NAME
lockf - apply, test or remove a POSIX lock on an open file SYNOPSIS
#include
int lockf(int fd, int cmd, offt len); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see featuretestmacros(7)): lockf(): BSDSOURCE || SVIDSOURCE || XOPENSOURCE >= 500 || XOPENSOURCE && XOPENSOURCEEXTENDED DESCRIPTION Apply, test or remove a POSIX lock on a section of an open file. The file is specified by fd, a file descriptor open for writing, the action by cmd, and the section consists of byte positions pos..pos+len-1 if
len is positive, and pos-len..pos-1 if len is negative, where pos is the current file position, and if len is zero, the section extends from the current file position to infinity, encompassing the present and
future end-of-file positions. In all cases, the section may extend
past current end-of-file. On Linux, lockf() is just an interface on top of fcntl(2) locking. Many other systems implement lockf() in this way, but note that
POSIX.1-2001 leaves the relationship between lockf() and fcntl(2) locks unspecified. A portable application should probably avoid mixing calls to these interfaces. Valid operations are given below: FLOCK Set an exclusive lock on the specified section of the file. If (part of) this section is already locked, the call blocks until the previous lock is released. If this section overlaps an earlier locked section, both are merged. File locks are released as soon as the process holding the locks closes some file descriptor for the file. A child process does not inherit these locks. FTLOCK Same as FLOCK but the call never blocks and returns an error instead if the file is already locked. FULOCK Unlock the indicated section of the file. This may cause a locked section to be split into two locked sections. FTEST Test the lock: return 0 if the specified section is unlocked or
locked by this process; return -1, set errno to EAGAIN (EACCES on some other systems), if another process holds a lock. RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately. ERRORS EACCES or EAGAIN The file is locked and FTLOCK or FTEST was specified, or the
operation is prohibited because the file has been memory-mapped by another process. EBADF fd is not an open file descriptor; or cmd is FLOCK or FTLOCK and fd is not a writable file descriptor. EDEADLK The command was FLOCK and this lock operation would cause a deadlock. EINVAL An invalid operation was specified in fd. ENOLCK Too many segment locks open, lock table is full. ATTRIBUTES For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7). ┌──────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐ │Interface │ Attribute │ Value │ ├──────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│lockf() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │ └──────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘ CONFORMING TO
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. SEE ALSO fcntl(2), flock(2)
locks.txt and mandatory-locking.txt in the Linux kernel source directory Documentation/filesystems (on older kernels, these files are
directly under the Documentation directory, and mandatory-locking.txt is called mandatory.txt) COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.53 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/.
GNU 2012-07-07 LOCKF(3)