Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751099AbaFMMl0 (ORCPT ); Fri, 13 Jun 2014 08:41:26 -0400 Received: from mail-ie0-f170.google.com ([209.85.223.170]:36701 "EHLO mail-ie0-f170.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750901AbaFMMlZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 13 Jun 2014 08:41:25 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <1402655819-14325-1-git-send-email-dh.herrmann@gmail.com> <1402655819-14325-4-git-send-email-dh.herrmann@gmail.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 14:41:24 +0200 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 3/7] shm: add memfd_create() syscall From: David Herrmann To: Michael Kerrisk-manpages Cc: lkml , Ryan Lortie , Linus Torvalds , Andrew Morton , "linux-mm@kvack.org" , "linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" , Linux API , Greg Kroah-Hartman , John Stultz , Lennart Poettering , Daniel Mack , Kay Sievers , Hugh Dickins , Tony Battersby , Andy Lutomirski Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > Hi David, > > On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, David Herrmann wrote: >> memfd_create() is similar to mmap(MAP_ANON), but returns a file-descriptor >> that you can pass to mmap(). It can support sealing and avoids any >> connection to user-visible mount-points. Thus, it's not subject to quotas >> on mounted file-systems, but can be used like malloc()'ed memory, but >> with a file-descriptor to it. >> >> memfd_create() returns the raw shmem file, so calls like ftruncate() can >> be used to modify the underlying inode. Also calls like fstat() >> will return proper information and mark the file as regular file. If you >> want sealing, you can specify MFD_ALLOW_SEALING. Otherwise, sealing is not >> supported (like on all other regular files). >> >> Compared to O_TMPFILE, it does not require a tmpfs mount-point and is not >> subject to quotas and alike. It is still properly accounted to memcg >> limits, though. > > Where do I find / is there detailed documentation (ideally, a man > page) for this new system call? I did write a man-page proposal for memfd_create() and a patch for fcntl() for v1, however, the API changed several times so I didn't keep them up to date (the man-page patches are on LKML). However, I wrote a short introduction to memfd+sealing v3, that I recommend reading first: http://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/memfd_create2/ This explains the idea behind the new API and describes almost all aspects of it. It's up-to-date to v3 and I will use it to write the final man-pages once Hugh and Andrew ACKed the patches. Let me know if anything is unclear. Thanks for looking at it! David -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/