.\" Copyright 1993 Giorgio Ciucci (giorgio@crcc.it) .\" and Copyright 2004, 2005 Michael Kerrisk .\" .\" %%%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 .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.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 08:11:14 EDT 1996 by Eric S. Raymond .\" Modified Sun Feb 18 01:59:29 2001 by Andries E. Brouwer .\" Modified, 27 May 2004, Michael Kerrisk .\" Added notes on CAP_IPC_OWNER requirement .\" Modified, 17 Jun 2004, Michael Kerrisk .\" Added notes on CAP_SYS_ADMIN requirement for IPC_SET and IPC_RMID .\" Modified, 11 Nov 2004, Michael Kerrisk .\" Language and formatting clean-ups .\" Added msqid_ds and ipc_perm structure definitions .\" 2005-08-02, mtk: Added IPC_INFO, MSG_INFO, MSG_STAT descriptions .\" 2018-03-20, dbueso: Added MSG_STAT_ANY description. .\" .TH MSGCTL 2 2020-11-01 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME msgctl \- System V message control operations .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .B #include .B #include .B #include .PP .BI "int msgctl(int " msqid ", int " cmd ", struct msqid_ds *" buf ); .fi .SH DESCRIPTION .BR msgctl () performs the control operation specified by .I cmd on the System\ V message queue with identifier .IR msqid . .PP The .I msqid_ds data structure is defined in \fI\fP as follows: .PP .in +4n .EX struct msqid_ds { struct ipc_perm msg_perm; /* Ownership and permissions */ time_t msg_stime; /* Time of last msgsnd(2) */ time_t msg_rtime; /* Time of last msgrcv(2) */ time_t msg_ctime; /* Time of creation or last modification by msgctl() */ unsigned long msg_cbytes; /* # of bytes in queue */ msgqnum_t msg_qnum; /* # number of messages in queue */ msglen_t msg_qbytes; /* Maximum # of bytes in queue */ pid_t msg_lspid; /* PID of last msgsnd(2) */ pid_t msg_lrpid; /* PID of last msgrcv(2) */ }; .EE .in .PP The fields of the .I msgid_ds structure are as follows: .TP 11 .I msg_perm This is an .I ipc_perm structure (see below) that specifies the access permissions on the message queue. .TP .I msg_stime Time of the last .BR msgsnd (2) system call. .TP .I msg_rtime Time of the last .BR msgrcv (2) system call. .TP .I msg_ctime Time of creation of queue or time of last .BR msgctl () .BR IPC_SET operation. .TP .I msg_cbytes Number of bytes in all messages currently on the message queue. This is a nonstandard Linux extension that is not specified in POSIX. .TP .I msg_qnum Number of messages currently on the message queue. .TP .I msg_qbytes Maximum number of bytes of message text allowed on the message queue. .TP .I msg_lspid ID of the process that performed the last .BR msgsnd (2) system call. .TP .I msg_lrpid ID of the process that performed the last .BR msgrcv (2) system call. .PP The .I ipc_perm structure is defined as follows (the highlighted fields are settable using .BR IPC_SET ): .PP .in +4n .EX struct ipc_perm { key_t __key; /* Key supplied to msgget(2) */ uid_t \fBuid\fP; /* Effective UID of owner */ gid_t \fBgid\fP; /* Effective GID of owner */ uid_t cuid; /* Effective UID of creator */ gid_t cgid; /* Effective GID of creator */ unsigned short \fBmode\fP; /* Permissions */ unsigned short __seq; /* Sequence number */ }; .EE .in .PP The least significant 9 bits of the .I mode field of the .I ipc_perm structure define the access permissions for the message queue. The permission bits are as follows: .TS l l. 0400 Read by user 0200 Write by user 0040 Read by group 0020 Write by group 0004 Read by others 0002 Write by others .TE .PP Bits 0100, 0010, and 0001 (the execute bits) are unused by the system. .PP Valid values for .I cmd are: .TP .B IPC_STAT Copy information from the kernel data structure associated with .I msqid into the .I msqid_ds structure pointed to by .IR buf . The caller must have read permission on the message queue. .TP .B IPC_SET Write the values of some members of the .I msqid_ds structure pointed to by .I buf to the kernel data structure associated with this message queue, updating also its .I msg_ctime member. .IP The following members of the structure are updated: .IR msg_qbytes , .IR msg_perm.uid , .IR msg_perm.gid , and (the least significant 9 bits of) .IR msg_perm.mode . .IP The effective UID of the calling process must match the owner .RI ( msg_perm.uid ) or creator .RI ( msg_perm.cuid ) of the message queue, or the caller must be privileged. Appropriate privilege (Linux: the .B CAP_SYS_RESOURCE capability) is required to raise the .I msg_qbytes value beyond the system parameter .BR MSGMNB . .TP .B IPC_RMID Immediately remove the message queue, awakening all waiting reader and writer processes (with an error return and .I errno set to .BR EIDRM ). The calling process must have appropriate privileges or its effective user ID must be either that of the creator or owner of the message queue. The third argument to .BR msgctl () is ignored in this case. .TP .BR IPC_INFO " (Linux-specific)" Return information about system-wide