Does the OS (POSIX) flush a memory-mapped file if the process is SIGKILLed?

Question

If a process is killed with SIGKILL, will the changes it has made to a memory-mapped file be flushed to disk? I assume that if the OS ensures a memory-mapped file is flushed to disk when the process is killed via SIGKILL, then it will also do so with other terminating signals (SIGABRT, SIGSEGV, etc...).

Answer 1

It will depend on whether the memory-mapped file is opened with modifications private (MAP_PRIVATE) or not (MAP_SHARED). If private, then no; the modifications will not be written back to disk. If shared, the kernel buffer pool contains the modified buffers, and these will be written to disk in due course - regardless of the cause of death.