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FLOCK(2) BSD System Calls Manual FLOCK(2) NAME flock -- apply or remove an advisory lock on an open file LIBRARY Standard C Library (libc, -lc) SYNOPSIS #include <fcntl.h> #define LOCK_SH 1 /* shared lock */ #define LOCK_EX 2 /* exclusive lock */ #define LOCK_NB 4 /* don't block when locking */ #define LOCK_UN 8 /* unlock */ int flock(int fd, int operation); DESCRIPTION flock() applies or removes an advisory lock on the file associated with the file descriptor fd. A lock is applied by specifying an operation pa- rameter that is one of LOCK_SH or LOCK_EX with the optional addition of LOCK_NB. To unlock an existing lock operation should be LOCK_UN. Advisory locks allow cooperating processes to perform consistent opera- tions on files, but do not guarantee consistency (i.e., processes may still access files without using advisory locks possibly resulting in in- consistencies). The locking mechanism allows two types of locks: shared locks and exclusive locks. At any time multiple shared locks may be applied to a file, but at no time are multiple exclusive, or both shared and exclu- sive, locks allowed simultaneously on a file. A shared lock may be upgraded to an exclusive lock, and vice versa, sim- ply by specifying the appropriate lock type; this results in the previous lock being released and the new lock applied (possibly after other pro- cesses have gained and released the lock). Requesting a lock on an object that is already locked normally causes the caller to be blocked until the lock may be acquired. If LOCK_NB is in- cluded in operation, then this will not happen; instead the call will fail and the error EAGAIN will be returned. NOTES Locks are on files, not file descriptors. That is, file descriptors du- plicated through dup(2) or fork(2) do not result in multiple instances of a lock, but rather multiple references to a single lock. If a process holding a lock on a file forks and the child explicitly unlocks the file, the parent will lose its lock. Processes blocked awaiting a lock may be awakened by signals. RETURN VALUES Zero is returned if the operation was successful; on an error a -1 is re- turned and an error code is left in the global location errno. ERRORS The flock() call fails if: [EAGAIN] The file is locked and the LOCK_NB option was speci- fied. [EBADF] The argument fd is an invalid descriptor. [EINVAL] The argument operation does not include exactly one of LOCK_EX, LOCK_SH, or LOCK_UN. [EOPNOTSUPP] The argument fd refers to an object other than a file. SEE ALSO close(2), dup(2), execve(2), fork(2), open(2), flockfile(3), lockf(3) HISTORY The flock() function call appeared in 4.2BSD. BSD October 15, 2011 BSD
NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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