ipc(2) — Linux manual page

 ipc(2) System Calls Manual ipc(2) 

NAME         top

 ipc - System V IPC system calls 

LIBRARY         top

 Standard C library (libc, -lc) 

SYNOPSIS         top

 #include <linux/ipc.h> /* Definition of needed constants */ #include <sys/syscall.h> /* Definition of SYS_* constants */ #include <unistd.h> int syscall(SYS_ipc, unsigned int call, int first, unsigned long second, unsigned long third, void *ptr, long fifth); Note: glibc provides no wrapper for ipc(), necessitating the use of syscall(2). 

DESCRIPTION         top

 ipc() is a common kernel entry point for the System V IPC calls for messages, semaphores, and shared memory. call determines which IPC function to invoke; the other arguments are passed through to the appropriate call. User-space programs should call the appropriate functions by their usual names. Only standard library implementors and kernel hackers need to know about ipc(). 

VERSIONS         top

 On some architectures—for example x86-64 and ARM—there is no ipc() system call; instead, msgctl(2), semctl(2), shmctl(2), and so on really are implemented as separate system calls. 

STANDARDS         top

 Linux. 

SEE ALSO         top

 msgctl(2), msgget(2), msgrcv(2), msgsnd(2), semctl(2), semget(2), semop(2), semtimedop(2), shmat(2), shmctl(2), shmdt(2), shmget(2), sysvipc(7) 

COLOPHON         top

 This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library user-space interface documentation) project. Information about the project can be found at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual page, see ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩. This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz fetched from ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on 2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up- to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17 ipc(2) 

Pages that refer to this page: semctl(2),  syscalls(2),  unimplemented(2),  seccomp_syscall_resolve_name(3),  sysvipc(7)

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