shm_open, shm_unlink — create/open or unlink POSIX shared memory objects
#include <sys/mman.h> #include <sys/stat.h> /* For mode constants */ #include <fcntl.h> /* For O_* constants */
int
shm_open( |
const char *name, |
int oflag, | |
mode_t mode) ; |
int
shm_unlink( |
const char *name) ; |
Note | |
---|---|
Link with |
shm_open
() creates and opens
a new, or opens an existing, POSIX shared memory object. A
POSIX shared memory object is in effect a handle which can be
used by unrelated processes to mmap(2) the same region of
shared memory. The shm_unlink
()
function performs the converse operation, removing an object
previously created by shm_open
().
The operation of shm_open
()
is analogous to that of open(2). name
specifies the shared
memory object to be created or opened. For portable use, a
shared memory object should be identified by a name of the
form /somename
; that is, a
null-terminated string of up to NAME_MAX
(i.e., 255) characters consisting
of an initial slash, followed by one or more characters, none
of which are slashes.
oflag
is a bit
mask created by ORing together exactly one of O_RDONLY
or O_RDWR
and any of the other flags listed
here:
O_RDONLY
Open the object for read access. A shared memory
object opened in this way can be mmap(2)ed only for
read (PROT_READ
)
access.
O_RDWR
Open the object for read-write access.
O_CREAT
Create the shared memory object if it does not
exist. The user and group ownership of the object are
taken from the corresponding effective IDs of the
calling process, and the object's permission bits are
set according to the low-order 9 bits of mode
, except that those
bits set in the process file mode creation mask (see
umask(2)) are cleared
for the new object. A set of macro constants which can
be used to define mode
is listed in
open(2). (Symbolic
definitions of these constants can be obtained by
including <
sys/stat.h
>
A new shared memory object initially has zero length—the size of the object can be set using ftruncate(2). The newly allocated bytes of a shared memory object are automatically initialized to 0.
O_EXCL
If O_CREAT
was also
specified, and a shared memory object with the given
name
already
exists, return an error. The check for the existence of
the object, and its creation if it does not exist, are
performed atomically.
O_TRUNC
If the shared memory object already exists, truncate it to zero bytes.
Definitions of these flag values can be obtained by
including <
fcntl.h
>
On successful completion shm_open
() returns a new file descriptor
referring to the shared memory object. This file descriptor
is guaranteed to be the lowest-numbered file descriptor not
previously opened within the process. The FD_CLOEXEC
flag (see fcntl(2)) is set for the
file descriptor.
The file descriptor is normally used in subsequent calls to ftruncate(2) (for a newly created object) and mmap(2). After a call to mmap(2) the file descriptor may be closed without affecting the memory mapping.
The operation of shm_unlink
() is analogous to unlink(2): it removes a
shared memory object name, and, once all processes have
unmapped the object, deallocates and destroys the contents of
the associated memory region. After a successful shm_unlink
(), attempts to shm_open
() an object with the same
name
fail (unless
O_CREAT
was specified, in which
case a new, distinct object is created).
On success, shm_open
()
returns a file descriptor (a nonnegative integer). On
success, shm_unlink
() returns
0. On failure, both functions return −1 and set
errno
to indicate the error.
Permission to shm_unlink
() the shared memory object
was denied.
Permission was denied to shm_open
() name
in the specified
mode
, or
O_TRUNC
was specified and
the caller does not have write permission on the
object.
Both O_CREAT
and
O_EXCL
were specified to
shm_open
() and the shared
memory object specified by name
already exists.
The name
argument to shm_open
()
was invalid.
The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.
The length of name
exceeds PATH_MAX
.
The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
An attempt was made to shm_open
() a name
that did not exist,
and O_CREAT
was not
specified.
An attempt was to made to shm_unlink
() a name
that does not
exist.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
Interface | Attribute | Value |
shm_open (), shm_unlink () |
Thread safety | MT-Safe locale |
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001 says that the group ownership of a newly created shared memory object is set to either the calling process's effective group ID or "a system default group ID". POSIX.1-2008 says that the group ownership may be set to either the calling process's effective group ID or, if the object is visible in the filesystem, the group ID of the parent directory.
POSIX leaves the behavior of the combination of
O_RDONLY
and O_TRUNC
unspecified. On Linux, this will
successfully truncate an existing shared memory
object—this may not be so on other UNIX systems.
The POSIX shared memory object implementation on Linux
makes use of a dedicated tmpfs(5) filesystem that is
normally mounted under /dev/shm
.
The programs below employ POSIX shared memory and POSIX unnamed semaphores to exchange a piece of data. The "bounce" program (which must be run first) raises the case of a string that is placed into the shared memory by the "send" program. Once the data has been modified, the "send" program then prints the contents of the modified shared memory. An example execution of the two programs is the following:
$ ./pshm_ucase_bounce /myshm & [1] 270171 $ ./pshm_ucase_send /myshm hello HELLO
Further detail about these programs is provided below.
