The memcntl() function allows the calling process to apply a variety of control operations over the address space identified by the mappings established for the address range [addr, addr + len).

The addr argument must be a multiple of the pagesize as returned by sysconf(3C). The scope of the control operations can be further defined with additional selection criteria (in the form of attributes) according to the bit pattern contained in attr.

The following attributes specify page mapping selection criteria:

SHARED

Page is mapped shared.

PRIVATE

Page is mapped private.

The following attributes specify page protection selection criteria. The selection criteria are constructed by a bitwise OR operation on the attribute bits and must match exactly.

PROT_READ

Page can be read.

PROT_WRITE

Page can be written.

PROT_EXEC

Page can be executed.

The following criteria may also be specified:

PROC_TEXT

Process text.

PROC_DATA

Process data.

The PROC_TEXT attribute specifies all privately mapped segments with read and execute permission, and the PROC_DATA attribute specifies all privately mapped segments with write permission.

Selection criteria can be used to describe various abstract memory objects within the address space on which to operate. If an operation shall not be constrained by the selection criteria, attr must have the value 0.

The operation to be performed is identified by the argument cmd. The symbolic names for the operations are defined in <sys/mman.h> as follows:

MC_LOCK

Lock in memory all pages in the range with attributes attr. A given page may be locked multiple times through different mappings; however, within a given mapping, page locks do not nest. Multiple lock operations on the same address in the same process will all be removed with a single unlock operation. A page locked in one process and mapped in another (or visible through a different mapping in the locking process) is locked in memory as long as the locking process does neither an implicit nor explicit unlock operation. If a locked mapping is removed, or a page is deleted through file removal or truncation, an unlock operation is implicitly performed. If a writable MAP_PRIVATE page in the address range is changed, the lock will be transferred to the private page.

The arg argument is not used, but must be 0 to ensure compatibility with potential future enhancements.

MC_LOCKAS

Lock in memory all pages mapped by the address space with attributes attr. The addr and len arguments are not used, but must be NULL and 0 respectively, to ensure compatibility with potential future enhancements. The arg argument is a bit pattern built from the flags:

MCL_CURRENT

Lock current mappings.

MCL_FUTURE

Lock future mappings.

The value of arg determines whether the pages to be locked are those currently mapped by the address space, those that will be mapped in the future, or both. If MCL_FUTURE is specified, then all mappings subsequently added to the address space will be locked, provided sufficient memory is available.

MC_SYNC

Write to their backing storage locations all modified pages in the range with attributes attr. Optionally, invalidate cache copies. The backing storage for a modified MAP_SHARED mapping is the file the page is mapped to; the backing storage for a modified MAP_PRIVATE mapping is its swap area. The arg argument is a bit pattern built from the flags used to control the behavior of the operation:

MS_ASYNC

Perform asynchronous writes.

MS_SYNC

Perform synchronous writes.

MS_INVALIDATE

Invalidate mappings.

MS_ASYNC Return immediately once all write operations are scheduled; with MS_SYNC the function will not return until all write operations are completed.

MS_INVALIDATE Invalidate all cached copies of data in memory, so that further references to the pages will be obtained by the system from their backing storage locations. This operation should be used by applications that require a memory object to be in a known state.

MC_UNLOCK

Unlock all pages in the range with attributes attr. The arg argument is not used, but must be 0 to ensure compatibility with potential future enhancements.

MC_UNLOCKAS

Remove address space memory locks and locks on all pages in the address space with attributes attr. The addr, len, and arg arguments are not used, but must be NULL, 0 and 0, respectively, to ensure compatibility with potential future enhancements.

MC_HAT_ADVISE

Advise system how a region of user-mapped memory will be accessed. The arg argument is interpreted as a "struct memcntl_mha *". The following members are defined in a struct memcntl_mha:

uint_t mha_cmd; uint_t mha_flags; size_t mha_pagesize;

The accepted values for mha_cmd are:

MHA_MAPSIZE_VA MHA_MAPSIZE_STACK MHA_MAPSIZE_BSSBRK

The mha_flags member is reserved for future use and must always be set to 0. The mha_pagesize member must be a valid size as obtained from getpagesizes(3C) or the constant value 0 to allow the system to choose an appropriate hardware address translation mapping size.

MHA_MAPSIZE_VA sets the preferred hardware address translation mapping size of the region of memory from addr to addr + len. Both addr and len must be aligned to an mha_pagesize boundary. The entire virtual address region from addr to addr + len must not have any holes. Permissions within each mha_pagesize-aligned portion of the region must be consistent. When a size of 0 is specified, the system selects an appropriate size based on the size and alignment of the memory region, type of processor, and other considerations.

MHA_MAPSIZE_STACK sets the preferred hardware address translation mapping size of the process main thread stack segment. The addr and len arguments must be NULL and 0, respectively.

MHA_MAPSIZE_BSSBRK sets the preferred hardware address translation mapping size of the process heap. The addr and len arguments must be NULL and 0, respectively. See the NOTES section of the ppgsz(1) manual page for additional information on process heap alignment.

The attr argument must be 0 for all MC_HAT_ADVISE operations.

The mask argument must be 0; it is reserved for future use.

Locks established with the lock operations are not inherited by a child process after fork(2). The memcntl() function fails if it attempts to lock more memory than a system-specific limit.

Due to the potential impact on system resources, all operations except MC_SYNC are restricted to processes with superuser effective user ID.

The memcntl() function subsumes the operations of plock(3C) and mctl(3UCB).

MC_HAT_ADVISE is intended to improve performance of applications that use large amounts of memory on processors that support multiple hardware address translation mapping sizes; however, it should be used with care. Not all processors support all sizes with equal efficiency. Use of larger sizes may also introduce extra overhead that could reduce performance or available memory. Using large sizes for one application may reduce available resources for other applications and result in slower system wide performance.

Upon successful completion, memcntl() returns 0; otherwise, it returns -1 and sets errno to indicate an error.

The memcntl() function will fail if:

EAGAIN

When the selection criteria match, some or all of the memory identified by the operation could not be locked when MC_LOCK or MC_LOCKAS was specified, some or all mappings in the address range [addr, addr + len) are locked for I/O when MC_HAT_ADVISE was specified, or the system has insufficient resources when MC_HAT_ADVISE was specified.

EBUSY

When the selection criteria match, some or all of the addresses in the range [addr, addr + len) are locked and MC_SYNC with the MS_INVALIDATE option was specified.

EINVAL

The addr argument specifies invalid selection criteria or is not a multiple of the page size as returned by sysconf(3C); the addr and/or len argument does not have the value 0 when MC_LOCKAS or MC_UNLOCKAS is specified; the arg argument is not valid for the function specified; mha_pagesize or mha_cmd is invalid; or MC_HAT_ADVISE is specified and not all pages in the specified region have the same access permissions within the given size boundaries.

ENOMEM

When the selection criteria match, some or all of the addresses in the range [addr, addr + len) are invalid for the address space of a process or specify one or more pages which are not mapped.

EPERM

The process's effective user ID is not superuser and MC_LOCK, MC_LOCKAS, MC_UNLOCK, or MC_UNLOCKAS was specified.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ppgsz(1), fork(2) mmap(2), mprotect(2), getpagesizes(3C), mctl(3UCB), mlock(3C), mlockall(3C), msync(3C), plock(3C), sysconf(3C), attributes(5)