Solaris™ Internals: Core Kernel Components

13.4. File System I/O

Two distinct methods perform file system I/O:

• read(), write(), and related system calls

• Memory-mapping of a file into the process's address space

Both methods are implemented the same way: a file is mapped into an address space and then paged I/O is performed on the pages within the mapped address space. Although it may be obvious that memory mapping is done when we memory-map a file into a process's address space, it is less obvious that the read() and write() system calls also map a file before reading or writing it. The major differences between these two methods are where the file is mapped and who does the mapping; a process calls mmap() to map the file into its address space for memory mapped I/O, and the kernel maps ...