xref: /netbsd-src/lib/libc/sys/mlock.2 (revision b482bd6fc9cdc06b889cd0acbda0e6e4072989df)
1.\"	$NetBSD: mlock.2,v 1.22 2015/02/08 14:10:28 wiz Exp $
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30.\"	@(#)mlock.2	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
31.\"
32.Dd February 8, 2015
33.Dt MLOCK 2
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm mlock ,
37.Nm munlock
38.Nd lock (unlock) physical pages in memory
39.Sh LIBRARY
40.Lb libc
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.In sys/mman.h
43.Ft int
44.Fn mlock "void *addr" "size_t len"
45.Ft int
46.Fn munlock "void *addr" "size_t len"
47.Sh DESCRIPTION
48The
49.Nm mlock
50system call
51locks into memory the physical pages associated with the virtual address
52range starting at
53.Fa addr
54for
55.Fa len
56bytes.
57The
58.Nm munlock
59call unlocks pages previously locked by one or more
60.Nm mlock
61calls.
62The entire range of memory must be allocated.
63.Pp
64After an
65.Nm mlock
66call, the indicated pages will cause neither a non-resident page
67nor address-translation fault until they are unlocked.
68They may still cause protection-violation faults or TLB-miss faults on
69architectures with software-managed TLBs.
70The physical pages remain in memory until all locked mappings for the pages
71are removed.
72Multiple processes may have the same physical pages locked via their own
73virtual address mappings.
74A single process may likewise have pages multiply-locked via different virtual
75mappings of the same pages or via nested
76.Nm mlock
77calls on the same address range.
78Unlocking is performed explicitly by
79.Nm munlock
80or implicitly by a call to
81.Nm munmap
82which deallocates the unmapped address range.
83Locked mappings are not inherited by the child process after a
84.Xr fork 2 .
85.Pp
86Since physical memory is a potentially scarce resource, processes are
87limited in how much they can lock down.
88A single process can
89.Nm mlock
90the minimum of
91a system-wide ``wired pages'' limit and
92the per-process
93.Li RLIMIT_MEMLOCK
94resource limit.
95.Pp
96Portable code should ensure that the
97.Fa addr
98and
99.Fa len
100parameters are aligned to a multiple of the page size, even though the
101.Nx
102implementation will round as necessary.
103.Sh RETURN VALUES
104A return value of 0 indicates that the call
105succeeded and all pages in the range have either been locked or unlocked.
106A return value of \-1 indicates an error occurred and the locked
107status of all pages in the range remains unchanged.
108In this case, the global location
109.Va errno
110is set to indicate the error.
111.Sh ERRORS
112.Fn mlock
113will fail if:
114.Bl -tag -width Er
115.It Bq Er EAGAIN
116Locking the indicated range would exceed either the system or per-process
117limit for locked memory.
118.It Bq Er EINVAL
119The address or length given is not page aligned and the implementation does
120not round.
121.It Bq Er ENOMEM
122Some portion of the indicated address range is not allocated.
123There was an error faulting/mapping a page.
124.It Bq Er EPERM
125.Fn mlock
126was called by non-root on an architecture where locked page accounting
127is not implemented.
128.Pp
129.El
130.Fn munlock
131will fail if:
132.Bl -tag -width Er
133.It Bq Er EINVAL
134The address or length given is not page aligned and the implementation does
135not round.
136.It Bq Er ENOMEM
137Some portion of the indicated address range is not allocated.
138Some portion of the indicated address range is not locked.
139.El
140.Sh SEE ALSO
141.Xr fork 2 ,
142.Xr mincore 2 ,
143.Xr mmap 2 ,
144.Xr munmap 2 ,
145.Xr setrlimit 2 ,
146.Xr getpagesize 3
147.Sh STANDARDS
148The
149.Fn mlock
150and
151.Fn munlock
152functions conform to
153.St -p1003.1b-93 .
154.Sh HISTORY
155The
156.Fn mlock
157and
158.Fn munlock
159functions first appeared in
160.Bx 4.4 .
161.Sh BUGS
162The per-process resource limit is a limit on the amount of virtual
163memory locked, while the system-wide limit is for the number of locked
164physical pages.
165Hence a process with two distinct locked mappings of the same physical page
166counts as 2 pages against the per-process limit and as only a single page
167in the system limit.
168