mmap, munmap - map or unmap files or devices into memory
#include <sys/mman.h>
void *mmap(void *addr, size_t length, int prot, int flags,
int fd, off_t offset);
int munmap(void *addr, size_t length);
See NOTES for information on feature test macro requirements.
mmap() creates a new mapping in the virtual address space of the calling
process. The starting address for the new mapping is specified in
addr.
The
length argument specifies the length of the mapping (which must be
greater than 0).
If
addr is NULL, then the kernel chooses the (page-aligned) address at
which to create the mapping; this is the most portable method of creating a
new mapping. If
addr is not NULL, then the kernel takes it as a hint
about where to place the mapping; on Linux, the kernel will pick a nearby page
boundary (but always above or equal to the value specified by
/proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr) and attempt to create the mapping there. If
another mapping already exists there, the kernel picks a new address that may
or may not depend on the hint. The address of the new mapping is returned as
the result of the call.
The contents of a file mapping (as opposed to an anonymous mapping; see
MAP_ANONYMOUS below), are initialized using
length bytes
starting at offset
offset in the file (or other object) referred to by
the file descriptor
fd.
offset must be a multiple of the page
size as returned by
sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE).
After the
mmap() call has returned, the file descriptor,
fd, can
be closed immediately without invalidating the mapping.
The
prot argument describes the desired memory protection of the mapping
(and must not conflict with the open mode of the file). It is either
PROT_NONE or the bitwise OR of one or more of the following flags:
- PROT_EXEC
- Pages may be executed.
- PROT_READ
- Pages may be read.
- PROT_WRITE
- Pages may be written.
- PROT_NONE
- Pages may not be accessed.
The
flags argument determines whether updates to the mapping are visible
to other processes mapping the same region, and whether updates are carried
through to the underlying file. This behavior is determined by including
exactly one of the following values in
flags:
- MAP_SHARED
- Share this mapping. Updates to the mapping are visible to other processes
mapping the same region, and (in the case of file-backed mappings) are
carried through to the underlying file. (To precisely control when updates
are carried through to the underlying file requires the use of
msync(2).)
- MAP_SHARED_VALIDATE (since Linux 4.15)
- This flag provides the same behavior as MAP_SHARED except that
MAP_SHARED mappings ignore unknown flags in flags. By
contrast, when creating a mapping using MAP_SHARED_VALIDATE, the
kernel verifies all passed flags are known and fails the mapping with the
error EOPNOTSUPP for unknown flags. This mapping type is also
required to be able to use some mapping flags (e.g.,
MAP_SYNC).
- MAP_PRIVATE
- Create a private copy-on-write mapping. Updates to the mapping are not
visible to other processes mapping the same file, and are not carried
through to the underlying file. It is unspecified whether changes made to
the file after the mmap() call are visible in the mapped
region.
Both
MAP_SHARED and
MAP_PRIVATE are described in POSIX.1-2001 and
POSIX.1-2008.
MAP_SHARED_VALIDATE is a Linux extension.
In addition, zero or more of the following values can be ORed in
flags:
- MAP_32BIT (since Linux 2.4.20, 2.6)
- Put the mapping into the first 2 Gigabytes of the process address space.
This flag is supported only on x86-64, for 64-bit programs. It was added
to allow thread stacks to be allocated somewhere in the first 2 GB
of memory, so as to improve context-switch performance on some early
64-bit processors. Modern x86-64 processors no longer have this
performance problem, so use of this flag is not required on those systems.
The MAP_32BIT flag is ignored when MAP_FIXED is set.
- MAP_ANON
- Synonym for MAP_ANONYMOUS. Deprecated.
- MAP_ANONYMOUS
- The mapping is not backed by any file; its contents are initialized to
zero. The fd argument is ignored; however, some implementations
require fd to be -1 if MAP_ANONYMOUS (or MAP_ANON) is
specified, and portable applications should ensure this. The offset
argument should be zero. The use of MAP_ANONYMOUS in conjunction
with MAP_SHARED is supported on Linux only since kernel 2.4.
