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PROLOG

       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of
       this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux  manual  page  for  details  of
       Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       shm_open — open a shared memory object (REALTIME)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/mman.h>

       int shm_open(const char *name, int oflag, mode_t mode);

DESCRIPTION

       The  shm_open() function shall establish a connection between a shared memory object and a
       file descriptor. It shall create an open file description that refers to the shared memory
       object  and  a  file  descriptor  that  refers  to  that  open  file description. The file
       descriptor is used by other functions to refer to that  shared  memory  object.  The  name
       argument  points  to a string naming a shared memory object. It is unspecified whether the
       name appears in the file system and is visible to other functions that take  pathnames  as
       arguments.  The  name  argument  conforms to the construction rules for a pathname, except
       that the interpretation of <slash> characters other than the leading <slash> character  in
       name  is  implementation-defined,  and  that  the  length limits for the name argument are
       implementation-defined and need not be the same as  the  pathname  limits  {PATH_MAX}  and
       {NAME_MAX}.   If name begins with the <slash> character, then processes calling shm_open()
       with the same value of name refer to the same shared memory object, as long as  that  name
       has  not  been  removed.  If name does not begin with the <slash> character, the effect is
       implementation-defined.

       If successful, shm_open() shall return a file descriptor for the shared memory object that
       is the lowest numbered file descriptor not currently open for that process.  The open file
       description is new, and therefore the file descriptor does not share  it  with  any  other
       processes.  It  is  unspecified  whether  the  file  offset  is  set.  The FD_CLOEXEC file
       descriptor flag associated with the new file descriptor is set.

       The file status flags and file access modes of the open file description are according  to
       the value of oflag.  The oflag argument is the bitwise-inclusive OR of the following flags
       defined in the <fcntl.h> header. Applications specify exactly one of the first two  values
       (access modes) below in the value of oflag:

       O_RDONLY    Open for read access only.

       O_RDWR      Open for read or write access.

       Any combination of the remaining flags may be specified in the value of oflag:

       O_CREAT     If  the  shared memory object exists, this flag has no effect, except as noted
                   under O_EXCL below. Otherwise, the shared memory object is created.  The  user
                   ID  of  the  shared memory object shall be set to the effective user ID of the
                   process. The group ID of  the  shared  memory  object  shall  be  set  to  the
                   effective group ID of the process; however, if the name argument is visible in
                   the file system, the group ID may be set to the group  ID  of  the  containing
                   directory. The permission bits of the shared memory object shall be set to the
                   value of the mode argument except those set in the file mode creation mask  of
                   the  process.  When  bits in mode other than the file permission bits are set,
                   the effect is unspecified. The mode  argument  does  not  affect  whether  the
                   shared  memory  object  is  opened  for reading, for writing, or for both. The
                   shared memory object has a size of zero.

       O_EXCL      If O_EXCL and O_CREAT are set, shm_open() fails if the  shared  memory  object
                   exists.  The  check  for  the  existence  of  the shared memory object and the
                   creation of the object if it does not exist is atomic with  respect  to  other
                   processes  executing  shm_open()  naming  the  same  shared memory object with
                   O_EXCL and O_CREAT set. If O_EXCL is set and O_CREAT is not set, the result is
                   undefined.

       O_TRUNC     If  the shared memory object exists, and it is successfully opened O_RDWR, the
                   object shall be truncated to zero length and  the  mode  and  owner  shall  be
                   unchanged  by this function call. The result of using O_TRUNC with O_RDONLY is
                   undefined.

       When a shared memory object is created, the state of the shared memory  object,  including
       all data associated with the shared memory object, persists until the shared memory object
       is unlinked and all other references are gone. It is  unspecified  whether  the  name  and
       shared memory object state remain valid after a system reboot.

RETURN VALUE

       Upon  successful  completion,  the shm_open() function shall return a non-negative integer
       representing the lowest numbered unused file descriptor. Otherwise, it shall return −1 and
       set errno to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       The shm_open() function shall fail if:

       EACCES The  shared memory object exists and the permissions specified by oflag are denied,
              or the shared memory object does not exist and  permission  to  create  the  shared
              memory object is denied, or O_TRUNC is specified and write permission is denied.

       EEXIST O_CREAT and O_EXCL are set and the named shared memory object already exists.

       EINTR  The shm_open() operation was interrupted by a signal.

       EINVAL The shm_open() operation is not supported for the given name.

       EMFILE All file descriptors available to the process are currently open.

       ENFILE Too many shared memory objects are currently open in the system.

       ENOENT O_CREAT is not set and the named shared memory object does not exist.

       ENOSPC There is insufficient space for the creation of the new shared memory object.

       The shm_open() function may fail if:

       ENAMETOOLONG
              The  length  of  the name argument exceeds {_POSIX_PATH_MAX} on systems that do not
              support the XSI option or exceeds  {_XOPEN_PATH_MAX}  on  XSI  systems,  or  has  a
              pathname  component  that  is  longer than {_POSIX_NAME_MAX} on systems that do not
              support the XSI option or longer than {_XOPEN_NAME_MAX} on XSI systems.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

   Creating and Mapping a Shared Memory Object
       The following code segment demonstrates the use of shm_open() to create  a  shared  memory
       object  which is then sized using ftruncate() before being mapped into the process address
       space using mmap():

           #include <unistd.h>
           #include <sys/mman.h>
           ...

