Re: [PATCH] mmap.2: document new MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE flag

From: Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
Date: Thu Apr 12 2018 - 04:04:21 EST


Hello Michal,

On 04/11/2018 02:04 PM, mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
>
> 4.17+ kernels offer a new MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE flag which allows the caller to
> atomicaly probe for a given address range.
>
> [wording heavily updated by John Hubbard <jhubbard@xxxxxxxxxx>]
> Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>

Thanks! I've applied your patch, and done a little tweaking. The results
have already been pushed.

Cheers

Michael


> ---
> Hi,
> Andrew's sent the MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE to Linus for the upcoming merge
> window. So here we go with the man page update.
>
> man2/mmap.2 | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/man2/mmap.2 b/man2/mmap.2
> index ea64eb8f0dcc..f702f3e4eba2 100644
> --- a/man2/mmap.2
> +++ b/man2/mmap.2
> @@ -261,6 +261,27 @@ Examples include
> and the PAM libraries
> .UR http://www.linux-pam.org
> .UE .
> +Newer kernels
> +(Linux 4.17 and later) have a
> +.B MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE
> +option that avoids the corruption problem; if available, MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE
> +should be preferred over MAP_FIXED.
> +.TP
> +.BR MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE " (since Linux 4.17)"
> +Similar to MAP_FIXED with respect to the
> +.I
> +addr
> +enforcement, but different in that MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE never clobbers a pre-existing
> +mapped range. If the requested range would collide with an existing
> +mapping, then this call fails with
> +.B 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. Please note that older kernels which do not recognize this
> +flag will typically (upon detecting a collision with a pre-existing mapping)
> +fall back to a "non-MAP_FIXED" type of behavior: they will return an address that
> +is different than the requested one. Therefore, backward-compatible software
> +should check the returned address against the requested address.
> .TP
> .B MAP_GROWSDOWN
> This flag is used for stacks.
> @@ -487,6 +508,12 @@ is not a valid file descriptor (and
> .B MAP_ANONYMOUS
> was not set).
> .TP
> +.B EEXIST
> +range covered by
> +.IR addr ,
> +.IR length
> +is clashing with an existing mapping.
> +.TP
> .B EINVAL
> We don't like
> .IR addr ,
>


--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/