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MLOCK(2) Linux Programmer's Manual MLOCK(2)
mlock, mlock2, munlock, mlockall, munlockall - lock and unlock memory
#include <sys/mman.h>
int mlock(const void *addr, size_t len);
int mlock2(const void *addr, size_t len, int flags);
int munlock(const void *addr, size_t len);
int mlockall(int flags);
int munlockall(void);
mlock(), mlock2(), and mlockall() lock part or all of the calling
process's virtual address space into RAM, preventing that memory from
being paged to the swap area.
munlock() and munlockall() perform the converse operation, unlocking
part or all of the calling process's virtual address space, so that
pages in the specified virtual address range may once more to be
swapped out if required by the kernel memory manager.
Memory locking and unlocking are performed in units of whole pages.
mlock(), mlock2(), and munlock()
mlock() locks pages in the address range starting at addr and
continuing for len bytes. All pages that contain a part of the
specified address range are guaranteed to be resident in RAM when the
call returns successfully; the pages are guaranteed to stay in RAM
until later unlocked.
mlock2() also locks pages in the specified range starting at addr and
continuing for len bytes. However, the state of the pages contained
in that range after the call returns successfully will depend on the
value in the flags argument.
The flags argument can be either 0 or the following constant:
MLOCK_ONFAULT
Lock pages that are currently resident and mark the entire
range to have pages locked when they are populated by the page
fault.
If flags is 0, mlock2() behaves exactly the same as mlock().
Note: currently, there is not a glibc wrapper for mlock2(), so it
will need to be invoked using syscall(2).
munlock() unlocks pages in the address range starting at addr and
continuing for len bytes. After this call, all pages that contain a
part of the specified memory range can be moved to external swap
space again by the kernel.
mlockall() and munlockall()
mlockall() locks all pages mapped into the address space of the
calling process. This includes the pages of the code, data and stack
segment, as well as shared libraries, user space kernel data, shared
memory, and memory-mapped files. All mapped pages are guaranteed to
be resident in RAM when the call returns successfully; the pages are
guaranteed to stay in RAM until later unlocked.
The flags argument is constructed as the bitwise OR of one or more of
the following constants:
MCL_CURRENT Lock all pages which are currently mapped into the
address space of the process.
MCL_FUTURE Lock all pages which will become mapped into the address
space of the process in the future. These could be, for
instance, new pages required by a growing heap and stack
as well as new memory-mapped files or shared memory
regions.
MCL_ONFAULT (since Linux 4.4)
Used together with MCL_CURRENT, MCL_FUTURE, or both.
Mark all current (with MCL_CURRENT) or future (with
MCL_FUTURE) mappings to lock pages when they are faulted
in. When used with MCL_CURRENT, all present pages are
locked, but mlockall() will not fault in non-present
pages. When used with MCL_FUTURE, all future mappings
will be marked to lock pages when they are faulted in,
but they will not be populated by the lock when the
mapping is created. MCL_ONFAULT must be used with either
MCL_CURRENT or MCL_FUTURE or both.
If MCL_FUTURE has been specified, then a later system call (e.g.,
mmap(2), sbrk(2), malloc(3)), may fail if it would cause the number
of locked bytes to exceed the permitted maximum (see below). In the
same circumstances, stack growth may likewise fail: the kernel will
deny stack expansion and deliver a SIGSEGV signal to the process.
munlockall() unlocks all pages mapped into the address space of the
calling process.
On success, these system calls return 0. On error, -1 is returned,
errno is set appropriately, and no changes are made to any locks in
the address space of the process.
ENOMEM (Linux 2.6.9 and later) the caller had a nonzero
RLIMIT_MEMLOCK soft resource limit, but tried to lock more
memory than the limit permitted. This limit is not enforced
if the process is privileged (CAP_IPC_LOCK).
ENOMEM (Linux 2.4 and earlier) the calling process tried to lock more
than half of RAM.
EPERM The caller is not privileged, but needs privilege
(CAP_IPC_LOCK) to perform the requested operation.
For mlock(), mlock2(), and munlock():
EAGAIN Some or all of the specified address range could not be
locked.
EINVAL The result of the addition addr+len was less than addr (e.g.,
the addition may have resulted in an overflow).
EINVAL (Not on Linux) addr was not a multiple of the page size.
ENOMEM Some of the specified address range does not correspond to
mapped pages in the address space of the process.
ENOMEM Locking or unlocking a region would result in the total number
of mappings with distinct attributes (e.g., locked versus
unlocked) exceeding the allowed maximum. (For example,
unlocking a range in the middle of a currently locked mapping
would result in three mappings: two locked mappings at each
end and an unlocked mapping in the middle.)
For mlock2():
EINVAL Unknown flags were specified.
For mlockall():
EINVAL Unknown flags were specified or MCL_ONFAULT was specified
without either MCL_FUTURE or MCL_CURRENT.
For munlockall():
EPERM (Linux 2.6.8 and earlier) The caller was not privileged
(CAP_IPC_LOCK).
mlock2() is available since Linux 4.4.
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4.
mlock2 () is Linux specific.
