The Linux Programming Interface

50VIRTUAL MEMORY OPERATIONS

This chapter looks at various system calls that perform operations on a process’s virtual address space:

• The mprotect() system call changes the protection on a region of virtual memory.

• The mlock() and mlockall() system calls lock a region of virtual memory into physical memory, thus preventing it from being swapped out.

• The mincore() system call allows a process to determine whether the pages in a region of virtual memory are resident in physical memory.

• The madvise() system call allows a process to advise the kernel about its future patterns of usage of a virtual memory region.

Some of these system calls find particular use in conjunction with shared memory regions (Chapters 48, 49, and 54), but they can ...