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Mapping Files into Memory
As an alternative to standard file I/O, the kernel provides an interface that allows an application to map a file into memory, meaning that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a memory address and a word in the file. The programmer can then access the file directly through memory, identically to any other chunk of memory-resident data—it is even possible to allow writes to the memory region to transparently map back to the file on disk.
POSIX.1 standardizes—and Linux implements—the mmap( )
system call for mapping objects into memory. This section will discuss mmap( )
as it pertains to mapping files into memory to perform I/O; in Chapter 8, we will visit other applications of mmap( )
.
A call to mmap( )
asks the kernel to map len
bytes of the object represented by the file descriptor fd
, starting at offset
bytes into the file, into memory. If addr
is included, it indicates a preference to use that starting address in memory. The access permissions are dictated by prot
, and additional behavior can be given by flags
:
The addr
parameter offers a suggestion to the kernel of where best to map the file. It is only a hint; most users pass 0
. The call returns the actual address in memory where the mapping begins.
The prot
parameter describes the desired memory protection of the mapping. It may be either PROT_NONE
, in which case the pages in this mapping may not be accessed (making little sense!), or a bitwise OR of one or more of the following flags:
-
The pages may be read.
-
The pages may be written.
-
The pages may be executed.
PROT_READ
PROT_WRITE
PROT_EXEC
The desired memory protection must not conflict with the open mode of the file. For example, if the program opens the file read-only, prot
must not specify PROT_WRITE
.
The flags
argument describes the type of mapping, and some elements of its behavior. It is a bitwise OR of the following values:
-
Instructs
mmap( )
to treataddr
as a requirement, not a hint. If the kernel is unable to place the mapping at the given address, the call fails. If the address and length parameters overlap an existing mapping, the overlapped pages are discarded and replaced by the new mapping. As this option requires intimate knowledge of the process address space, it is nonportable, and its use is discouraged. -
States that the mapping is not shared. The file is mapped copy-on-write, and any changes made in memory by this process are not reflected in the actual file, or in the mappings of other processes.
-
Shares the mapping with all other processes that map this same file. Writing into the mapping is equivalent to writing to the file. Reads from the mapping will reflect the writes of other processes.
MAP_FIXED
MAP_PRIVATE
MAP_SHARED
Either MAP_SHARED
or MAP_PRIVATE
must be specified, but not both. Other, more advanced flags are discussed in Chapter 8.
When you map a file descriptor, the file's reference count is incremented. Therefore, you can close the file descriptor after mapping the file, and your process will still have access to it. The corresponding decrement of the file's reference count will occur when you unmap the file, or when the process terminates.
As an example, the following snippet maps the file backed by fd
, beginning with its first byte, and extending for len
bytes, into a read-only mapping:
Figure 4-1 shows the effects of paramaters supplied with mmap( )
on the mapping between a file and a process' address space.
The page is the smallest unit of memory that can have distinct permissions and behavior. Consequently, the page is the building block of memory mappings, which in turn are the building blocks of the process address space.
The mmap( )
system call operates on pages. Both the addr
and offset
parameters must be aligned on a page-sized boundary. That is, they must be integer multiples of the page size.
Mappings are, therefore, integer multiples of pages. If the len
parameter provided by the caller is not aligned on a page boundary—perhaps because the underlying file's size is not a multiple of the page size—the mapping is rounded up to the next full page. The bytes inside this added memory, between the last valid byte and the end of the mapping, are zero-filled. Any read from that region will return zeros. Any writes to that memory will not affect the backing file, even if it is mapped as MAP_SHARED
. Only the original len
bytes are ever written back to the file.
The standard POSIX method of obtaining the page size is with sysconf( )
, which can retrieve a variety of system-specific information:
A call to sysconf( )
returns the value of the configuration item name
, or −1
if name
is invalid. On error, the call sets errno
to EINVAL
. Because −1
may be a valid value for some items (e.g., limits, where −1
means no limit), it may be wise to clear errno
before invocation, and check its value after.
POSIX defines _SC_PAGESIZE
(and a synonym, _SC_PAGE_SIZE
) to be the size of a page, in bytes. Therefore, getting the page size is simple:
Linux also provides the getpagesize( )
function:
A call to getpagesize( )
will likewise return the size of a page, in bytes. Usage is even simpler than sysconf( )
:
Not all Unix systems support this function; it's been dropped from the 1003.1-2001 revision of the POSIX standard. It is included here for completeness.
