man-pages/man2/userfaultfd.2

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.\" FIXME Need to describe close(2) semantics for userfaulfd file descriptor
.\"
.TH USERFAULTFD 2 2016-12-12 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
userfaultfd \- create a file descriptor for handling page faults in user space
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <sys/types.h>
.sp
.BI "int userfaultfd(int " flags );
.fi
.PP
.IR Note :
There is no glibc wrapper for this system call; see NOTES.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR userfaultfd ()
creates a new userfaultfd object that can be used for delegation of page-fault
handling to a user-space application,
and returns a file descriptor that refers to the new object.
The new userfaultfd object is configured using
.BR ioctl (2).

Once the userfaultfd object is configured, the application can use
.BR read (2)
to receive userfaultfd notifications.
The reads from userfaultfd may be blocking or non-blocking,
depending on the value of
.I flags
used for the creation of the userfaultfd or subsequent calls to
.BR fcntl (2).

The following values may be bitwise ORed in
.IR flags
to change the behavior of
.BR userfaultfd ():
.TP
.BR O_CLOEXEC
Enable the close-on-exec flag for the new userfaultfd file descriptor.
See the description of the
.B O_CLOEXEC
flag in
.BR open (2).
.TP
.BR O_NONBLOCK
Enables non-blocking operation for the userfaultfd object.
See the description of the
.BR O_NONBLOCK
flag in
.BR open (2).
.\"
.SS Usage
The userfaultfd mechanism is designed to allow a thread in a multithreaded
program to perform user-space paging for the other threads in the process.
When a page fault occurs for one of the regions registered
to the userfaultfd object,
the faulting thread is put to sleep and
an event is generated that can be read via the userfaultfd file descriptor.
The fault-handling thread reads events from this file descriptor and services
them using the operations described in
.BR ioctl_userfaultfd (2).
When servicing the page fault events,
the fault-handling thread can trigger a wake-up for the sleeping thread.
.\"
.SS Userfaultfd operation
After the userfaultfd object is created with
.BR userfaultfd (),
the application must enable it using the
.B UFFDIO_API
.BR ioctl (2)
operation.
This operation allows a handshake between the kernel and user space
to determine the API version and supported features.
This operation must be performed before any of the other
.BR ioctl (2)
operations described below (or those operations fail with the
.BR EINVAL
error).

After a successful
.B UFFDIO_API
operation,
the application then registers memory address ranges using the
.B UFFDIO_REGISTER
.BR ioctl (2)
operation.
After successful completion of a
.B UFFDIO_REGISTER
operation,
a page fault occurring in the requested memory range, and satisfying
the mode defined at the registration time, will be forwarded by the kernel to
the user-space application.
The application can then use the
.B UFFDIO_COPY
or
.B UFFDIO_ZERO
.BR ioctl (2)
operations to resolve the page fault.

Details of the various
.BR ioctl (2)
operations can be found in
.BR ioctl_userfaultfd (2).

Currently, userfaultfd can be used only with anonymous private memory
mappings.
.\"
.SS Reading from the userfaultfd structure
.\" FIXME are the details below correct
Each
.BR read (2)
from the userfaultfd file descriptor returns one or more
.I uffd_msg
structures, each of which describes a page-fault event:

.nf
.in +4n
struct uffd_msg {
    __u8  event;                /* Type of event */
    ...
    union {
        struct { 
            __u64 flags;        /* Flags describing fault */
            __u64 address;      /* Faulting address */
        } pagefault;
	...
    } arg;

    /* Padding fields omitted */
} __packed;
.in
.fi

If multiple events are available and the supplied buffer is large enough,
.BR read (2)
returns as many events as will fit in the supplied buffer.
If the buffer supplied to
.BR read (2)
is smaller than the size of the
.I uffd_msg
structure, the
.BR read (2)
fails with the error
.BR EINVAL .

The fields set in the
.I uffd_msg
structure are as follows:
.TP
.I event
The type of event.
Currently, only one value can appear in this field:
.BR UFFD_EVENT_PAGEFAULT ,
which indicates a page-fault event.
.TP
.I address
The address that triggered the page fault.
.TP
.I flags
A bit mask of flags that describe the event.
For
.BR UFFD_EVENT_PAGEFAULT ,
the following flag may appear:
.RS
.TP
.B UFFD_PAGEFAULT_FLAG_WRITE
If the address is in a range that was registered with the
.B UFFDIO_REGISTER_MODE_MISSING
flag (see
.BR ioctl_userfaultfd (2))
and this flag is set, this a write fault;
otherwise it is a read fault.
.\"
.\" UFFD_PAGEFAULT_FLAG_WP is not yet supported.
.RE
.PP
The userfaultfd file descriptor can be monitored with
.BR poll (2),
.BR select (2),
and
.BR epoll (7).
When events are available, the file descriptor indicates as readable.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success,
.BR userfaultfd ()
returns a new file descriptor that refers to the userfaultfd object.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EINVAL
An unsupported value was specified in
.IR flags .
.TP
.BR EMFILE
The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been
reached
.TP
.B ENFILE
The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
reached.
.TP
.B ENOMEM
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
.SH VERSIONS
The
.BR userfaultfd ()
system call first appeared in Linux 4.3.
.SH CONFORMING TO
.BR userfaultfd ()
is Linux-specific and should not be used in programs intended to be
portable.
.SH NOTES
Glibc does not provide a wrapper for this system call; call it using
.BR syscall (2).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR fcntl (2),
.BR ioctl (2),
.BR ioctl_userfaultfd (2),
.BR mmap (2)

.IR Documentation/vm/userfaultfd.txt
in the Linux kernel source tree