ipcs
—
report System V interprocess communication facilities
status
The ipcs
program provides information on System V
interprocess communication (IPC) facilities on the system.
The options are as follows:
-a
- Show the maximum amount of information possible when displaying active
semaphores, message queues, and shared memory segments. (This is shorthand
for specifying the
-b
, -c
,
-o
, -p
, and
-t
options.)
-b
- Show the maximum allowed sizes for active semaphores, message queues, and
shared memory segments. The “maximum allowed size” is the
maximum number of bytes in a message on a message queue, the size of a
shared memory segment, or the number of semaphores in a set of
semaphores.
-c
- Show the creator's name and group for active semaphores, message queues,
and shared memory segments.
-m
- Display information about active shared memory segments.
-o
- Show outstanding usage for active message queues, and shared memory
segments. The “outstanding usage” is the number of messages
in a message queue, or the number of processes attached to a shared memory
segment.
-p
- Show the process ID information for active semaphores, message queues, and
shared memory segments. The “process ID information” is the
last process to send a message to or receive a message from a message
queue, the process that created a semaphore, or the last process to attach
or detach a shared memory segment.
-q
- Display information about active message queues.
-s
- Display information about active semaphores.
-t
- Show access times for active semaphores, message queues, and shared memory
segments. The access times is the time of the last control operation on an
IPC object, the last send or receive of a message, the last attach or
detach of a shared memory segment, or the last operation on a
semaphore.
-M
- Display system information about shared memory.
-Q
- Display system information about messages queues.
-S
- Display system information about semaphores.
-T
- Display system information about shared memory, message queues and
semaphores. (This is shorthand for specifying the
-M
, -Q
, and
-S
options.)
If none of the -M
,
-m
, -Q
,
-q
, -S
,
-s
, or -T
options are
specified, information about all active IPC facilities is listed.
System data structures may change while ipcs
is running;
the output of ipcs
is not guaranteed to be consistent.
This manual page is woefully incomplete, because it does not at all attempt to
explain the information printed by ipcs
.