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NAME
shmget - allocates a System V shared memory segment
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/ipc.h>
#include <sys/shm.h>
int shmget(key_t key, size_t size, int shmflg);
DESCRIPTION
shmget() returns the identifier of the System V shared memory segment associated with the value of the
argument key. A new shared memory segment, with size equal to the value of size rounded up to a multiple
of PAGE_SIZE, is created if key has the value IPC_PRIVATE or key isn't IPC_PRIVATE, no shared memory
segment corresponding to key exists, and IPC_CREAT is specified in shmflg.
If shmflg specifies both IPC_CREAT and IPC_EXCL and a shared memory segment already exists for key, then
shmget() fails with errno set to EEXIST. (This is analogous to the effect of the combination O_CREAT |
O_EXCL for open(2).)
The value shmflg is composed of:
IPC_CREAT Create a new segment. If this flag is not used, then shmget() will find the segment
associated with key and check to see if the user has permission to access the segment.
IPC_EXCL This flag is used with IPC_CREAT to ensure that this call creates the segment. If the
segment already exists, the call fails.
SHM_HUGETLB (since Linux 2.6)
Allocate the segment using "huge pages." See the Linux kernel source file
Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt for further information.
SHM_HUGE_2MB, SHM_HUGE_1GB (since Linux 3.8)
Used in conjunction with SHM_HUGETLB to select alternative hugetlb page sizes (respectively,
2 MB and 1 GB) on systems that support multiple hugetlb page sizes.
More generally, the desired huge page size can be configured by encoding the base-2 logarithm
of the desired page size in the six bits at the offset SHM_HUGE_SHIFT. Thus, the above two
constants are defined as:
#define SHM_HUGE_2MB (21 << SHM_HUGE_SHIFT)
#define SHM_HUGE_1GB (30 << SHM_HUGE_SHIFT)
For some additional details, see the discussion of the similarly named constants in mmap(2).
SHM_NORESERVE (since Linux 2.6.15)
This flag serves the same purpose as the mmap(2) MAP_NORESERVE flag. Do not reserve swap
space for this segment. When swap space is reserved, one has the guarantee that it is
possible to modify the segment. When swap space is not reserved one might get SIGSEGV upon a
write if no physical memory is available. See also the discussion of the file
/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory in proc(5).
In addition to the above flags, the least significant 9 bits of shmflg specify the permissions granted to
the owner, group, and others. These bits have the same format, and the same meaning, as the mode
argument of open(2). Presently, execute permissions are not used by the system.
When a new shared memory segment is created, its contents are initialized to zero values, and its
associated data structure, shmid_ds (see shmctl(2)), is initialized as follows:
shm_perm.cuid and shm_perm.uid are set to the effective user ID of the calling process.
shm_perm.cgid and shm_perm.gid are set to the effective group ID of the calling process.
The least significant 9 bits of shm_perm.mode are set to the least significant 9 bit of shmflg.
shm_segsz is set to the value of size.
shm_lpid, shm_nattch, shm_atime, and shm_dtime are set to 0.
shm_ctime is set to the current time.
If the shared memory segment already exists, the permissions are verified, and a check is made to see if
it is marked for destruction.
RETURN VALUE
On success, a valid shared memory identifier is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to
indicate the error.
ERRORS
On failure, errno is set to one of the following:
EACCES The user does not have permission to access the shared memory segment, and does not have the
CAP_IPC_OWNER capability in the user namespace that governs its IPC namespace.
EEXIST IPC_CREAT and IPC_EXCL were specified in shmflg, but a shared memory segment already exists for
key.
EINVAL A new segment was to be created and size is less than SHMMIN or greater than SHMMAX.
EINVAL A segment for the given key exists, but size is greater than the size of that segment.
ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
ENOENT No segment exists for the given key, and IPC_CREAT was not specified.
ENOMEM No memory could be allocated for segment overhead.
ENOSPC All possible shared memory IDs have been taken (SHMMNI), or allocating a segment of the requested
size would cause the system to exceed the system-wide limit on shared memory (SHMALL).
EPERM The SHM_HUGETLB flag was specified, but the caller was not privileged (did not have the
CAP_IPC_LOCK capability).
CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4.
SHM_HUGETLB and SHM_NORESERVE are Linux extensions.
NOTES
The inclusion of <sys/types.h> and <sys/ipc.h> isn't required on Linux or by any version of POSIX.
However, some old implementations required the inclusion of these header files, and the SVID also
documented their inclusion. Applications intended to be portable to such old systems may need to include
these header files.
IPC_PRIVATE isn't a flag field but a key_t type. If this special value is used for key, the system call
ignores all but the least significant 9 bits of shmflg and creates a new shared memory segment.
Shared memory limits
The following limits on shared memory segment resources affect the shmget() call:
SHMALL System-wide limit on the total amount of shared memory, measured in units of the system page size.
On Linux, this limit can be read and modified via /proc/sys/kernel/shmall. Since Linux 3.16, the
default value for this limit is:
ULONG_MAX - 2^24
The effect of this value (which is suitable for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems) is to impose no
limitation on allocations. This value, rather than ULONG_MAX, was chosen as the default to
prevent some cases where historical applications simply raised the existing limit without first
checking its current value. Such applications would cause the value to overflow if the limit was
set at ULONG_MAX.
From Linux 2.4 up to Linux 3.15, the default value for this limit was:
SHMMAX / PAGE_SIZE * (SHMMNI / 16)
If SHMMAX and SHMMNI were not modified, then multiplying the result of this formula by the page
size (to get a value in bytes) yielded a value of 8 GB as the limit on the total memory used by
all shared memory segments.
SHMMAX Maximum size in bytes for a shared memory segment.
On Linux, this limit can be read and modified via /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax. Since Linux 3.16, the
default value for this limit is:
ULONG_MAX - 2^24
The effect of this value (which is suitable for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems) is to impose no
limitation on allocations. See the description of SHMALL for a discussion of why this default
value (rather than ULONG_MAX) is used.
From Linux 2.2 up to Linux 3.15, the default value of this limit was 0x2000000 (32 MB).
Because it is not possible to map just part of a shared memory segment, the amount of virtual
memory places another limit on the maximum size of a usable segment: for example, on i386 the
largest segments that can be mapped have a size of around 2.8 GB, and on x86-64 the limit is
around 127 TB.
SHMMIN Minimum size in bytes for a shared memory segment: implementation dependent (currently 1 byte,
though PAGE_SIZE is the effective minimum size).
SHMMNI System-wide limit on the number of shared memory segments. In Linux 2.2, the default value for
this limit was 128; since Linux 2.4, the default value is 4096.
On Linux, this limit can be read and modified via /proc/sys/kernel/shmmni.
The implementation has no specific limits for the per-process maximum number of shared memory segments
(SHMSEG).
Linux notes
Until version 2.3.30, Linux would return EIDRM for a shmget() on a shared memory segment scheduled for
deletion.
BUGS
The name choice IPC_PRIVATE was perhaps unfortunate, IPC_NEW would more clearly show its function.
SEE ALSO
memfd_create(2), shmat(2), shmctl(2), shmdt(2), ftok(3), capabilities(7), shm_overview(7), svipc(7)
COLOPHON
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