xref: /illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man3c/mlock.3c (revision df5cd018c34371890eeeb8c930245b9323e8aa25)

.\"
.\" Copyright 2022 Oxide Computer Company
.\" Copyright (c) 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
.\" Copyright 1989 AT&T
.\"
.\" The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
.\" Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
.\" You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
.\"
.\" You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
.\" or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
.\" See the License for the specific language governing permissions
.\" and limitations under the License.
.\"
.\" When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
.\" file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
.\" If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
.\" fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
.\" information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]
.\"
.Dd March 13, 2022
.Dt MLOCK 3C
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mlock ,
.Nm munlock
.Nd lock or unlock pages in memory
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In sys/mman.h
.Ft int
.Fo mlock
.Fa "const void *addr"
.Fa "size_t len"
.Fc
.Ft int
.Fo munlock
.Fa "const void *addr"
.Fa "size_t len"
.Fc
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn mlock
function uses the mappings established for the address range
.Pf [ Fa addr ,
.Fa addr
+
.Fa len Ns
) to identify pages to be locked in memory.
If the page identified by a mapping changes, such as occurs when a copy of a
writable
.Dv MAP_PRIVATE
page is made upon the first store, the lock will be transferred to the newly
copied private page.
.Pp
The
.Fn munlock
function removes locks established with
.Fn mlock .
.Pp
A given page may be locked multiple times by executing an
.Fn mlock
through different mappings.
That is, if two different processes lock the same page, then the page will
remain locked until both processes remove their locks.
However, within a given mapping, page locks do not nest \(em multiple
.Fn mlock
operations on the same address in the same process will all be removed with a
single
.Fn munlock .
Of course, a page locked in one process and mapped in another
.Pq or visible through a different mapping in the locking process
is still locked in memory.
This fact can be used to create applications that do nothing other than lock
important data in memory, thereby avoiding page I/O faults on references from
other processes in the system.
.Pp
The contents of the locked pages will not be transferred to or from disk except
when explicitly requested by one of the locking processes.
This guarantee applies only to the mapped data, and not to any associated data
structures
.Pq file descriptors and on-disk metadata, among others .
.Pp
If the mapping through which an
.Fn mlock
has been performed is removed, an
.Fn munlock
is implicitly performed.
An
.Fn munlock
is also performed implicitly when a page is deleted through file removal or
truncation.
.Pp
Locks established with
.Fn mlock
are not inherited by a child process after
a
.Xr fork 2
and are not nested.
.Pp
Attempts to
.Fn mlock
more memory than a system-specific limit will fail.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the
.Fn mlock
and
.Fn munlock
functions return
.Sy 0 .
Otherwise, no changes are made to any locks in the address space of the process,
the functions return
.Sy -1
and set
.Va errno
to indicate the error.
.Sh ERRORS
The
.Fn mlock
and
.Fn munlock
functions will fail if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Er EINVAL
The
.Fa addr
argument is not a multiple of the page size as returned by
.Xr sysconf 3C .
.It Er ENOMEM
Addresses in the range
.Pf [ Fa addr ,
.Fa addr
+
.Fa len Ns
) are invalid for the address space of a process, or specify one or more pages
which are not mapped.
.It Er ENOSYS
The system does not support this memory locking interface.
.It Er EPERM
The
.Brq PRIV_PROC_LOCK_MEMORY
privilege is not asserted in the effective set of the calling process.
.El
.Pp
The
.Fn mlock
function will fail if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Er EAGAIN
.ad
Some or all of the memory identified by the range
.Pf [ Fa addr ,
.Fa addr
+
.Fa len Ns
) could not be locked because of insufficient system resources or because of a
limit or resource control on locked memory.
.El
.Sh USAGE
Because of the impact on system resources, the use of
.Fn mlock
and
.Fn munlock
is restricted to users with the
.Brq PRIV_PROC_LOCK_MEMORY
privilege.
.Sh INTERFACE STABILITY
.Sy Committed
.Sh MT-LEVEL
.Sy MT-Safe
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr fork 2 ,
.Xr memcntl 2 ,
.Xr mmap 2 ,
.Xr mlockall 3C ,
.Xr plock 3C ,
.Xr sysconf 3C ,
.Xr attributes 7 ,
.Xr standards 7