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SEMOP(2) System Calls Manual SEMOP(2)

semopsemaphore operations

#include <sys/sem.h>


semop() provides a number of atomic operations on a set of semaphores. The semaphore set is specified by semid. sops is an array of semaphore operations, nsops is the number of operations in this array. The sembuf structures in the array contain the following members:

        u_short sem_num;        /* semaphore # */
        short   sem_op;         /* semaphore operation */
        short   sem_flg;        /* operation flags */

Each operation (specified in sem_op) is applied to semaphore number sem_num in the set of semaphores specified by semid. The value of sem_op determines the action taken in the following way:

The behavior of each operation is influenced by the flags set in sem_flg in the following way:

In the case where the calling process would normally block, waiting for a semaphore to reach a certain value, IPC_NOWAIT makes the call return immediately, returning a value of -1 and setting errno to EAGAIN.
Keep track of the changes that this call makes to the value of a semaphore, so that they can be undone when the calling process terminates. This is useful to prevent other processes waiting on a semaphore to block forever, should the process that has the semaphore locked terminate in a critical section.


semop() will fail if:

There is no semaphore associated with semid.
The semaphore set was removed while the process was waiting for one of its semaphores to reach a certain value.
The calling process has no permission to access the specified semaphore set.
The value of nsops is too big. The maximum is specified in MAX_SOPS in <sys/sem.h>.
sem_num in one of the sem_buf structures is less than 0, or greater than the actual number of semaphores in the set specified by semid.
was requested, and there is not enough space left in the kernel to store the undo information.
The requested operation cannot immediately be performed, and IPC_NOWAIT was set in sem_flg.
sops points to an illegal address.

semctl(2), semget(2)

November 1, 2015 OpenBSD-current