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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON


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

NAME         top

       mkdir - create a directory

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/stat.h>
       #include <sys/types.h>

       int mkdir(const char *pathname, mode_t mode);

DESCRIPTION         top

       mkdir() attempts to create a directory named pathname.

       The argument mode specifies the permissions to use.  It is modified by the
       process's umask in the usual way: the permissions of the created directory are
       (mode & ~umask & 0777).  Other mode bits of the created directory depend on
       the operating system.  For Linux, see below.

       The newly created directory will be owned by the effective user ID of the
       process.  If the directory containing the file has the set-group-ID bit set,
       or if the file system is mounted with BSD group semantics (mount -o bsdgroups
       or, synonymously mount -o grpid), the new directory will inherit the group
       ownership from its parent; otherwise it will be owned by the effective group
       ID of the process.

       If the parent directory has the set-group-ID bit set then so will the newly
       created directory.

RETURN VALUE         top

       mkdir() returns zero on success, or -1 if an error occurred (in which case,
       errno is set appropriately).

ERRORS         top

       EACCES The parent directory does not allow write permission to the process, or
              one of the directories in pathname did not allow search permission.
              (See also path_resolution(7).)

       EEXIST pathname already exists (not necessarily as a directory).  This
              includes the case where pathname is a symbolic link, dangling or not.

       EFAULT pathname points outside your accessible address space.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving pathname.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              pathname was too long.

       ENOENT A directory component in pathname does not exist or is a dangling
              symbolic link.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOSPC The device containing pathname has no room for the new directory.

       ENOSPC The new directory cannot be created because the user's disk quota is
              exhausted.

       ENOTDIR
              A component used as a directory in pathname is not, in fact, a
              directory.

       EPERM  The file system containing pathname does not support the creation of
              directories.

       EROFS  pathname refers to a file on a read-only file system.

CONFORMING TO         top

       SVr4, BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES         top

       Under Linux apart from the permission bits, only the S_ISVTX mode bit is
       honored.  That is, under Linux the created directory actually gets mode (mode
       & ~umask & 01777).  See also stat(2).

       There are many infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS.  Some of these
       affect mkdir().

SEE ALSO         top

       mkdir(1), chmod(2), chown(2), mkdirat(2), mknod(2), mount(2), rmdir(2),
       stat(2), umask(2), unlink(2), path_resolution(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.23 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
       at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                 2008-05-13                             MKDIR(2)