... The call to accomplish this is the msgget() system call: int msgget(key_t key , int msgflg ); msgget() returns the message queue ID on success, or -1 on failure (and it sets errno , of course.) ... And here is a code snippet that shows one of our pirate structures being added to the message queue: #include key_t key; int msqid; struct pirate_msgbuf pmb = {2, "L'Olonais", 'S', 80, 10, 12035}; key = ftok("/home/beej/somefile", 'b'); msqid = msgget(key, 0666 | ... And the message queue is no more. ...