The page size is also stored statically in the macro PAGE_SIZE
, which is defined in<asm/page.h>
. Thus, a third possible way to retrieve the page size is:
Unlike the first two options, however, this approach retrieves the system page size at compile-time, and not runtime. Some architectures support multiple machine types with different page sizes, and some machine types even support multiple page sizes themselves! A single binary should be able to run on all machine types in a given architecture—that is, you should be able to build it once and run it everywhere. Hard-coding the page size would nullify that possibility. Consequently, you should determine the page size at runtime. Because addr
and offset
are usually 0
, this requirement is not overly difficult to meet.
Moreover, future kernel versions will likely not export this macro to user space. We cover it in this chapter due to its frequent presence in Unix code, but you should not use it in your own programs. The sysconf( )
approach is your best bet.
On success, a call to mmap( )
returns the location of the mapping. On failure, the call returnsMAP_FAILED
, and sets errno
appropriately. A call to mmap( )
never returns 0
.
Possible errno
values include:
-
The given file descriptor is not a regular file, or the mode with which it was opened conflicts with
prot
orflags
. -
The file has been locked via a file lock.
-
The given file descriptor is not valid.
-
One or more of the parameters
addr
,len
, oroff
are invalid. -
The system-wide limit on open files has been reached.
-
The filesystem on which the file to map resides does not support memory mapping.
-
The process does not have enough memory.
-
The result of
addr+len
exceeds the size of the address space. -
PROT_EXEC
was given, but the filesystem is mountednoexec
.
EACCESS
EAGAIN
EBADF
EINVAL
ENFILE
ENODEV
ENOMEM
EOVERFLOW
EPERM
Two signals are associated with mapped regions:
-
This signal is generated when a process attempts to access a region of a mapping that is no longer valid—for example, because the file was truncated after it was mapped.
-
This signal is generated when a process attempts to write to a region that is mapped read-only.
SIGBUS
SIGSEGV
Linux provides the munmap( )
system call for removing a mapping created with mmap( )
:
A call to munmap( )
removes any mappings that contain pages located anywhere in the process address space starting at addr
, which must be page-aligned, and continuing for len
bytes. Once the mapping has been removed, the previously associated memory region is no longer valid, and further access attempts result in a SIGSEGV
signal.
Normally, munmap( )
is passed the return value and the len
parameter from a previous invocation of mmap( )
.
On success, munmap( )
returns 0
; on failure, it returns −1
, and errno
is set appropriately. The only standard errno
value is EINVAL
, which specifies that one or more parameters were invalid.
As an example, the following snippet unmaps any memory regions with pages contained in the interval [addr,addr+len]
:
Let's consider a simple example program that uses mmap( )
to print a file chosen by the user to standard out:
The only unfamiliar system call in this example should be fstat( )
, which we will cover inChapter 7. All you need to know at this point is that fstat( )
returns information about a given file. The S_ISREG( )
macro can check some of this information, so that we can ensure that the given file is a regular file (as opposed to a device file or a directory) before we map it. The behavior of nonregular files when mapped depends on the backing device. Some device files are mmap-able; other nonregular files are not mmap-able, and will set errno
toEACCESS
.
The rest of the example should be straightforward. The program is passed a filename as an argument. It opens the file, ensures it is a regular file, maps it, closes it, prints the file byte-by-byte to standard out, and then unmaps the file from memory.
Manipulating files via mmap( )
has a handful of advantages over the standard read( )
andwrite( )
system calls. Among them are:
-
Reading from and writing to a memory-mapped file avoids the extraneous copy that occurs when using the
read( )
orwrite( )
system calls, where the data must be copied to and from a user-space buffer. -
Aside from any potential page faults, reading from and writing to a memory-mapped file does not incur any system call or context switch overhead. It is as simple as accessing memory.
-
When multiple processes map the same object into memory, the data is shared among all the processes. Read-only and shared writable mappings are shared in their entirety; private writable mappings have their not-yet-COW (copy-on-write) pages shared.
-
Seeking around the mapping involves trivial pointer manipulations. There is no need for the
lseek( )
system call.
For these reasons, mmap( )
is a smart choice for many applications.
