ipcrm(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTES | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY

IPCRM(1)                      User Commands                      IPCRM(1)

NAME         top

       ipcrm - remove certain IPC resources

SYNOPSIS         top

       ipcrm [options]

       ipcrm [shm|msg|sem] ID ...

DESCRIPTION         top

       ipcrm removes System V inter-process communication (IPC) objects
       and associated data structures from the system. In order to delete
       such objects, you must be superuser, or the creator or owner of
       the object.

       System V IPC objects are of three types: shared memory, message
       queues, and semaphores. Deletion of a message queue or semaphore
       object is immediate (regardless of whether any process still holds
       an IPC identifier for the object). A shared memory object is only
       removed after all currently attached processes have detached (‐
       shmdt(2)) the object from their virtual address space.

       Two syntax styles are supported. The old Linux historical syntax
       specifies a three-letter keyword indicating which class of object
       is to be deleted, followed by one or more IPC identifiers for
       objects of this type.

       The SUS-compliant syntax allows the specification of zero or more
       objects of all three types in a single command line, with objects
       specified either by key or by identifier (see below). Both keys
       and identifiers may be specified in decimal, hexadecimal
       (specified with an initial '0x' or '0X'), or octal (specified with
       an initial '0').

       The details of the removes are described in shmctl(2), msgctl(2),
       and semctl(2). The identifiers and keys can be found by using
       ipcs(1).

OPTIONS         top

       -a, --all [shm] [msg] [sem]
           Remove all resources. When an option argument is provided, the
           removal is performed only for the specified resource types.

           Warning! Do not use -a if you are unsure how the software
           using the resources might react to missing objects. Some
           programs create these resources at startup and may not have
           any code to deal with an unexpected disappearance.

       -M, --shmem-key shmkey
           Remove the shared memory segment created with shmkey after the
           last detach is performed.

       -m, --shmem-id shmid
           Remove the shared memory segment identified by shmid after the
           last detach is performed.

       -Q, --queue-key msgkey
           Remove the message queue created with msgkey.

       -q, --queue-id msgid
           Remove the message queue identified by msgid.

       -S, --semaphore-key semkey
           Remove the semaphore created with semkey.

       -s, --semaphore-id semid
           Remove the semaphore identified by semid.

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Print version and exit.

NOTES         top

       In its first Linux implementation, ipcrm used the deprecated
       syntax shown in the second line of the SYNOPSIS. Functionality
       present in other *nix implementations of ipcrm has since been
       added, namely the ability to delete resources by key (not just
       identifier), and to respect the same command-line syntax. For
       backward compatibility the previous syntax is still supported.

SEE ALSO         top

       ipcmk(1), ipcs(1), msgctl(2), msgget(2), semctl(2), semget(2),
       shmctl(2), shmdt(2), shmget(2), ftok(3), sysvipc(7)

REPORTING BUGS         top

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY         top

       The ipcrm command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
       part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
       project. Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2025-02-02. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2025-01-30.) 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

util-linux 2.41.devel-938-0a... 2025-01-15                       IPCRM(1)

Pages that refer to this page: ipcmk(1)ipcs(1)lsipc(1)pcp-ipcs(1)sysvipc(7)