message queue limits and parameters in the structure pointed to by .IR buf . This structure is of type .I msginfo (thus, a cast is required), defined in .I if the .B _GNU_SOURCE feature test macro is defined: .IP .in +4n .EX struct msginfo { int msgpool; /* Size in kibibytes of buffer pool used to hold message data; unused within kernel */ int msgmap; /* Maximum number of entries in message map; unused within kernel */ int msgmax; /* Maximum number of bytes that can be written in a single message */ int msgmnb; /* Maximum number of bytes that can be written to queue; used to initialize msg_qbytes during queue creation (msgget(2)) */ int msgmni; /* Maximum number of message queues */ int msgssz; /* Message segment size; unused within kernel */ int msgtql; /* Maximum number of messages on all queues in system; unused within kernel */ unsigned short msgseg; /* Maximum number of segments; unused within kernel */ }; .EE .in .IP The .IR msgmni , .IR msgmax , and .I msgmnb settings can be changed via .I /proc files of the same name; see .BR proc (5) for details. .TP .BR MSG_INFO " (Linux-specific)" Return a .I msginfo structure containing the same information as for .BR IPC_INFO , except that the following fields are returned with information about system resources consumed by message queues: the .I msgpool field returns the number of message queues that currently exist on the system; the .I msgmap field returns the total number of messages in all queues on the system; and the .I msgtql field returns the total number of bytes in all messages in all queues on the system. .TP .BR MSG_STAT " (Linux-specific)" Return a .I msqid_ds structure as for .BR IPC_STAT . However, the .I msqid argument is not a queue identifier, but instead an index into the kernel's internal array that maintains information about all message queues on the system. .TP .BR MSG_STAT_ANY " (Linux-specific, since Linux 4.17)" Return a .I msqid_ds structure as for .BR MSG_STAT . However, .I msg_perm.mode is not checked for read access for .IR msqid meaning that any user can employ this operation (just as any user may read .IR /proc/sysvipc/msg to obtain the same information). .SH RETURN VALUE On success, .BR IPC_STAT , .BR IPC_SET , and .B IPC_RMID return 0. A successful .B IPC_INFO or .B MSG_INFO operation returns the index of the highest used entry in the kernel's internal array recording information about all message queues. (This information can be used with repeated .B MSG_STAT or .B MSG_STAT_ANY operations to obtain information about all queues on the system.) A successful .B MSG_STAT or .B MSG_STAT_ANY operation returns the identifier of the queue whose index was given in .IR msqid . .PP On error, \-1 is returned with .I errno indicating the error. .SH ERRORS On failure, .I errno is set to one of the following: .TP .B EACCES The argument .I cmd is equal to .B IPC_STAT or .BR MSG_STAT , but the calling process does not have read permission on the message queue .IR msqid , and does not have the .B CAP_IPC_OWNER capability in the user namespace that governs its IPC namespace. .TP .B EFAULT The argument .I cmd has the value .B IPC_SET or .BR IPC_STAT , but the address pointed to by .I buf isn't accessible. .TP .B EIDRM The message queue was removed. .TP .B EINVAL Invalid value for .I cmd or .IR msqid . Or: for a .B MSG_STAT operation, the index value specified in .I msqid referred to an array slot that is currently unused. .TP .B EPERM The argument .I cmd has the value .B IPC_SET or .BR IPC_RMID , but the effective user ID of the calling process is not the creator (as found in .IR msg_perm.cuid ) or the owner (as found in .IR msg_perm.uid ) of the message queue, and the caller is not privileged (Linux: does not have the .B CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability). .TP .B EPERM An attempt .RB ( IPC_SET ) was made to increase .I msg_qbytes beyond the system parameter .BR MSGMNB , but the caller is not privileged (Linux: does not have the .B CAP_SYS_RESOURCE capability). .SH CONFORMING TO POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4. .\" SVID does not document the EIDRM error condition. .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 The .BR IPC_INFO , .BR MSG_STAT , and .B MSG_INFO operations are used by the .BR ipcs (1) program to provide information on allocated resources. In the future these may modified or moved to a .I /proc filesystem interface. .PP Various fields in the \fIstruct msqid_ds\fP were typed as .I short under Linux 2.2 and have become .I long under Linux 2.4. To take advantage of this, a recompilation under glibc-2.1.91 or later should suffice. (The kernel distinguishes old and new calls by an .B IPC_64 flag in .IR cmd .) .SH SEE ALSO .BR msgget (2), .BR msgrcv (2), .BR msgsnd (2), .BR capabilities (7), .BR mq_overview (7), .BR sysvipc (7) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 5.10 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/.