There are a few points to keep in mind when using mmap( )
:
-
Memory mappings are always an integer number of pages in size. Thus, the difference between the size of the backing file and an integer number of pages is "wasted" as slack space. For small files, a significant percentage of the mapping may be wasted. For example, with 4 KB pages, a 7 byte mapping wastes 4,089 bytes.
-
The memory mappings must fit into the process' address space. With a 32-bit address space, a very large number of various-sized mappings can result in fragmentation of the address space, making it hard to find large free contiguous regions. This problem, of course, is much less apparent with a 64-bit address space.
-
There is overhead in creating and maintaining the memory mappings and associated data structures inside the kernel. This overhead is generally obviated by the elimination of the double copy mentioned in the previous section, particularly for larger and frequently accessed files.
For these reasons, the benefits of mmap( )
are most greatly realized when the mapped file is large (and thus any wasted space is a small percentage of the total mapping), or when the total size of the mapped file is evenly divisible by the page size (and thus there is no wasted space).
Linux provides the mremap( )
system call for expanding or shrinking the size of a given mapping. This function is Linux-specific:
A call to mremap( )
expands or shrinks mapping in the region [addr,addr+old_size)
to the new size new_size
. The kernel can potentially move the mapping at the same time, depending on the availability of space in the process' address space and the value of flags
.
Tip
The opening [
in [addr,addr+old_size)
indicates that the region starts with (and includes) the low address, whereas the closing )
indicates that the region stops just before (does not include) the high address. This convention is known as interval notation.
The flags
parameter can be either 0
or MREMAP_MAYMOVE
, which specifies that the kernel is free to move the mapping, if required, in order to perform the requested resizing. A large resizing is more likely to succeed if the kernel can move the mapping.
On success, mremap( )
returns a pointer to the newly resized memory mapping. On failure, it returns MAP_FAILED
, and sets errno
to one of the following:
-
The memory region is locked, and cannot be resized.
-
Some pages in the given range are not valid pages in the process' address space, or there was a problem remapping the given pages.
-
An argument was invalid.
-
The given range cannot be expanded without moving (and
MREMAP_MAYMOVE
was not given), or there is not enough free space in the process' address space.
EAGAIN
EFAULT
EINVAL
ENOMEM
Libraries such as glibc often use mremap( )
to implement an efficient realloc( )
, which is an interface for resizing a block of memory originally obtained via malloc( )
. For example:
This would only work if all malloc( )
allocations were unique anonymous mappings; nonetheless, it stands as a useful example of the performance gains to be had. The example assumes the programmer has written a look_up_mapping_size( )
function.
The GNU C library does use mmap( )
and family for performing some memory allocations. We will look that topic in depth in Chapter 8.
POSIX defines the mprotect( )
interface to allow programs to change the permissions of existing regions of memory:
A call to mprotect( )
will change the protection mode for the memory pages contained in[addr,addr+len)
, where addr
is page-aligned. The prot
parameter accepts the same values as the prot
given to mmap( )
: PROT_NONE
, PROT_READ
, PROT_WRITE
, andPROT_EXEC
. These values are not additive; if a region of memory is readable, and prot
is set to only PROT_WRITE
, the call will make the region only writable.
On some systems, mprotect( )
may operate only on memory mappings previously created via mmap( )
. On Linux, mprotect( )
can operate on any region of memory.
On success, mprotect( )
returns 0
. On failure, it returns −1
, and sets errno
to one of the following:
-
The memory cannot be given the permissions requested by
prot
. This can happen, for example, if you attempt to set the mapping of a file opened read-only to writable. -
The parameter
addr
is invalid or not page-aligned. -
Insufficient kernel memory is available to satisfy the request, or one or more pages in the given memory region are not a valid part of the process' address space.
EACCESS
EINVAL
ENOMEM
POSIX provides a memory-mapped equivalent of the fsync( )
system call that we discussed in Chapter 2:
A call to msync( )
flushes back to disk any changes made to a file mapped via mmap( )
, synchronizing the mapped file with the mapping. Specifically, the file or subset of a file associated with the mapping starting at memory address addr
and continuing for len
bytes is synchronized to disk. The addr
argument must be page-aligned; it is generally the return value from a previous mmap( )
invocation.