- MAP_DENYWRITE
- This flag is ignored. (Long ago—Linux 2.0 and earlier—it
signaled that attempts to write to the underlying file should fail with
ETXTBUSY. But this was a source of denial-of-service attacks.)
- MAP_EXECUTABLE
- This flag is ignored.
- MAP_FILE
- Compatibility flag. Ignored.
- MAP_FIXED
- Don't interpret addr as a hint: place the mapping at exactly that
address. addr must be suitably aligned: for most architectures a
multiple of the page size is sufficient; however, some architectures may
impose additional restrictions. If the memory region specified by
addr and len overlaps pages of any existing mapping(s), then
the overlapped part of the existing mapping(s) will be discarded. If the
specified address cannot be used, mmap() will fail.
- Software that aspires to be portable should use the MAP_FIXED flag
with care, keeping in mind that the exact layout of a process's memory
mappings is allowed to change significantly between kernel versions, C
library versions, and operating system releases. Carefully read the
discussion of this flag in NOTES!
- MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE (since Linux 4.17)
- This flag provides behavior that is similar to MAP_FIXED with
respect to the addr enforcement, but differs in that
MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE never clobbers a preexisting mapped range. If
the requested range would collide with an existing mapping, then this call
fails with the error EEXIST. This flag can therefore be used as a
way to atomically (with respect to other threads) attempt to map an
address range: one thread will succeed; all others will report
failure.
- Note that older kernels which do not recognize the
MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE flag will typically (upon detecting a collision
with a preexisting mapping) fall back to a
"non-MAP_FIXED" type of behavior: they will return an
address that is different from the requested address. Therefore,
backward-compatible software should check the returned address against the
requested address.
- MAP_GROWSDOWN
- This flag is used for stacks. It indicates to the kernel virtual memory
system that the mapping should extend downward in memory. The return
address is one page lower than the memory area that is actually created in
the process's virtual address space. Touching an address in the
"guard" page below the mapping will cause the mapping to grow by
a page. This growth can be repeated until the mapping grows to within a
page of the high end of the next lower mapping, at which point touching
the "guard" page will result in a SIGSEGV signal.
- MAP_HUGETLB (since Linux 2.6.32)
- Allocate the mapping using "huge pages." See the Linux kernel
source file Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst for
further information, as well as NOTES, below.
- MAP_HUGE_2MB, MAP_HUGE_1GB (since Linux 3.8)
- Used in conjunction with MAP_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 MAP_HUGE_SHIFT. (A value of zero in this bit field provides
the default huge page size; the default huge page size can be discovered
via the Hugepagesize field exposed by /proc/meminfo.) Thus,
the above two constants are defined as:
-
#define MAP_HUGE_2MB (21 << MAP_HUGE_SHIFT)
#define MAP_HUGE_1GB (30 << MAP_HUGE_SHIFT)
- The range of huge page sizes that are supported by the system can be
discovered by listing the subdirectories in
/sys/kernel/mm/hugepages.
- MAP_LOCKED (since Linux 2.5.37)
- Mark the mapped region to be locked in the same way as mlock(2).
This implementation will try to populate (prefault) the whole range but
the mmap() call doesn't fail with ENOMEM if this fails.
Therefore major faults might happen later on. So the semantic is not as
strong as mlock(2). One should use mmap() plus
mlock(2) when major faults are not acceptable after the
initialization of the mapping. The MAP_LOCKED flag is ignored in
older kernels.
- MAP_NONBLOCK (since Linux 2.5.46)
- This flag is meaningful only in conjunction with MAP_POPULATE.
Don't perform read-ahead: create page tables entries only for pages that
are already present in RAM. Since Linux 2.6.23, this flag causes
MAP_POPULATE to do nothing. One day, the combination of
MAP_POPULATE and MAP_NONBLOCK may be reimplemented.
- MAP_NORESERVE
- Do not reserve swap space for this mapping. When swap space is reserved,
one has the guarantee that it is possible to modify the mapping. 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 kernels before
2.6, this flag had effect only for private writable mappings.
- MAP_POPULATE (since Linux 2.5.46)
- Populate (prefault) page tables for a mapping. For a file mapping, this
causes read-ahead on the file. This will help to reduce blocking on page
faults later. MAP_POPULATE is supported for private mappings only
since Linux 2.6.23.
