ENOLINK
Linux / POSIXERRORNotableNetworkHIGH confidence

Link Has Been Severed

Production Risk

Indicates network disruption mid-operation; implement retry with reconnect logic.

What this means

ENOLINK (errno 67) is returned when a communication link to a remote host has been severed. Used by RPC, NFS, and STREAMS.

Why it happens
  1. 1Remote host became unreachable mid-operation
  2. 2STREAMS link was severed
  3. 3RPC connection dropped
How to reproduce

RPC call when the remote host goes down mid-operation.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
// RPC or NFS operation when link drops
// errno = ENOLINK after connection to server is lost

expected output

Link has been severed (ENOLINK)

Fix

Reconnect and retry the operation

WHEN After ENOLINK on a remote operation

Reconnect and retry the operation
if (errno == ENOLINK) {
  // Reconnect to remote service
  reconnect_to_server();
  // Retry the operation
  retry_operation();
}

Why this works

ENOLINK is a transient error; re-establishing the link and retrying is the correct response.

Sources
Official documentation ↗

Linux Programmer Manual errno(3)

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