IPCS(1)

NAME
ipcs - show information on IPC facilities

SYNOPSIS

ipcs [options]

DESCRIPTION

ipcs shows information on System V inter-process communication facilities. By default it shows information about all three resources: shared memory segments, message queues, and semaphore arrays.

OPTIONS

-i, --id id
    Show full details on just the one resource element identified by id. This option needs to be combined with one of the three resource options: -m, -q or -s.

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

-V, --version
    Print version and exit.

  Resource options

-m, --shmems
    Write information about active shared memory segments.

-q, --queues
    Write information about active message queues.

-s, --semaphores
    Write information about active semaphore sets.

-a, --all
    Write information about all three resources (default).

  Output formats

Of these options only one takes effect: the last one specified.

-c, --creator
    Show creator and owner.

-l, --limits
    Show resource limits.

-p, --pid
    Show PIDs of creator and last operator.

-t, --time
    Write time information. The time of the last control operation that changed the access permissions for all facilities, the time of the last msgsnd(2) and msgrcv(2) operations on message queues, the time of the last shmat(2) and shmdt(2) operations on shared memory, and the time of the last semop(2) operation on semaphores.

-u, --summary
    Show status summary.

  Representation

These affect only the -l (--limits) option.

-b, --bytes
    Print the sizes in bytes rather than in a human-readable format.

    By default, the unit, sizes are expressed in, is byte, and unit prefixes are in power of 2^10 (1024). Abbreviations of symbols are exhibited truncated in order to reach a better readability, by exhibiting alone the first letter of them; examples: "1 KiB" and "1 MiB" are respectively exhibited as "1 K" and "1 M", then omitting on purpose the mention "iB", which is part of these abbreviations.

--human
    Print sizes in human-readable format.

CONFORMING TO

The Linux ipcs utility is not fully compatible to the POSIX ipcs utility. The Linux version does not support the POSIX -a, -b and -o options, but does support the -l and -u options not defined by POSIX. A portable application shall not use the -a, -b, -o, -l, and -u options.

NOTES

The current implementation of ipcs obtains information about available IPC resources by parsing the files in /proc/sysvipc. Before util-linux version v2.23, an alternate mechanism was used: the IPC_STAT command of msgctl(2), semctl(2), and shmctl(2). This mechanism is also used in later util-linux versions in the case where /proc is unavailable. A limitation of the IPC_STAT mechanism is that it can only be used to retrieve information about IPC resources for which the user has read permission.

AUTHORS

SEE ALSO

ipcmk(1), ipcrm(1), msgrcv(2), msgsnd(2), semget(2), semop(2), shmat(2), shmdt(2), shmget(2), sysvipc(7)

REPORTING BUGS

For bug reports, use the issue tracker at

AVAILABILITY

The ipcs command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from