- MAP_STACK (since Linux 2.6.27)
- Allocate the mapping at an address suitable for a process or thread
stack.
- This flag is currently a no-op on Linux. However, by employing this flag,
applications can ensure that they transparently obtain support if the flag
is implemented in the future. Thus, it is used in the glibc threading
implementation to allow for the fact that some architectures may (later)
require special treatment for stack allocations. A further reason to
employ this flag is portability: MAP_STACK exists (and has an
effect) on some other systems (e.g., some of the BSDs).
- MAP_SYNC (since Linux 4.15)
- This flag is available only with the MAP_SHARED_VALIDATE mapping
type; mappings of type MAP_SHARED will silently ignore this flag.
This flag is supported only for files supporting DAX (direct mapping of
persistent memory). For other files, creating a mapping with this flag
results in an EOPNOTSUPP error.
- Shared file mappings with this flag provide the guarantee that while some
memory is writably mapped in the address space of the process, it will be
visible in the same file at the same offset even after the system crashes
or is rebooted. In conjunction with the use of appropriate CPU
instructions, this provides users of such mappings with a more efficient
way of making data modifications persistent.
- MAP_UNINITIALIZED (since Linux 2.6.33)
- Don't clear anonymous pages. This flag is intended to improve performance
on embedded devices. This flag is honored only if the kernel was
configured with the CONFIG_MMAP_ALLOW_UNINITIALIZED option. Because
of the security implications, that option is normally enabled only on
embedded devices (i.e., devices where one has complete control of the
contents of user memory).
Of the above flags, only
MAP_FIXED is specified in POSIX.1-2001 and
POSIX.1-2008. However, most systems also support
MAP_ANONYMOUS (or its
synonym
MAP_ANON).
The
munmap() system call deletes the mappings for the specified address
range, and causes further references to addresses within the range to generate
invalid memory references. The region is also automatically unmapped when the
process is terminated. On the other hand, closing the file descriptor does not
unmap the region.
The address
addr must be a multiple of the page size (but
length
need not be). All pages containing a part of the indicated range are unmapped,
and subsequent references to these pages will generate
SIGSEGV. It is
not an error if the indicated range does not contain any mapped pages.
On success,
mmap() returns a pointer to the mapped area. On error, the
value
MAP_FAILED (that is,
(void *) -1) is
returned, and
errno is set to indicate the cause of the error.
On success,
munmap() returns 0. On failure, it returns -1, and
errno is set to indicate the cause of the error (probably to
EINVAL).
- EACCES
- A file descriptor refers to a non-regular file. Or a file mapping was
requested, but fd is not open for reading. Or MAP_SHARED was
requested and PROT_WRITE is set, but fd is not open in
read/write (O_RDWR) mode. Or PROT_WRITE is set, but the file
is append-only.
- EAGAIN
- The file has been locked, or too much memory has been locked (see
setrlimit(2)).
- EBADF
- fd is not a valid file descriptor (and MAP_ANONYMOUS was not
set).
- EEXIST
- MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE was specified in flags, and the range
covered by addr and length clashes with an existing
mapping.
- EINVAL
- We don't like addr, length, or offset (e.g., they are
too large, or not aligned on a page boundary).
- EINVAL
- (since Linux 2.6.12) length was 0.
- EINVAL
- flags contained none of MAP_PRIVATE, MAP_SHARED or
MAP_SHARED_VALIDATE.
- ENFILE
- The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
reached.
- ENODEV
- The underlying filesystem of the specified file does not support memory
mapping.
- ENOMEM
- No memory is available.
- ENOMEM
- The process's maximum number of mappings would have been exceeded. This
error can also occur for munmap(), when unmapping a region in the
middle of an existing mapping, since this results in two smaller mappings
on either side of the region being unmapped.
- ENOMEM
- (since Linux 4.7) The process's RLIMIT_DATA limit, described in
getrlimit(2), would have been exceeded.
- EOVERFLOW
- On 32-bit architecture together with the large file extension (i.e., using
64-bit off_t): the number of pages used for length plus
number of pages used for offset would overflow unsigned long
(32 bits).
