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Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)mmap.2 8.4 (Berkeley) 5/11/95 .\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/sys/mmap.2,v 1.22.2.12 2002/02/27 03:40:13 dd Exp $ .\" $DragonFly: src/lib/libc/sys/mmap.2,v 1.9 2007/05/17 08:19:00 swildner Exp $ .\" .Dd December 11, 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/types.h .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 function 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 parameter 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 parameter 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 contains other mappings those mappings will be replaced. If the specified address cannot otherwise be used, .Fn mmap will fail. If .Dv MAP_FIXED is specified, .Fa addr must be a multiple of the pagesize. .It Dv MAP_TRYFIXED Try to do a fixed mapping but fail if another mapping already exists in the space instead of overwriting the mapping. .Pp When used with MAP_STACK this flag allows one MAP_STACK mapping to be made within another (typically the master user stack), as long as no pages have been faulted in the area requested. .It Dv MAP_HASSEMAPHORE Notify the kernel that the region may contain semaphores and that special handling may be necessary. .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/filesystem 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 function 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 filesystem buffer cache. However, it may be used to associate dirty VM pages with filesystem 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 Map the area as a stack. .Dv MAP_ANON is implied. .Fa Offset should be 0, .Fa fd must be -1, and .Fa prot should 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. .Pp The entire area is reserved from the point of view of other .Fn mmap calls, even if not faulted in yet. .Pp WARNING. We currently allow .Dv MAP_STACK mappings to provide a hint that points within an existing .Dv MAP_STACK mapping's space, and this will succeed as long as no page have been faulted in the area specified, but this behavior is no longer supported unless you also specify the .Dv MAP_TRYFIXED flag. .Pp Note that unless .Dv MAP_FIXED or .Dv MAP_TRYFIXED is used, you cannot count on the returned address matching the hint you have provided. .It Dv MAP_VPAGETABLE Memory accessed via this map is not linearly mapped and will be governed by a virtual page table. The base address of the virtual page table may be set using .Xr mcontrol 2 with .Dv MADV_SETMAP . Virtual page tables work with anonymous memory but there is no way to populate the page table so for all intents and purposes .Dv MAP_VPAGETABLE can only be used when mapping file descriptors. Since the kernel will update the VPTE_M bit in the virtual page table, the mapping must R+W even though actual access to the memory will be properly governed by the virtual page table. .Pp Addressable backing store is limited by the range supported in the virtual page table entries. The kernel may implement a page table abstraction capable of addressing a larger range within the backing store then could otherwise be mapped into memory. .El .Pp The .Xr close 2 function 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 .Fn Mmap will fail if: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EACCES The flag .Dv PROT_READ was specified as part of the .Fa prot parameter 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 parameters and .Fa fd was not open for writing. .It Bq Er EBADF .Fa fd is not a valid open file descriptor. .It Bq Er EINVAL .Dv MAP_FIXED was specified and the .Fa addr parameter 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 .Fa Len was negative. .It Bq Er EINVAL .Dv MAP_ANON was specified and the .Fa fd parameter was not -1. .It Bq Er EINVAL .Dv MAP_ANON has not been specified and .Fa fd did not reference a regular or character special file. .It Bq Er EINVAL .Fa Offset was not page-aligned. (See .Sx BUGS below.) .It Bq Er ENOMEM .Dv MAP_FIXED was specified and the .Fa addr parameter wasn't 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 mlock 2 , .Xr mprotect 2 , .Xr msync 2 , .Xr munlock 2 , .Xr munmap 2 , .Xr getpagesize 3 .Sh BUGS .Fa len is limited to 2GB. Mmapping slightly more than 2GB doesn't work, but it is possible to map a window of size (filesize % 2GB) for file sizes of slightly less than 2G, 4GB, 6GB and 8GB. .Pp The limit is imposed for a variety of reasons. Most of them have to do with .Dx not wanting to use 64 bit offsets in the VM system due to the extreme performance penalty. So .Dx uses 32bit page indexes and this gives .Dx a maximum of 8TB filesizes. It's actually bugs in the filesystem code that causes the limit to be further restricted to 1TB (loss of precision when doing blockno calculations). .Pp Another reason for the 2GB limit is that filesystem metadata can reside at negative offsets.