ipcmk(1)

ipcmk1

Make various ipc resources

Usage

ipcmk [options]

Overview

ipcmk allows you to create POSIX and System V inter-process communication (IPC) objects: shared memory segments, message queues, and semaphore (arrays for System V).

Options

Resources can be specified with these options:

-M, --shmem size

Create a shared memory segment of size bytes. The size argument may be followed by the multiplicative suffixes KiB (=1024), MiB (=1024*1024), and so on for GiB, etc. (the "iB" is optional, e.g., "K" has the same meaning as "KiB") or the suffixes KB (=1000), MB (=1000*1000), and so on for GB, etc.

-m, --posix-shmem size

Create a POSIX shared memory segment of size bytes. The size argument may be followed by the multiplicative suffixes KiB (=1024), MiB (=1024*1024), and so on for GiB, etc. (the "iB" is optional, e.g., "K" has the same meaning as "KiB") or the suffixes KB (=1000), MB (=1000*1000), and so on for GB, etc.

-Q, --queue

Create a message queue.

-q, --posix-mqueue

Create a POSIX message queue.

-S, --semaphore number

Create a semaphore array with number of elements.

-s, --posix-semaphore

Create a POSIX named semaphore.

-n, --name name

Name of the POSIX IPC object. This option is mandatory for POSIX IPC objects.

Other options are:

-p, --mode mode

Access permissions for the resource. Default is 0644.

-h, --help

Display help text and exit.

-V, --version

Display version and exit.

Releases

9 releases since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); the text changed 8 times.

  1. 6.0
  2. 7
  3. 8
  4. 9
  5. 10
  6. 11
  7. 12
  8. 13
  9. Arch

--help since Debian 8 (Jessie); --mode since Debian 8 (Jessie); --name since Debian 13 (Trixie); --posix-mqueue since Debian 13 (Trixie); --posix-semaphore since Debian 13 (Trixie); --posix-shmem since Debian 13 (Trixie); --queue since Debian 8 (Jessie); --semaphore since Debian 8 (Jessie); --shmem since Debian 8 (Jessie); --version since Debian 8 (Jessie); -M since Debian 8 (Jessie); -S since Debian 8 (Jessie); -V since Debian 8 (Jessie); -m since Debian 13 (Trixie); -n since Debian 13 (Trixie); -p since Debian 8 (Jessie); -q since Debian 13 (Trixie); -s since Debian 13 (Trixie).

Authors

Hayden A. James <[email protected]>, Prasanna Paithankar <[email protected]>

Reporting bugs

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

Availability

The ipcmk 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/>.

From util-linux 2.42.4-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.