Without invocation of msync( )
, there is no guarantee that a dirty mapping will be written back to disk until the file is unmapped. This is different from the behavior of write( )
, where a buffer is dirtied as part of the writing process, and queued for writeback to disk. When writing into a memory mapping, the process directly modifies the file's pages in the kernel's page cache, without kernel involvement. The kernel may not synchronize the page cache and the disk anytime soon.
The flags
parameter controls the behavior of the synchronizing operation. It is a bitwise OR of the following values:
-
Specifies that synchronization should occur asynchronously. The update is scheduled, but the
msync( )
call returns immediately without waiting for the writes to take place. -
Specifies that all other cached copies of the mapping be invalidated. Any future access to any mappings of this file will reflect the newly synchronized on-disk contents.
-
Specifies that synchronization should occur synchronously. The
msync( )
call will not return until all pages are written back to disk.
MS_ASYNC
MS_INVALIDATE
MS_SYNC
Either MS_ASYNC
or MS_SYNC
must be specified, but not both.
Usage is simple:
This example asynchronously synchronizes (say that 10 times fast) to disk the file mapped in the region [addr,addr+len)
.
On success, msync( )
returns 0
. On failure, the call returns −1
, and sets errno
appropriately. The following are valid errno
values:
-
The
flags
parameter has bothMS_SYNC
andMS_ASYNC
set, a bit other than one of the three valid flags is set, oraddr
is not page-aligned. -
The given memory region (or part of it) is not mapped. Note that Linux will return
ENOMEM
, as POSIX dictates, when asked to synchronize a region that is only partly unmapped, but it will still synchronize any valid mappings in the region.
EINVAL
ENOMEM
Before version 2.4.19 of the Linux kernel, msync( )
returned EFAULT
in place of ENOMEM
.
Linux provides a system call named madvise( )
to let processes give the kernel advice and hints on how they intend to use a mapping. The kernel can then optimize its behavior to take advantage of the mapping's intended use. While the Linux kernel dynamically tunes its behavior, and generally provides optimal performance without explicit advice, providing such advice can ensure the desired caching and readahead behavior for some workloads.
A call to madvise( )
advises the kernel on how to behave with respect to the pages in the memory map starting at addr
, and extending for len
bytes:
If len
is 0
, the kernel will apply the advice to the entire mapping that starts at addr
. The parameter advice
delineates the advice, which can be one of:
-
The application has no specific advice to give on this range of memory. It should be treated as normal.
-
The application intends to access the pages in the specified range in a random (nonsequential) order.
-
The application intends to access the pages in the specified range sequentially, from lower to higher addresses.
-
The application intends to access the pages in the specified range in the near future.
-
The application does not intend to access the pages in the specified range in the near future.
MADV_NORMAL
MADV_RANDOM
MADV_SEQUENTIAL
MADV_WILLNEED
MADV_DONTNEED
The actual behavior modifications that the kernel takes in response to this advice are implementation-specific: POSIX dictates only the meaning of the advice, not any potential consequences. The current 2.6 kernel behaves as follows in response to the advice
values:
-
The kernel behaves as usual, performing a moderate amount of readahead.
-
The kernel disables readahead, reading only the minimal amount of data on each physical read operation.
-
The kernel performs aggressive readahead.
-
The kernel initiates readahead, reading the given pages into memory.
-
The kernel frees any resources associated with the given pages, and discards any dirty and not-yet-synchronized pages. Subsequent accesses to the mapped data will cause the data to be paged in from the backing file.
MADV_NORMAL
MADV_RANDOM
MADV_SEQUENTIAL
MADV_WILLNEED
MADV_DONTNEED
Typical usage is:
This call instructs the kernel that the process intends to access the memory region[addr,addr+len)
sequentially.
On success, madvise( )
returns 0
. On failure, it returns −1
, and errno
is set appropriately. The following are valid errors:
-
An internal kernel resource (probably memory) was unavailable. The process can try again.
-
The region exists, but does not map a file.
-
The parameter
len
is negative,addr
is not page-aligned, theadvice
parameter is invalid, or the pages were locked or shared withMADV_DONTNEED
. -
An internal I/O error occurred with
MADV_WILLNEED
. -
The given region is not a valid mapping in this process' address space, or
MADV_WILLNEED
was given, but there is insufficient memory to page in the given regions.
EAGAIN
EBADF
EINVAL
EIO
ENOMEM
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