Mailbox

A mailbox is a pseudo device used for interprocess communication and synchronization. The device code for mailboxes is MBAn.

Mailbox characteristics

Mailboxes can store a certain amount of information to be shared between processes, signal to a process when there is information to be read by that process. There is also a queueing mechanism for when multiple messages are being written to a mailbox. Multiple channels can be assigned to a mailbox. Mailboxes can be permanent and temporary. Temporary mailboxes are deleted when all channels to the mailbox have been deassigned; permanent mailboxes must be explicitly deleted. Mailboxes can have many writers and many readers. Mailboxes have a "size" determined by the buffer quota.

Protection

Mailboxes have four kinds of access: read (R), write (W), logical I/O (L), and or physical I/O (P).

Privileges

• TMPMBX is required to create temporary mailboxes
• PRMMBX is required to create permanent mailboxes
• SYSNAM or GRPNAM are required to place the logical name for the mailbox in the appropriate table

See also

• | OpenVMS Programming Concepts
• | OpenVMS System Services Reference Manual
• | OpenVMS I/O User’s Reference Manual
• OpenVMS Mailboxes: Concepts, Implementation, and Troubleshooting by Bruce Ellis for OpenVMS Technical Journal V9: