Pipe buffer size is 4k or 64k? Pipe buffer size is 4k or 64k? c c

Pipe buffer size is 4k or 64k?


The other answers tell you that the pipe size is 64 KB. The reason why PIPE_BUF is 4KB is that PIPE_BUF is the largest size for which writes are guaranteed to be atomic. See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/write.html


It's programmable now


As of Linux 2.6.35 you can use fcntl(2) with the F_SETPIPE_SZ operation to set the pipe buffer up to /proc/sys/fs/pipe-max-size. This is by default 1 MB; see proc(5).


In my experience, the single write test produced a total size of 65536, yet when I wrote 2700 at a time, I could only write 16 times, and then the next attempt stalls. I figure that the 'atomic' write needs to be within one 4K block, and that for each of my writes, it goes to the next full block to satisfy the request. So, in effect, the useable pipe size depends on the size of your writes.