- EPERM
- The prot argument asks for PROT_EXEC but the mapped area
belongs to a file on a filesystem that was mounted no-exec.
- EPERM
- The operation was prevented by a file seal; see fcntl(2).
- ETXTBSY
- MAP_DENYWRITE was set but the object specified by fd is open
for writing.
Use of a mapped region can result in these signals:
- SIGSEGV
- Attempted write into a region mapped as read-only.
- SIGBUS
- Attempted access to a portion of the buffer that does not correspond to
the file (for example, beyond the end of the file, including the case
where another process has truncated the file).
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
Interface |
Attribute |
Value |
mmap (), munmap () |
Thread safety |
MT-Safe |
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.4BSD.
On POSIX systems on which
mmap(),
msync(2), and
munmap()
are available,
_POSIX_MAPPED_FILES is defined in
<unistd.h> to a value greater than 0. (See also
sysconf(3).)
Memory mapped by
mmap() is preserved across
fork(2), with the same
attributes.
A file is mapped in multiples of the page size. For a file that is not a
multiple of the page size, the remaining memory is zeroed when mapped, and
writes to that region are not written out to the file. The effect of changing
the size of the underlying file of a mapping on the pages that correspond to
added or removed regions of the file is unspecified.
On some hardware architectures (e.g., i386),
PROT_WRITE implies
PROT_READ. It is architecture dependent whether
PROT_READ
implies
PROT_EXEC or not. Portable programs should always set
PROT_EXEC if they intend to execute code in the new mapping.
The portable way to create a mapping is to specify
addr as 0 (NULL), and
omit
MAP_FIXED from
flags. In this case, the system chooses the
address for the mapping; the address is chosen so as not to conflict with any
existing mapping, and will not be 0. If the
MAP_FIXED flag is
specified, and
addr is 0 (NULL), then the mapped address will be 0
(NULL).
Certain
flags constants are defined only if suitable feature test macros
are defined (possibly by default):
_DEFAULT_SOURCE with glibc 2.19 or
later; or
_BSD_SOURCE or
_SVID_SOURCE in glibc 2.19 and earlier.
(Employing
_GNU_SOURCE also suffices, and requiring that macro
specifically would have been more logical, since these flags are all
Linux-specific.) The relevant flags are:
MAP_32BIT,
MAP_ANONYMOUS (and the synonym
MAP_ANON),
MAP_DENYWRITE,
MAP_EXECUTABLE,
MAP_FILE,
MAP_GROWSDOWN,
MAP_HUGETLB,
MAP_LOCKED,
MAP_NONBLOCK,
MAP_NORESERVE,
MAP_POPULATE, and
MAP_STACK.
An application can determine which pages of a mapping are currently resident in
the buffer/page cache using
mincore(2).
The only safe use for
MAP_FIXED is where the address range specified by
addr and
length was previously reserved using another mapping;
otherwise, the use of
MAP_FIXED is hazardous because it forcibly
removes preexisting mappings, making it easy for a multithreaded process to
corrupt its own address space.
For example, suppose that thread A looks through
/proc/<pid>/maps
and in order to locate an unused address range that it can map using
MAP_FIXED, while thread B simultaneously acquires part or all of that
same address range. When thread A subsequently employs
mmap(MAP_FIXED),
it will effectively clobber the mapping that thread B created. In this
scenario, thread B need not create a mapping directly; simply making a library
call that, internally, uses
dlopen(3) to load some other shared
library, will suffice. The
dlopen(3) call will map the library into the
process's address space. Furthermore, almost any library call may be
implemented in a way that adds memory mappings to the address space, either
with this technique, or by simply allocating memory. Examples include
brk(2),
malloc(3),
pthread_create(3), and the PAM
libraries
http://www.linux-pam.org
Since Linux 4.17, a multithreaded program can use the
MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE
flag to avoid the hazard described above when attempting to create a mapping
at a fixed address that has not been reserved by a preexisting mapping.
For file-backed mappings, the
st_atime field for the mapped file may be
updated at any time between the
mmap() and the corresponding unmapping;
the first reference to a mapped page will update the field if it has not been
already.
