#include <sys/mman.h> int mprotect(const void *addr, size_t len, int prot);
If the calling process tries to access memory in a manner that violates the protection, then the kernel generates a SIGSEGV signal for the process.
prot is either PROT_NONE or a bitwise-or of the other values in the following list:
Whether PROT_EXEC has any effect different from PROT_READ is architecture- and kernel version-dependent. On some hardware architectures (e.g., i386), PROT_WRITE implies PROT_READ.
POSIX.1-2001 says that an implementation may permit access other than that specified in prot, but at a minimum can only allow write access if PROT_WRITE has been set, and must not allow any access if PROT_NONE has been set.
The program below allocates four pages of memory, makes the third of these pages read-only, and then executes a loop that walks upwards through the allocated region modifying bytes.
An example of what we might see when running the program is the following:
$ ./a.out Start of region: 0x804c000 Got SIGSEGV at address: 0x804e000
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <malloc.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#define handle_error(msg) \
do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } while (0)
char *buffer;
static void
handler(int sig, siginfo_t *si, void *unused)
{
printf("Got SIGSEGV at address: 0x%lx\n",
(long) si->si_addr);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *p;
int pagesize;
struct sigaction sa;
sa.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO;
sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
sa.sa_sigaction = handler;
if (sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sa, NULL) == -1)
handle_error("sigaction");
pagesize = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE);
if (pagesize == -1)
handle_error("sysconf");
/* Allocate a buffer aligned on a page boundary;
initial protection is PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE */
buffer = memalign(pagesize, 4 * pagesize);
if (buffer == NULL)
handle_error("memalign");
printf("Start of region: 0x%lx\n", (long) buffer);
if (mprotect(buffer + pagesize * 2, pagesize,
PROT_NONE) == -1)
handle_error("mprotect");
for (p = buffer ; ; )
*(p++) = 'a';
printf("Loop completed\n"); /* Should never happen */
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}