Opensource.com A guide to inter-process communication in Linux Learn how processes synchronize with each other in Linux. By Marty Kalin . A GUIDE TO INTER-PROCESS COMMUNICATION IN LINUX . CC BY-SA 4.0 . OPENSOURCE.COM 1 OPENSOURCE.COM ..................................................................... ABOUT OPENSOURCE.COM What is Opensource.com? publishes stories about creating, OPENSOURCE.COM adopting, and sharing open source solutions. Visit Opensource.com to learn more about how the open source way is improving technologies, education, business, government, health, law, entertainment, humanitarian efforts, and more. Submit a story idea: opensource.com/story Email us:
[email protected] . 2 A GUIDE TO INTER-PROCESS COMMUNICATION IN LINUX . CC BY-SA 4.0 . OPENSOURCE.COM . ABOUT THE AUTHOR MARTY KALIN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE (College of Computing and I ’M AN ACADEMIC Digital Media, DePaul University) with wide experience in software development, mostly in production planning and scheduling (steel industry) and product configuration (truck and bus manufacturing). Details on books and other publications are available at: Marty Kalin’s hompage FO OLL W MARTY KALIN T witter: @kalin_martin . A GUIDE TO INTER-PROCESS COMMUNICATION IN LINUX . CC BY-SA 4.0 . OPENSOURCE.COM 3 OPENSOURCE.COM ..................................................................... INTRODUCTION Introduction 5 CHAPTERS Shared storage 6 Using pipes and message queues 12 Sockets and signals 19 Wrapping up this guide 24 GET INVOLVED | ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Write for Us 25 . 4 A GUIDE TO INTER-PROCESS COMMUNICATION IN LINUX . CC BY-SA 4.0 . OPENSOURCE.COM . INTRODUCTION Introduction interprocess communication (ipc) in Linux. The THIS GUIDE IS AboUT guide uses code examples in C to clarify the following IPC mechanisms: • Shared files • Shared memory (with semaphores) • Pipes (named and unnamed) • Message queues • Sockets • Signals I’ll introduce you to some core concepts before moving on to the first two of these mech- anisms: shared files and shared memory.