The
st_ctime and
st_mtime field for a file mapped with
PROT_WRITE and
MAP_SHARED will be updated after a write to the
mapped region, and before a subsequent
msync(2) with the
MS_SYNC
or
MS_ASYNC flag, if one occurs.
For mappings that employ huge pages, the requirements for the arguments of
mmap() and
munmap() differ somewhat from the requirements for
mappings that use the native system page size.
For
mmap(),
offset must be a multiple of the underlying huge page
size. The system automatically aligns
length to be a multiple of the
underlying huge page size.
For
munmap(),
addr and
length must both be a multiple of
the underlying huge page size.
This page describes the interface provided by the glibc
mmap() wrapper
function. Originally, this function invoked a system call of the same name.
Since kernel 2.4, that system call has been superseded by
mmap2(2), and
nowadays the glibc
mmap() wrapper function invokes
mmap2(2) with
a suitably adjusted value for
offset.
On Linux, there are no guarantees like those suggested above under
MAP_NORESERVE. By default, any process can be killed at any moment when
the system runs out of memory.
In kernels before 2.6.7, the
MAP_POPULATE flag has effect only if
prot is specified as
PROT_NONE.
SUSv3 specifies that
mmap() should fail if
length is 0. However,
in kernels before 2.6.12,
mmap() succeeded in this case: no mapping was
created and the call returned
addr. Since kernel 2.6.12,
mmap()
fails with the error
EINVAL for this case.
POSIX specifies that the system shall always zero fill any partial page at the
end of the object and that system will never write any modification of the
object beyond its end. On Linux, when you write data to such partial page
after the end of the object, the data stays in the page cache even after the
file is closed and unmapped and even though the data is never written to the
file itself, subsequent mappings may see the modified content. In some cases,
this could be fixed by calling
msync(2) before the unmap takes place;
however, this doesn't work on
tmpfs(5) (for example, when using the
POSIX shared memory interface documented in
shm_overview(7)).
The following program prints part of the file specified in its first
command-line argument to standard output. The range of bytes to be printed is
specified via offset and length values in the second and third command-line
arguments. The program creates a memory mapping of the required pages of the
file and then uses
write(2) to output the desired bytes.
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define handle_error(msg) \
do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } while (0)
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *addr;
int fd;
struct stat sb;
off_t offset, pa_offset;
size_t length;
ssize_t s;
if (argc < 3 || argc > 4) {
fprintf(stderr, "%s file offset [length]\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY);
if (fd == -1)
handle_error("open");
if (fstat(fd, &sb) == -1) /* To obtain file size */
handle_error("fstat");
offset = atoi(argv[2]);
pa_offset = offset & ~(sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE) - 1);
/* offset for mmap() must be page aligned */
if (offset >= sb.st_size) {
fprintf(stderr, "offset is past end of file\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (argc == 4) {
length = atoi(argv[3]);
if (offset + length > sb.st_size)
length = sb.st_size - offset;
/* Can't display bytes past end of file */
} else { /* No length arg ==> display to end of file */
length = sb.st_size - offset;
}
addr = mmap(NULL, length + offset - pa_offset, PROT_READ,
MAP_PRIVATE, fd, pa_offset);
if (addr == MAP_FAILED)
handle_error("mmap");
s = write(STDOUT_FILENO, addr + offset - pa_offset, length);
if (s != length) {
if (s == -1)
handle_error("write");
fprintf(stderr, "partial write");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
munmap(addr, length + offset - pa_offset);
close(fd);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
ftruncate(2),
getpagesize(2),
memfd_create(2),
mincore(2),
mlock(2),
mmap2(2),
mprotect(2),
mremap(2),
msync(2),
remap_file_pages(2),
setrlimit(2),
shmat(2),
userfaultfd(2),
shm_open(3),
shm_overview(7)
The descriptions of the following files in
proc(5):
/proc/[pid]/maps,
/proc/[pid]/map_files, and
/proc/[pid]/smaps.
B.O. Gallmeister, POSIX.4, O'Reilly, pp. 128–129 and
389–391.