process_vm_readv(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

process_vm_readv(2)        System Calls Manual       process_vm_readv(2)

NAME         top

       process_vm_readv, process_vm_writev - transfer data between
       process address spaces

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/uio.h>

       ssize_t process_vm_readv(pid_t pid,
                              const struct iovec *local_iov,
                              unsigned long liovcnt,
                              const struct iovec *remote_iov,
                              unsigned long riovcnt,
                              unsigned long flags);
       ssize_t process_vm_writev(pid_t pid,
                              const struct iovec *local_iov,
                              unsigned long liovcnt,
                              const struct iovec *remote_iov,
                              unsigned long riovcnt,
                              unsigned long flags);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
   feature_test_macros(7)):

       process_vm_readv(), process_vm_writev():
           _GNU_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION         top

       These system calls transfer data between the address space of the
       calling process ("the local process") and the process identified
       by pid ("the remote process").  The data moves directly between
       the address spaces of the two processes, without passing through
       kernel space.

       The process_vm_readv() system call transfers data from the remote
       process to the local process.  The data to be transferred is
       identified by remote_iov and riovcnt: remote_iov is a pointer to
       an array describing address ranges in the process pid, and
       riovcnt specifies the number of elements in remote_iov.  The data
       is transferred to the locations specified by local_iov and
       liovcnt: local_iov is a pointer to an array describing address
       ranges in the calling process, and liovcnt specifies the number
       of elements in local_iov.

       The process_vm_writev() system call is the converse of
       process_vm_readv()—it transfers data from the local process to
       the remote process.  Other than the direction of the transfer,
       the arguments liovcnt, local_iov, riovcnt, and remote_iov have
       the same meaning as for process_vm_readv().

       The local_iov and remote_iov arguments point to an array of iovec
       structures, described in iovec(3type).

       Buffers are processed in array order.  This means that
       process_vm_readv() completely fills local_iov[0] before
       proceeding to local_iov[1], and so on.  Likewise, remote_iov[0]
       is completely read before proceeding to remote_iov[1], and so on.

       Similarly, process_vm_writev() writes out the entire contents of
       local_iov[0] before proceeding to local_iov[1], and it completely
       fills remote_iov[0] before proceeding to remote_iov[1].

       The lengths of remote_iov[i].iov_len and local_iov[i].iov_len do
       not have to be the same.  Thus, it is possible to split a single
       local buffer into multiple remote buffers, or vice versa.

       The flags argument is currently unused and must be set to 0.

       The values specified in the liovcnt and riovcnt arguments must be
       less than or equal to IOV_MAX (defined in <limits.h> or
       accessible via the call sysconf(_SC_IOV_MAX)).

       The count arguments and local_iov are checked before doing any
       transfers.  If the counts are too big, or local_iov is invalid,
       or the addresses refer to regions that are inaccessible to the
       local process, none of the vectors will be processed and an error
       will be returned immediately.

       Note, however, that these system calls do not check the memory
       regions in the remote process until just before doing the
       read/write.  Consequently, a partial read/write (see RETURN
       VALUE) may result if one of the remote_iov elements points to an
       invalid memory region in the remote process.  No further
       reads/writes will be attempted beyond that point.  Keep this in
       mind when attempting to read data of unknown length (such as C
       strings that are null-terminated) from a remote process, by
       avoiding spanning memory pages (typically 4 KiB) in a single
       remote iovec element.  (Instead, split the remote read into two
       remote_iov elements and have them merge back into a single write
       local_iov entry.  The first read entry goes up to the page
       boundary, while the second starts on the next page boundary.)

       Permission to read from or write to another process is governed
       by a ptrace access mode PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_REALCREDS check; see
       ptrace(2).

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, process_vm_readv() returns the number of bytes read
       and process_vm_writev() returns the number of bytes written.
       This return value may be less than the total number of requested
       bytes, if a partial read/write occurred.  (Partial transfers
       apply at the granularity of iovec elements.  These system calls
       won't perform a partial transfer that splits a single iovec
       element.)  The caller should check the return value to determine
       whether a partial read/write occurred.

       On error, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EFAULT The memory described by local_iov is outside the caller's
              accessible address space.

       EFAULT The memory described by remote_iov is outside the
              accessible address space of the process pid.

       EINVAL The sum of the iov_len values of either local_iov or
              remote_iov overflows a ssize_t value.

       EINVAL flags is not 0.

       EINVAL liovcnt or riovcnt is too large.

       ENOMEM Could not allocate memory for internal copies of the iovec
              structures.

       EPERM  The caller does not have permission to access the address
              space of the process pid.

       ESRCH  No process with ID pid exists.

STANDARDS         top

       Linux.

HISTORY         top

       Linux 3.2, glibc 2.15.

NOTES         top

       The data transfers performed by process_vm_readv() and
       process_vm_writev() are not guaranteed to be atomic in any way.

       These system calls were designed to permit fast message passing
       by allowing messages to be exchanged with a single copy operation
       (rather than the double copy that would be required when using,
       for example, shared memory or pipes).

EXAMPLES         top

       The following code sample demonstrates the use of
       process_vm_readv().  It reads 20 bytes at the address 0x10000
       from the process with PID 10 and writes the first 10 bytes into
       buf1 and the second 10 bytes into buf2.

       #define _GNU_SOURCE
       #include <stdlib.h>
       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <sys/uio.h>

       int
       main(void)
       {
           char          buf1[10];
           char          buf2[10];
           pid_t         pid = 10;    /* PID of remote process */
           ssize_t       nread;
           struct iovec  local[2];
           struct iovec  remote[1];

           local[0].iov_base = buf1;
           local[0].iov_len = 10;
           local[1].iov_base = buf2;
           local[1].iov_len = 10;
           remote[0].iov_base = (void *) 0x10000;
           remote[0].iov_len = 20;

           nread = process_vm_readv(pid, local, 2, remote, 1, 0);
           if (nread != 20)
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);

           exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

SEE ALSO         top

       readv(2), writev(2)

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-6.9.1.tar.gz
       fetched from
       ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
       2024-06-26.  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 6.9.1          2024-05-02            process_vm_readv(2)

Pages that refer to this page: process_madvise(2)ptrace(2)syscalls(2)capabilities(7)