MLOCK

NAME

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/mman.h>

int mlock(const void *addr, size_t len);
int mlock2(const void *addr, size_t len, unsigned int flags);
int munlock(const void *addr, size_t len);

int mlockall(int flags);
int munlockall(void);

DESCRIPTION

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()

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 so that the remaining nonresident pages are locked when they are populated by a page fault.

If flags is 0, mlock2() behaves exactly the same as mlock().

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()

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.  

RETURN VALUE

ERRORS

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).

VERSIONS

CONFORMING TO

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).)  

NOTES

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

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

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.  

BUGS

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.  

SEE ALSO

COLOPHON

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

mlock(), mlock2(), and munlock()

mlockall() and munlockall()

RETURN VALUE

ERRORS

VERSIONS

CONFORMING TO

NOTES

Linux notes

Limits and permissions

BUGS

SEE ALSO

COLOPHON