namelen argument gave an invalid address.
[ENAMETOOLONG] The current host name is longer than namelen. (For
gethostname() only.)
[EPERM] The caller tried to set the host name and was not the
super-user.
SEE ALSO
sysconf(3), sysctl(3)
STANDARDS
The gethostname() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
(``POSIX.1''). Callers should be aware that {sysconf(_SC_HOST_NAME_MAX)}
may be variable or infinite, but is guaranteed to be no less than
{_POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX}. On older systems, this limit was defined in the
non-standard header <sys/param.h> as MAXHOSTNAMELEN, and counted the ter-
minating null. The sethostname() function and the error returns for
gethostname() are not standardized.
HISTORY
The gethostname() function appeared in 4.2BSD. The namelen argument to
gethostname() was changed to size_t in FreeBSD 5.2 for alignment with
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').
BSD August 18, 2003 BSD
Mac OS X 10.8 - Generated Tue Aug 28 05:26:31 CDT 2012