           #define MAX_LEN 10000
           struct region {        /* Defines "structure" of shared memory */
               int len;
               char buf[MAX_LEN];
           };
           struct region *rptr;
           int fd;

           /* Create shared memory object and set its size */

           fd = shm_open("/myregion", O_CREAT | O_RDWR, S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);
           if (fd == −1)
               /* Handle error */;

           if (ftruncate(fd, sizeof(struct region)) == −1)
               /* Handle error */;

           /* Map shared memory object */

           rptr = mmap(NULL, sizeof(struct region),
                  PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
           if (rptr == MAP_FAILED)
               /* Handle error */;

           /* Now we can refer to mapped region using fields of rptr;
              for example, rptr->len */
           ...

APPLICATION USAGE

       None.

RATIONALE

       When the Memory Mapped Files option is supported, the normal open() call is used to obtain
       a  descriptor to a file to be mapped according to existing practice with mmap().  When the
       Shared Memory Objects  option  is  supported,  the  shm_open()  function  shall  obtain  a
       descriptor to the shared memory object to be mapped.

       There  is ample precedent for having a file descriptor represent several types of objects.
       In the POSIX.1‐1990 standard, a file descriptor can represent a file, a pipe,  a  FIFO,  a
       tty,  or  a  directory.  Many  implementations  simply have an operations vector, which is
       indexed by the file descriptor type and does very different operations. Note that in  some
       cases  the file descriptor passed to generic operations on file descriptors is returned by
       open() or creat() and in some cases returned by alternate functions, such as pipe().   The
       latter technique is used by shm_open().

       Note  that such shared memory objects can actually be implemented as mapped files. In both
       cases, the size can be set after the open  using  ftruncate().   The  shm_open()  function
       itself does not create a shared object of a specified size because this would duplicate an
       extant function that set the size of an object referenced by a file descriptor.

       On implementations where memory objects are implemented using the  existing  file  system,
       the  shm_open()  function  may  be  implemented using a macro that invokes open(), and the
       shm_unlink() function may be implemented using a macro that invokes unlink().

       For implementations without a permanent file system, the definition of  the  name  of  the
       memory  objects  is  allowed not to survive a system reboot. Note that this allows systems
       with a permanent file system to implement memory objects as data  structures  internal  to
       the implementation as well.

       On  implementations  that  choose  to  implement  memory  objects using memory directly, a
       shm_open() followed by an ftruncate() and close() can be  used  to  preallocate  a  shared
       memory  area  and to set the size of that preallocation. This may be necessary for systems
       without virtual memory hardware support in order to ensure that the memory is contiguous.

       The set of valid open flags to shm_open() was restricted to O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_CREAT, and
       O_TRUNC  because  these  could  be easily implemented on most memory mapping systems. This
       volume of POSIX.1‐2008 is silent on the results if the implementation  cannot  supply  the
       requested file access because of implementation-defined reasons, including hardware ones.

       The  error  conditions  [EACCES] and [ENOTSUP] are provided to inform the application that
       the implementation cannot complete a request.

       [EACCES] indicates for implementation-defined reasons, probably hardware-related, that the
       implementation  cannot  comply  with  a  requested  mode because it conflicts with another
       requested mode. An example might be that an application desires to open  a  memory  object
       two  times,  mapping  different  areas  with different access modes. If the implementation
       cannot map a single area into a process space in two places, which would  be  required  if
       different access modes were required for the two areas, then the implementation may inform
       the application at the time of the second open.

       [ENOTSUP] indicates for implementation-defined reasons,  probably  hardware-related,  that
       the  implementation  cannot  comply with a requested mode at all. An example would be that
       the hardware of the implementation cannot support write-only shared memory areas.

       On all implementations, it may be desirable to restrict the location of the memory objects
       to  specific  file  systems for performance (such as a RAM disk) or implementation-defined
       reasons (shared memory supported directly only on certain file  systems).  The  shm_open()
       function  may  be  used  to  enforce  these  restrictions.  There  are a number of methods
       available to the application to determine an appropriate name of the file or the  location
       of  an appropriate directory. One way is from the environment via getenv().  Another would
       be from a configuration file.

       This volume of POSIX.1‐2008 specifies that memory objects have initial  contents  of  zero
       when  created. This is consistent with current behavior for both files and newly allocated
       memory. For those implementations that use physical memory, it would be possible that such
       implementations   could   simply   use  available  memory  and  give  it  to  the  process
       uninitialized.   This,  however,  is  not  consistent  with  standard  behavior  for   the
       uninitialized  data area, the stack, and of course, files. Finally, it is highly desirable
       to set the allocated memory to  zero  for  security  reasons.  Thus,  initializing  memory
       objects to zero is required.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       A future version might require the shm_open() and shm_unlink() functions to have semantics
       similar to normal file system operations.

SEE ALSO

       close(), dup(), exec, fcntl(), mmap(), shmat(), shmctl(), shmdt(), shm_unlink(), umask()

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <fcntl.h>, <sys_mman.h>

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and  reproduced  in  electronic  form  from  IEEE  Std
       1003.1,  2013  Edition,  Standard  for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
       Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013  by  the
       Institute  of  Electrical  and  Electronics  Engineers,  Inc and The Open Group.  (This is
       POSIX.1-2008 with the  2013  Technical  Corrigendum  1  applied.)  In  the  event  of  any
       discrepancy  between  this  version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the
       original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The  original  Standard
       can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any  typographical  or  formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have
       been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page  format.  To  report
       such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .