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, size_t namelen);
DESCRIPTIONgethostname() returns the standard host name for the current processor,
as previously set by sethostname(). The parameter namelen specifies the
size of the name array. The returned name is null-terminated unless
insufficient space is provided.
sethostname() sets the name of the host machine to be name, which has
length namelen. This call is restricted to the super-user and is nor‐
mally used only when the system is bootstrapped.
RETURN VALUES
If the call succeeds a value of 0 is returned. If the call fails, a
value of -1 is returned and an error code is placed in the global loca‐
tion errno.
ERRORS
If the gethostname() or sethostname() functions fail, they will set errno
for any of the errors specified for the routine sysctl(3).
SEE ALSOgethostid(3), sysctl(3), sysctl(8)STANDARDS
The gethostname() function conforms to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4,
Version 2 (“XPG4.2”).
HISTORY
The gethostname function call appeared in 4.2BSD.
BUGS
Host names are limited to MAXHOSTNAMELEN (from ⟨sys/param.h⟩) characters
including null-termination, currently 256.
BSD October 14, 2005 BSD
