path: root/lib/libc/sys/mmap.2

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.\"	@(#)mmap.2	8.4 (Berkeley) 5/11/95
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd April 21, 2006
.Dt MMAP 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mmap
.Nd allocate memory, or map files or devices into memory
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In sys/mman.h
.Ft void *
.Fn mmap "void *addr" "size_t len" "int prot" "int flags" "int fd" "off_t offset"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn mmap
system call causes the pages starting at
.Fa addr
and continuing for at most
.Fa len
bytes to be mapped from the object described by
.Fa fd ,
starting at byte offset
.Fa offset .
If
.Fa len
is not a multiple of the pagesize, the mapped region may extend past the
specified range.
Any such extension beyond the end of the mapped object will be zero-filled.
.Pp
If
.Fa addr
is non-zero, it is used as a hint to the system.
(As a convenience to the system, the actual address of the region may differ
from the address supplied.)
If
.Fa addr
is zero, an address will be selected by the system.
The actual starting address of the region is returned.
A successful
.Fa mmap
deletes any previous mapping in the allocated address range.
.Pp
The protections (region accessibility) are specified in the
.Fa prot
argument by
.Em or Ns 'ing
the following values:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width PROT_WRITE -compact
.It Dv PROT_NONE
Pages may not be accessed.
.It Dv PROT_READ
Pages may be read.
.It Dv PROT_WRITE
Pages may be written.
.It Dv PROT_EXEC
Pages may be executed.
.El
.Pp
The
.Fa flags
argument specifies the type of the mapped object, mapping options and
whether modifications made to the mapped copy of the page are private
to the process or are to be shared with other references.
Sharing, mapping type and options are specified in the
.Fa flags
argument by
.Em or Ns 'ing
the following values:
.Bl -tag -width MAP_HASSEMAPHORE
.It Dv MAP_ANON
Map anonymous memory not associated with any specific file.
The file descriptor used for creating
.Dv MAP_ANON
must be \-1.
The
.Fa offset
argument is ignored.
.\".It Dv MAP_FILE
.\"Mapped from a regular file or character-special device memory.
.It Dv MAP_FIXED
Do not permit the system to select a different address than the one
specified.
If the specified address cannot be used,
.Fn mmap
will fail.
If
.Dv MAP_FIXED
is specified,
.Fa addr
must be a multiple of the pagesize.
If a
.Dv MAP_FIXED
request is successful, the mapping established by
.Fn mmap
replaces any previous mappings for the process' pages in the range from
.Fa addr
to
.Fa addr
+
.Fa len .
Use of this option is discouraged.
.It Dv MAP_HASSEMAPHORE
Notify the kernel that the region may contain semaphores and that special
handling may be necessary.
.It Dv MAP_INHERIT
This flag never operated as advertised and is no longer supported.
Please refer to
.Xr minherit 2
for further information.
.It Dv MAP_NOCORE
Region is not included in a core file.
.It Dv MAP_NOSYNC
Causes data dirtied via this VM map to be flushed to physical media
only when necessary (usually by the pager) rather than gratuitously.
Typically this prevents the update daemons from flushing pages dirtied
through such maps and thus allows efficient sharing of memory across
unassociated processes using a file-backed shared memory map.
Without
this option any VM pages you dirty may be flushed to disk every so often
(every 30-60 seconds usually) which can create performance problems if you
do not need that to occur (such as when you are using shared file-backed
mmap regions for IPC purposes).
Note that VM/file system coherency is
maintained whether you use
.Dv MAP_NOSYNC
or not.
This option is not portable
across
.Ux
platforms (yet), though some may implement the same behavior
by default.
.Pp
.Em WARNING !
Extending a file with
.Xr ftruncate 2 ,
thus creating a big hole, and then filling the hole by modifying a shared
.Fn mmap
can lead to severe file fragmentation.
In order to avoid such fragmentation you should always pre-allocate the
file's backing store by
.Fn write Ns ing
zero's into the newly extended area prior to modifying the area via your
.Fn mmap .
The fragmentation problem is especially sensitive to
.Dv MAP_NOSYNC
pages, because pages may be flushed to disk in a totally random order.
.Pp
The same applies when using
.Dv MAP_NOSYNC
to implement a file-based shared memory store.
