.\" Copyright 1993 Giorgio Ciucci (giorgio@crcc.it) .\" .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are .\" preserved on all copies. .\" .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a .\" permission notice identical to this one. .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working .\" professionally. .\" .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" %%%LICENSE_END .\" .\" Modified Tue Oct 22 17:54:56 1996 by Eric S. Raymond .\" Modified 1 Jan 2002, Martin Schulze .\" Modified 4 Jan 2002, Michael Kerrisk .\" Modified, 27 May 2004, Michael Kerrisk .\" Added notes on capability requirements .\" Modified, 11 Nov 2004, Michael Kerrisk .\" Language and formatting clean-ups .\" Added notes on /proc files .\" Rewrote BUGS note about semget()'s failure to initialize .\" semaphore values .\" .TH SEMGET 2 2018-04-30 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME semget \- get a System V semaphore set identifier .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .B #include .B #include .B #include .fi .PP .BI "int semget(key_t " key , .BI "int " nsems , .BI "int " semflg ); .SH DESCRIPTION The .BR semget () system call returns the System\ V semaphore set identifier associated with the argument .IR key . It may be used either to obtain the identifier of a previously created semaphore set (when .I semflg is zero and .I key does not have the value .BR IPC_PRIVATE ), or to create a new set. .PP A new set of .I nsems semaphores is created if .I key has the value .B IPC_PRIVATE or if no existing semaphore set is associated with .I key and .B IPC_CREAT is specified in .IR semflg . .PP If .I semflg specifies both .B IPC_CREAT and .B IPC_EXCL and a semaphore set already exists for .IR key , then .BR semget () fails with .I errno set to .BR EEXIST . (This is analogous to the effect of the combination .B O_CREAT | O_EXCL for .BR open (2).) .PP Upon creation, the least significant 9 bits of the argument .I semflg define the permissions (for owner, group and others) for the semaphore set. These bits have the same format, and the same meaning, as the .I mode argument of .BR open (2) (though the execute permissions are not meaningful for semaphores, and write permissions mean permission to alter semaphore values). .PP When creating a new semaphore set, .BR semget () initializes the set's associated data structure, .I semid_ds (see .BR semctl (2)), as follows: .IP .I sem_perm.cuid and .I sem_perm.uid are set to the effective user ID of the calling process. .IP .I sem_perm.cgid and .I sem_perm.gid are set to the effective group ID of the calling process. .IP The least significant 9 bits of .I sem_perm.mode are set to the least significant 9 bits of .IR semflg . .IP .I sem_nsems is set to the value of .IR nsems . .IP .I sem_otime is set to 0. .IP .I sem_ctime is set to the current time. .PP The argument .I nsems can be 0 (a don't care) when a semaphore set is not being created. Otherwise, .I nsems must be greater than 0 and less than or equal to the maximum number of semaphores per semaphore set .RB ( SEMMSL ). .PP If the semaphore set already exists, the permissions are verified. .\" and a check is made to see if it is marked for destruction. .SH RETURN VALUE If successful, the return value will be the semaphore set identifier (a nonnegative integer), otherwise, \-1 is returned, with .I errno indicating the error. .SH ERRORS On failure, .I errno will be set to one of the following: .TP .B EACCES A semaphore set exists for .IR key , but the calling process does not have permission to access the set, and does not have the .B CAP_IPC_OWNER capability in the user namespace that governs its IPC namespace. .TP .B EEXIST .B IPC_CREAT and .BR IPC_EXCL were specified in .IR semflg , but a semaphore set already exists for .IR key . .\" .TP .\" .B EIDRM .\" The semaphore set is marked to be deleted. .TP .B EINVAL .I nsems is less than 0 or greater than the limit on the number of semaphores per semaphore set .RB ( SEMMSL ). .TP .B EINVAL A semaphore set corresponding to .I key already exists, but .I nsems is larger than the number of semaphores in that set. .TP .B ENOENT No semaphore set exists for .I key and .I semflg did not specify .BR IPC_CREAT . .TP .B ENOMEM A semaphore set has to be created but the system does not have enough memory for the new data structure. .TP .B ENOSPC A semaphore set has to be created but the system limit for the maximum number of semaphore sets .RB ( SEMMNI ), or the system wide maximum number of semaphores .RB ( SEMMNS ), would be exceeded. .SH CONFORMING TO SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. .\" SVr4 documents additional error conditions EFBIG, E2BIG, EAGAIN, .\" ERANGE, EFAULT. .SH NOTES The inclusion of .I and .I isn't required on Linux or by any version of POSIX. However, some old implementations required the inclusion of these header files, and the SVID also documented their inclusion. Applications intended to be portable to such old systems may need to include these header files. .\" Like Linux, the FreeBSD man pages still document .\" the inclusion of these header files. .PP .B IPC_PRIVATE isn't a flag field but a .I key_t type. If this special value is used for .IR key , the system call ignores all but the least significant 9 bits of .I semflg and creates a new semaphore set (on success). .\" .SS Semaphore initialization The values of the semaphores in a newly created set are indeterminate. (POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2008 are explicit on this point, although POSIX.1-2008 notes that a future version of the standard may require an implementation to initialize the semaphores to 0.) Although Linux, like many other implementations, initializes the semaphore values to 0, a portable application cannot rely on this: it should explicitly initialize the semaphores to the desired values. .\" In truth, every one of the many implementations that I've tested sets .\" the values to zero, but I suppose there is/was some obscure .\" implementation out there that does not. .PP Initialization can be done using .BR semctl (2) .B SETVAL or .B SETALL operation. Where multiple peers do not know who will be the first to initialize the set, checking for a nonzero .I sem_otime in the associated data structure retrieved by a .BR semctl (2) .B IPC_STAT operation can be used to avoid races. .\" .SS Semaphore limits The following limits on semaphore set resources affect the .BR semget () call: .TP .B SEMMNI System-wide limit on the number of semaphore sets. On Linux systems before version 3.19, the default value for this limit was 128. Since Linux 3.19, .\" commit e843e7d2c88b7db107a86bd2c7145dc715c058f4 the default value is 32,000. On Linux, this limit can be read and modified via the fourth field of .IR /proc/sys/kernel/sem . .\" This /proc file is not available in Linux 2.2 and earlier -- MTK .TP .B SEMMSL Maximum number of semaphores per semaphore ID. On Linux systems before version 3.19, the default value for this limit was 250. Since Linux 3.19, .\" commit e843e7d2c88b7db107a86bd2c7145dc715c058f4 the default value is 32,000. On Linux, this limit can be read and modified via the first field of .IR /proc/sys/kernel/sem . .TP .B SEMMNS System-wide limit on the number of semaphores: policy dependent (on Linux, this limit can be read and modified via the second field of .IR /proc/sys/kernel/sem ). Note that the number of semaphores system-wide is also limited by the product of .B SEMMSL and .BR SEMMNI . .SH BUGS The name choice .B IPC_PRIVATE was perhaps unfortunate, .B IPC_NEW would more clearly show its function. .SH SEE ALSO .BR semctl (2), .BR semop (2), .BR ftok (3), .BR capabilities (7), .BR sem_overview (7), .BR svipc (7) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 4.16 of the Linux .I man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at \%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.