Our group recently had some confusion around this. Although f327722042df ("socket.7: Explain effect of SO_SNDTIMEO for connect()") adds a mention of connect(2), the wording around "Timeouts only have effect for system calls that perform socket I/O" is slightly confusing: is connect(2) I/O?. Let's just add connect(2) to the list of things that time out explicitly to avoid any confusion. Test program for grins: #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/socket.h> #include <netinet/ip.h> #include <arpa/inet.h> int main(void) { struct sockaddr_in servaddr = { /* tycho.pizza */ .sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.241.255.151"), .sin_port = htons(443), .sin_family = AF_INET, }; int fd; struct timeval timeout = { .tv_sec = 0, .tv_usec = 100, }; fd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); if (fd < 0) { perror("socket"); return 1; } if (setsockopt(fd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_SNDTIMEO, &timeout, sizeof(timeout)) < 0) { perror("setsockopt"); return 1; } if (connect(fd, (struct sockaddr *)&servaddr, sizeof(servaddr)) < 0) { perror("connect"); return 1; } printf("connect successful\n"); return 0; } $ ./so_sndtimeo connect: Operation now in progress Signed-off-by: Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.pizza> --- man7/socket.7 | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/man7/socket.7 b/man7/socket.7 index 2b191c783..c3c13cda6 100644 --- a/man7/socket.7 +++ b/man7/socket.7 @@ -838,6 +838,7 @@ just as if the socket was specified to be nonblocking. If the timeout is set to zero (the default), then the operation will never timeout. Timeouts only have effect for system calls that perform socket I/O (e.g., +.BR connect (2), .BR read (2), .BR recvmsg (2), .BR send (2), base-commit: 60eb580d1e836977d57355b6519f32e37bdc3392 -- 2.34.1