The following header file is included by both programs below. Its primary purpose is to define a structure that will be imposed on the memory object that is shared between the two programs.
#include <sys/mman.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <semaphore.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> #define errExit(msg) do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); \ } while (0) #define BUF_SIZE 1024 /* Maximum size for exchanged string */ /* Define a structure that will be imposed on the shared memory object */ struct shmbuf { sem_t sem1; /* POSIX unnamed semaphore */ sem_t sem2; /* POSIX unnamed semaphore */ size_t cnt; /* Number of bytes used in 'buf' */ char buf[BUF_SIZE]; /* Data being transferred */ };
The "bounce" program creates a new shared memory object
with the name given in its command-line argument and sizes
the object to match the size of the shmbuf
structure defined in the header
file. It then maps the object into the process's address
space, and initializes two POSIX semaphores inside the
object to 0.
After the "send" program has posted the first of the semaphores, the "bounce" program upper cases the data that has been placed in the memory by the "send" program and then posts the second semaphore to tell the "send" program that it may now access the shared memory.
/* pshm_ucase_bounce.c Licensed under GNU General Public License v2 or later. */ #include <ctype.h> #include "pshm_ucase.h" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { if (argc != 2) { fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s /shm−path\n", argv[0]); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } char *shmpath = argv[1]; /* Create shared memory object and set its size to the size of our structure. */ int fd = shm_open(shmpath, O_CREAT | O_EXCL | O_RDWR, S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR); if (fd == −1) errExit("shm_open"); if (ftruncate(fd, sizeof(struct shmbuf)) == −1) errExit("ftruncate"); /* Map the object into the caller's address space. */ struct shmbuf *shmp = mmap(NULL, sizeof(*shmp), PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0); if (shmp == MAP_FAILED) errExit("mmap"); /* Initialize semaphores as process−shared, with value 0. */ if (sem_init(&shmp−>sem1, 1, 0) == −1) errExit("sem_init−sem1"); if (sem_init(&shmp−>sem2, 1, 0) == −1) errExit("sem_init−sem2"); /* Wait for 'sem1' to be posted by peer before touching shared memory. */ if (sem_wait(&shmp−>sem1) == −1) errExit("sem_wait"); /* Convert data in shared memory into upper case. */ for (int j = 0; j < shmp−>cnt; j++) shmp−>buf[j] = toupper((unsigned char) shmp−>buf[j]); /* Post 'sem2' to tell the to tell peer that it can now access the modified data in shared memory. */ if (sem_post(&shmp−>sem2) == −1) errExit("sem_post"); /* Unlink the shared memory object. Even if the peer process is still using the object, this is okay. The object will be removed only after all open references are closed. */ shm_unlink(shmpath); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }
The "send" program takes two command-line arguments: the pathname of a shared memory object previously created by the "bounce" program and a string that is to be copied into that object.
The program opens the shared memory object and maps the object into its address space. It then copies the data specified in its second argument into the shared memory, and posts the first semaphore, which tells the "bounce" program that it can now access that data. After the "bounce" program posts the second semaphore, the "send" program prints the contents of the shared memory on standard output.
/* pshm_ucase_send.c Licensed under GNU General Public License v2 or later. */ #include <string.h> #include "pshm_ucase.h" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { if (argc != 3) { fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s /shm−path string\n", argv[0]); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } char *shmpath = argv[1]; char *string = argv[2]; size_t len = strlen(string); if (len > BUF_SIZE) { fprintf(stderr, "String is too long\n"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } /* Open the existing shared memory object and map it into the caller's address space. */ int fd = shm_open(shmpath, O_RDWR, 0); if (fd == −1) errExit("shm_open"); struct shmbuf *shmp = mmap(NULL, sizeof(*shmp), PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0); if (shmp == MAP_FAILED) errExit("mmap"); /* Copy data into the shared memory object. */ shmp−>cnt = len; memcpy(&shmp−>buf, string, len); /* Tell peer that it can now access shared memory. */ if (sem_post(&shmp−>sem1) == −1) errExit("sem_post"); /* Wait until peer says that it has finished accessing the shared memory. */ if (sem_wait(&shmp−>sem2) == −1) errExit("sem_wait"); /* Write modified data in shared memory to standard output. */ write(STDOUT_FILENO, &shmp−>buf, len); write(STDOUT_FILENO, "\n", 1); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); }
close(2), fchmod(2), fchown(2), fcntl(2), fstat(2), ftruncate(2), memfd_create(2), mmap(2), open(2), umask(2), shm_overview(7)
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and the latest version of this page, can be found at
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