It is recommended that you create the backing store by
.Fn write Ns ing
zero's to the backing file rather than
.Fn ftruncate Ns ing
it.
You can test file fragmentation by observing the KB/t (kilobytes per
transfer) results from an
.Dq Li iostat 1
while reading a large file sequentially, e.g.\& using
.Dq Li dd if=filename of=/dev/null bs=32k .
.Pp
The
.Xr fsync 2
system call will flush all dirty data and metadata associated with a file,
including dirty NOSYNC VM data, to physical media.
The
.Xr sync 8
command and
.Xr sync 2
system call generally do not flush dirty NOSYNC VM data.
The
.Xr msync 2
system call is obsolete since
.Bx
implements a coherent file system buffer cache.
However, it may be
used to associate dirty VM pages with file system buffers and thus cause
them to be flushed to physical media sooner rather than later.
.It Dv MAP_PRIVATE
Modifications are private.
.It Dv MAP_SHARED
Modifications are shared.
.It Dv MAP_STACK
.Dv MAP_STACK
implies
.Dv MAP_ANON ,
and
.Fa offset
of 0.
The
.Fa fd
argument
must be -1 and
.Fa prot
must include at least
.Dv PROT_READ
and
.Dv PROT_WRITE .
This option creates
a memory region that grows to at most
.Fa len
bytes in size, starting from the stack top and growing down.
The
stack top is the starting address returned by the call, plus
.Fa len
bytes.
The bottom of the stack at maximum growth is the starting
address returned by the call.
.El
.Pp
The
.Xr close 2
system call does not unmap pages, see
.Xr munmap 2
for further information.
.Pp
The current design does not allow a process to specify the location of
swap space.
In the future we may define an additional mapping type,
.Dv MAP_SWAP ,
in which
the file descriptor argument specifies a file or device to which swapping
should be done.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion,
.Fn mmap
returns a pointer to the mapped region.
Otherwise, a value of
.Dv MAP_FAILED
is returned and
.Va errno
is set to indicate the error.
.Sh ERRORS
The
.Fn mmap
system call
will fail if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EACCES
The flag
.Dv PROT_READ
was specified as part of the
.Fa prot
argument and
.Fa fd
was not open for reading.
The flags
.Dv MAP_SHARED
and
.Dv PROT_WRITE
were specified as part of the
.Fa flags
and
.Fa prot
argument and
.Fa fd
was not open for writing.
.It Bq Er EBADF
The
.Fa fd
argument
is not a valid open file descriptor.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
.Dv MAP_FIXED
was specified and the
.Fa addr
argument was not page aligned, or part of the desired address space
resides out of the valid address space for a user process.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
The
.Fa len
argument
was negative.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
.Dv MAP_ANON
was specified and the
.Fa fd
argument was not -1.
The
.Fa offset
argument
was not page-aligned.
(See
.Sx BUGS
below.)
.It Bq Er ENODEV
.Dv MAP_ANON
has not been specified and
.Fa fd
did not reference a regular or character special file.
.It Bq Er ENOMEM
.Dv MAP_FIXED
was specified and the
.Fa addr
argument was not available.
.Dv MAP_ANON
was specified and insufficient memory was available.
The system has reached the per-process mmap limit specified in the
.Va vm.max_proc_mmap
sysctl.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr madvise 2 ,
.Xr mincore 2 ,
.Xr minherit 2 ,
.Xr mlock 2 ,
.Xr mprotect 2 ,
.Xr msync 2 ,
.Xr munlock 2 ,
.Xr munmap 2 ,
.Xr getpagesize 3 ,
.Xr make.conf 5
.Sh BUGS
The
.Fa len
argument
is limited to the maximum file size or available userland address
space.
Files may not be able to be made more than 1TB large on 32 bit systems
due to file systems restrictions and bugs, but address space is far more
restrictive.
Larger files may be possible on 64 bit systems.
.Pp
The previous documented limit of 2GB was a documentation bug.
That limit has not existed since
.Fx 2.2 .
.Pp
Note that an attempt to
.Fn mmap
zero bytes has no effect and succeeds, while an attempt to
.Fn munmap
zero bytes will return
.Bq Er EINVAL .