FLOCK(2)		   Linux Programmer's Manual		      FLOCK(2)



NAME
       flock - apply or remove an advisory lock on an open file

SYNOPSIS
       #include <sys/file.h>

       int flock(int fd, int operation);

DESCRIPTION
       Apply or remove an advisory lock on the open file specified by fd.  The
       argument operation is one of the following:

	   LOCK_SH  Place a shared lock.  More than one	 process  may  hold  a
		    shared lock for a given file at a given time.

	   LOCK_EX  Place  an  exclusive  lock.	  Only one process may hold an
		    exclusive lock for a given file at a given time.

	   LOCK_UN  Remove an existing lock held by this process.

       A call to flock() may block if an incompatible lock is held by  another
       process.	  To  make  a  nonblocking request, include LOCK_NB (by ORing)
       with any of the above operations.

       A single file may not simultaneously have  both	shared	and  exclusive
       locks.

       Locks  created  by flock() are associated with an open file description
       (see open(2)).  This means that duplicate file descriptors (created by,
       for  example,  fork(2) or dup(2)) refer to the same lock, and this lock
       may be modified or released using any of these file descriptors.	  Fur-
       thermore,  the lock is released either by an explicit LOCK_UN operation
       on any of these duplicate file  descriptors,  or	 when  all  such  file
       descriptors have been closed.

       If  a  process  uses  open(2) (or similar) to obtain more than one file
       descriptor for the same file, these file descriptors are treated	 inde-
       pendently  by  flock().	An attempt to lock the file using one of these
       file descriptors may be denied by a lock that the calling  process  has
       already placed via another file descriptor.

       A  process  may	hold  only one type of lock (shared or exclusive) on a
       file.  Subsequent flock() calls on an already locked file will  convert
       an existing lock to the new lock mode.

       Locks created by flock() are preserved across an execve(2).

       A  shared  or  exclusive lock can be placed on a file regardless of the
       mode in which the file was opened.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and  errno  is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EBADF  fd is not an open file descriptor.

       EINTR  While  waiting  to  acquire  a lock, the call was interrupted by
	      delivery of a signal caught by a handler; see signal(7).

       EINVAL operation is invalid.

       ENOLCK The kernel ran out of memory for allocating lock records.

       EWOULDBLOCK
	      The file is locked and the LOCK_NB flag was selected.

CONFORMING TO
       4.4BSD (the flock() call first  appeared	 in  4.2BSD).	A  version  of
       flock(),	 possibly  implemented	in  terms of fcntl(2), appears on most
       UNIX systems.

NOTES
       Since kernel 2.0, flock() is implemented as a system call  in  its  own
       right  rather  than  being  emulated  in the GNU C library as a call to
       fcntl(2).  With this implementation, there is  no  interaction  between
       the  types of lock placed by flock() and fcntl(2), and flock() does not
       detect deadlock.	 (Note, however, that on some  systems,	 such  as  the
       modern BSDs, flock() and fcntl(2) locks do interact with one another.)

       In  Linux  kernels  up  to 2.6.11, flock() does not lock files over NFS
       (i.e., the scope of locks was limited to the local  system).   Instead,
       one  could  use	fcntl(2) byte-range locking, which does work over NFS,
       given a sufficiently recent version of Linux and a  server  which  sup-
       ports  locking.	 Since Linux 2.6.12, NFS clients support flock() locks
       by emulating them as byte-range locks on the entire file.   This	 means
       that  fcntl(2) and flock() locks do interact with one another over NFS.
       Since Linux 2.6.37, the	kernel	supports  a  compatibility  mode  that
       allows  flock()	locks  (and  also  fcntl(2)  byte  region locks) to be
       treated as local; see  the  discussion  of  the	local_lock  option  in
       nfs(5).

       flock()	places	advisory  locks	 only; given suitable permissions on a
       file, a process is free to ignore the use of flock() and perform I/O on
       the file.

       flock()	and  fcntl(2)  locks  have different semantics with respect to
       forked processes and dup(2).  On systems that implement	flock()	 using
       fcntl(2),  the  semantics  of  flock()  will  be	 different  from those
       described in this manual page.

       Converting a lock (shared to exclusive, or vice versa) is  not  guaran-
       teed  to	 be atomic: the existing lock is first removed, and then a new
       lock is established.  Between these two steps, a pending	 lock  request
       by  another process may be granted, with the result that the conversion
       either blocks, or fails if LOCK_NB was specified.  (This is the	origi-
       nal BSD behavior, and occurs on many other implementations.)

SEE ALSO
       flock(1),  close(2),  dup(2),  execve(2),  fcntl(2),  fork(2), open(2),
       lockf(3), lslocks(8)

       Documentation/filesystems/locks.txt in the  Linux  kernel  source  tree
       (Documentation/locks.txt in older kernels)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 4.10 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs,  and  the
       latest	  version     of     this    page,    can    be	   found    at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2016-03-15			      FLOCK(2)