On POSIX systems on which mlock() and munlock() are available,
_POSIX_MEMLOCK_RANGE is defined in <unistd.h> and the number of bytes
in a page can be determined from the constant PAGESIZE (if defined)
in <limits.h> or by calling sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE).
On POSIX systems on which mlockall() and munlockall() are available,
_POSIX_MEMLOCK is defined in <unistd.h> to a value greater than 0.
(See also sysconf(3).)
Memory locking has two main applications: real-time algorithms and
high-security data processing. Real-time applications require
deterministic timing, and, like scheduling, paging is one major cause
of unexpected program execution delays. Real-time applications will
usually also switch to a real-time scheduler with
sched_setscheduler(2). Cryptographic security software often handles
critical bytes like passwords or secret keys as data structures. As
a result of paging, these secrets could be transferred onto a
persistent swap store medium, where they might be accessible to the
enemy long after the security software has erased the secrets in RAM
and terminated. (But be aware that the suspend mode on laptops and
some desktop computers will save a copy of the system's RAM to disk,
regardless of memory locks.)
Real-time processes that are using mlockall() to prevent delays on
page faults should reserve enough locked stack pages before entering
the time-critical section, so that no page fault can be caused by
function calls. This can be achieved by calling a function that
allocates a sufficiently large automatic variable (an array) and
writes to the memory occupied by this array in order to touch these
stack pages. This way, enough pages will be mapped for the stack and
can be locked into RAM. The dummy writes ensure that not even copy-
on-write page faults can occur in the critical section.
Memory locks are not inherited by a child created via fork(2) and are
automatically removed (unlocked) during an execve(2) or when the
process terminates. The mlockall() MCL_FUTURE and MCL_FUTURE |
MCL_ONFAULT settings are not inherited by a child created via fork(2)
and are cleared during an execve(2).
Note that fork(2) will prepare the address space for a copy-on-write
operation. The consequence is that any write access that follows
will cause a page fault that in turn may cause high latencies for a
real-time process. Therefore, it is crucial not to invoke fork(2)
after an mlockall() or mlock() operation—not even from a thread which
runs at a low priority within a process which also has a thread
running at elevated priority.
The memory lock on an address range is automatically removed if the
address range is unmapped via munmap(2).
Memory locks do not stack, that is, pages which have been locked
several times by calls to mlock(), mlock2(), or mlockall() will be
unlocked by a single call to munlock() for the corresponding range or
by munlockall(). Pages which are mapped to several locations or by
several processes stay locked into RAM as long as they are locked at
least at one location or by at least one process.
If a call to mlockall() which uses the MCL_FUTURE flag is followed by
another call that does not specify this flag, the changes made by the
MCL_FUTURE call will be lost.
The mlock2() MLOCK_ONFAULT flag and the mlockall() MCL_ONFAULT flag
allow efficient memory locking for applications that deal with large
mappings where only a (small) portion of pages in the mapping are
touched. In such cases, locking all of the pages in a mapping would
incur a significant penalty for memory locking.
Linux notes
Under Linux, mlock(), mlock2(), and munlock() automatically round
addr down to the nearest page boundary. However, the POSIX.1
specification of mlock() and munlock() allows an implementation to
require that addr is page aligned, so portable applications should
ensure this.
The VmLck field of the Linux-specific /proc/[pid]/status file shows
how many kilobytes of memory the process with ID PID has locked using
mlock(), mlock2(), mlockall(), and mmap(2) MAP_LOCKED.
Limits and permissions
In Linux 2.6.8 and earlier, a process must be privileged
(CAP_IPC_LOCK) in order to lock memory and the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK soft
resource limit defines a limit on how much memory the process may
lock.
Since Linux 2.6.9, no limits are placed on the amount of memory that
a privileged process can lock and the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK soft resource
limit instead defines a limit on how much memory an unprivileged
process may lock.
In Linux 4.8 and earlier, a bug in the kernel's accounting of locked
memory for unprivileged processes (i.e., without CAP_IPC_LOCK) meant
that if the region specified by addr and len overlapped an existing
lock, then the already locked bytes in the overlapping region were
counted twice when checking against the limit. Such double
accounting could incorrectly calculate a "total locked memory" value
for the process that exceeded the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit, with the
result that mlock() and mlock2() would fail on requests that should
have succeeded. This bug was fixed in Linux 4.9
In the 2.4 series Linux kernels up to and including 2.4.17, a bug
caused the mlockall() MCL_FUTURE flag to be inherited across a
fork(2). This was rectified in kernel 2.4.18.
Since kernel 2.6.9, if a privileged process calls
mlockall(MCL_FUTURE) and later drops privileges (loses the
CAP_IPC_LOCK capability by, for example, setting its effective UID to
a nonzero value), then subsequent memory allocations (e.g., mmap(2),
brk(2)) will fail if the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK resource limit is
encountered.
mincore(2), mmap(2), setrlimit(2), shmctl(2), sysconf(3), proc(5),
capabilities(7)
This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2017-03-13 MLOCK(2)
Pages that refer to this page: execve(2), fork(2), getrlimit(2), mincore(2), mmap(2), mremap(2), perf_event_open(2), shmctl(2), syscalls(2), capabilities(7), sched(7)