Shared memory and malloc

[Greg Hunt]

In article <647 at voodoo.UUCP>, howie at voodoo.voodoo.uucp (howie) writes:
> 
> Here's a question for someone with experience with shared memory (and
> malloc).
> 
> I have a pointer in a segment, shared by two processes.  If one of the 
> processes does a malloc() using that pointer, will the other process have 
> access to that portion of memory that has been malloced.

No, I'm afraid not.  The malloc() call allocates unshared space
from the calling process's stack or heap.  That memory can only be
used by the calling process itself, the other processes cannot see
that memory since it's not in their process.

To do what you want, you have to set aside a portion of the shared
memory segment that both processes share as a shared "heap", and
write your own routines to parcel out that shared memory.  This
means you need to write your own versions of malloc() and free()
that operate on shared memory (call them something else to avoid
interfering with the standard malloc() and free()).

If that sounds too complex to you, I'd suggest that you set aside
portions of the shared memory segment when you initially set it up
that are the right sizes for what you need.  Then have one of the
processes compute and store the pointers to the areas before either
of them want to use the areas.  This will give you "static" areas
that you can use.

Remember that using pointers in shared memory segments assumes that
all of the processes attach the segment at the same virtual address
in their address spaces.  If you don't ensure this, then the pointers
will point to different places, and that'll surely mess things up.

I always use offsets from the beginning the segment and compute the
pointers I need by adding the offset to the attach address in this
process.  If I need to access the pointers often, I'll save them in
global pointers and compute them just once.  This avoids the problems
caused by different processes attaching the shared memory to different
addresses in their process space.

Shared memory can be used to solve lots of problems, but sometimes
it's not easy to set it up the right way.  Good luck.

--
Greg Hunt                        Internet: hunt at dg-rtp.rtp.dg.com
DG/UX Kernel Development         UUCP:     {world}!mcnc!rti!dg-rtp!hunt
Data General Corporation
Research Triangle Park, NC, USA  These opinions are mine, not DG's.