Cameron Katri's Manual Page Server

NAME

msync — synchronize a mapped region

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/mman.h>

int
msync(void *addr, size_t len, int flags);

DESCRIPTION

The msync() system call writes modified whole pages back to the filesystem and updates the file modification time. Only those pages containing addr and len-1 succeeding locations will be examined.

The flags argument may be specified as follows:

MS_ASYNC	Return immediately
MS_SYNC		Perform synchronous writes
MS_INVALIDATE	Invalidate all cached data

The MS_ASYNC flag is not permitted to be combined with other flags.

RETURN VALUES

If any errors occur, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error. Otherwise, a 0 value is returned.

ERRORS

msync() will fail if:

[EBUSY]

Some of the specified addresses are locked and MS_INVALIDATE is specified.

[EINVAL]

addr is not a multiple of the hardware page size.

[EINVAL]

len is too large, or less than 1.

[EINVAL]

flags is invalid (e.g., it combines MS_ASYNC with another flag, which is not permitted).

[EIO]

An I/O error occurs while writing to the file system.

[ENOMEM]

The specified address range is outside of the address range of the process or includes an unmapped page.

LEGACY SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/mman.h>

The include file <sys/types.h> is necessary.

SEE ALSO

madvise(2), mincore(2), mprotect(2), munmap(2), compat(5)

HISTORY

The msync() function first appeared in 4.4BSD.