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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | AVAILABILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHONThe Linux Programming Interface

MSYNC(2)                  Linux Programmer's Manual                 MSYNC(2)

NAME         top

       msync - synchronize a file with a memory map

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/mman.h>

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

DESCRIPTION         top

       msync() flushes changes made to the in-core copy of a file that was
       mapped into memory using mmap(2) back to disk.  Without use of this
       call there is no guarantee that changes are written back before
       munmap(2) is called.  To be more precise, the part of the file that
       corresponds to the memory area starting at addr and having length
       length is updated.

       The flags argument may have the bits MS_ASYNC, MS_SYNC, and
       MS_INVALIDATE set, but not both MS_ASYNC and MS_SYNC.  MS_ASYNC
       specifies that an update be scheduled, but the call returns
       immediately.  MS_SYNC asks for an update and waits for it to
       complete.  MS_INVALIDATE asks to invalidate other mappings of the
       same file (so that they can be updated with the fresh values just
       written).

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS         top

       EBUSY  MS_INVALIDATE was specified in flags, and a memory lock exists
              for the specified address range.

       EINVAL addr is not a multiple of PAGESIZE; or any bit other than
              MS_ASYNC | MS_INVALIDATE | MS_SYNC is set in flags; or both
              MS_SYNC and MS_ASYNC are set in flags.

       ENOMEM The indicated memory (or part of it) was not mapped.

CONFORMING TO         top

       POSIX.1-2001.

       This call was introduced in Linux 1.3.21, and then used EFAULT
       instead of ENOMEM.  In Linux 2.4.19 this was changed to the POSIX
       value ENOMEM.

AVAILABILITY         top

       On POSIX systems on which msync() is available, both
       _POSIX_MAPPED_FILES and _POSIX_SYNCHRONIZED_IO are defined in
       <unistd.h> to a value greater than 0.  (See also sysconf(3).)

SEE ALSO         top

       mmap(2)

       B.O. Gallmeister, POSIX.4, O'Reilly, pp. 128-129 and 389-391.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.51 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                            2008-04-22                         MSYNC(2)

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