shm_open(3) Library Functions Manual shm_open(3)
NAME
shm_open, shm_unlink - create/open or unlink POSIX shared memory ob-
jects
LIBRARY
Real-time library (librt, -lrt)
SYNOPSIS
#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);
DESCRIPTION
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 opera-
tion, 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 correspond-
ing effective IDs of the calling process, and the object's per-
mission 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 ob-
tained 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 ex-
ist, 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 <fc-
ntl.h>.
On successful completion shm_open() returns a new file descriptor re-
ferring to the shared memory object. This file descriptor is guaran-
teed 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 ftrun-
cate(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 ob-
ject with the same name fail (unless O_CREAT was specified, in which
case a new, distinct object is created).
RETURN VALUE
On success, shm_open() returns a file descriptor (a nonnegative inte-
ger). On success, shm_unlink() returns 0. On failure, both functions
return -1 and set errno to indicate the error.
ERRORS
EACCES Permission to shm_unlink() the shared memory object was denied.
EACCES Permission was denied to shm_open() name in the specified mode,
or O_TRUNC was specified and the caller does not have write per-
mission on the object.
EEXIST Both O_CREAT and O_EXCL were specified to shm_open() and the
shared memory object specified by name already exists.
EINVAL The name argument to shm_open() was invalid.
EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has
been reached.
ENAMETOOLONG
The length of name exceeds PATH_MAX.
ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
reached.
ENOENT An attempt was made to shm_open() a name that did not exist, and
O_CREAT was not specified.
ENOENT An attempt was to made to shm_unlink() a name that does not ex-
ist.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attrib-
utes(7).
┌────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼────────────────┤
│ shm_open(), shm_unlink() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe locale │
└────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴────────────────┘
VERSIONS
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.
STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
HISTORY
glibc 2.2. POSIX.1-2001.
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 own-
ership 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.
EXAMPLES
The programs below employ POSIX shared memory and POSIX unnamed sema-
phores 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 mem-
ory. 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.
Program source: pshm_ucase.h
The following header file is included by both programs below. Its pri-
mary purpose is to define a structure that will be imposed on the mem-
ory object that is shared between the two programs.
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <semaphore.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/stat.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 */
};
Program source: pshm_ucase_bounce.c
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 mem-
ory 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[])
{
int fd;
char *shmpath;
struct shmbuf *shmp;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s /shm-path\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
shmpath = argv[1];
/* Create shared memory object and set its size to the size
of our structure. */
fd = shm_open(shmpath, O_CREAT | O_EXCL | O_RDWR, 0600);
if (fd == -1)
errExit("shm_open");
if (ftruncate(fd, sizeof(struct shmbuf)) == -1)
errExit("ftruncate");
/* Map the object into the caller's address space. */
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 (size_t j = 0; j < shmp->cnt; j++)
shmp->buf[j] = toupper((unsigned char) shmp->buf[j]);
/* Post 'sem2' to tell the 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);
}
Program source: pshm_ucase_send.c
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 argu-
ment 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[])
{
int fd;
char *shmpath, *string;
size_t len;
struct shmbuf *shmp;
if (argc != 3) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s /shm-path string\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
shmpath = argv[1];
string = argv[2];
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. */
fd = shm_open(shmpath, O_RDWR, 0);
if (fd == -1)
errExit("shm_open");
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);
}
SEE ALSO
close(2), fchmod(2), fchown(2), fcntl(2), fstat(2), ftruncate(2),
memfd_create(2), mmap(2), open(2), umask(2), shm_overview(7)
Linux man-pages 6.7 2023-10-31 shm_open(3)
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