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NAME

       madvise - give advice about use of memory

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/mman.h>

       int madvise(void *addr, size_t length, int advice);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       madvise(): _BSD_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

       The  madvise()  system  call  is used to give advice or directions to the kernel about the
       address range beginning at address addr and with size length bytes.  Initially, the system
       call  supported a set of "conventional" advice values, which are also available on several
       other implementations.   (Note,  though,  that  madvise()  is  not  specified  in  POSIX.)
       Subsequently, a number of Linux-specific advice values have been added.

   Conventional advice values
       The  advice  values listed below allow an application to tell the kernel how it expects to
       use some mapped or shared memory areas, so that the kernel can  choose  appropriate  read-
       ahead  and  caching techniques.  These advice values do not influence the semantics of the
       application (except in the case of MADV_DONTNEED), but may influence its performance.  All
       of  the  advice  values  listed  here have analogs in the POSIX-specified posix_madvise(3)
       function, and the values have the same meanings, with the exception of MADV_DONTNEED.

       The advice is indicated in the advice argument, which is one of the following:

       MADV_NORMAL
              No special treatment.  This is the default.

       MADV_RANDOM
              Expect page references in random order.  (Hence, read ahead may be less useful than
              normally.)

       MADV_SEQUENTIAL
              Expect  page  references in sequential order.  (Hence, pages in the given range can
              be aggressively read ahead, and may be freed soon after they are accessed.)

       MADV_WILLNEED
              Expect access in the near future.  (Hence, it might be a good  idea  to  read  some
              pages ahead.)

       MADV_DONTNEED
              Do  not  expect access in the near future.  (For the time being, the application is
              finished with the given range, so the kernel can  free  resources  associated  with
              it.)

              After  a  successful MADV_DONTNEED operation, the semantics of memory access in the
              specified region are changed: subsequent  accesses  of  pages  in  the  range  will
              succeed, but will result in either repopulating the memory contents from the up-to-
              date contents of the underlying mapped  file  (for  shared  file  mappings,  shared
              anonymous  mappings,  and  shmem-based  techniques  such  as System V shared memory
              segments) or zero-fill-on-demand pages for anonymous private mappings.

              Note that, when applied  to  shared  mappings,  MADV_DONTNEED  might  not  lead  to
              immediate  freeing  of the pages in the range.  The kernel is free to delay freeing
              the pages until an appropriate moment.  The resident set size (RSS) of the  calling
              process will be immediately reduced however.

              MADV_DONTNEED  cannot  be  applied  to  locked  pages, Huge TLB pages, or VM_PFNMAP
              pages.  (Pages marked with the kernel-internal VM_PFNMAP flag  are  special  memory
              areas  that  are  not  managed  by  the  virtual  memory subsystem.  Such pages are
              typically created by device drivers that map the pages into user space.)

   Linux-specific advice values
       The following Linux-specific advice values have no  counterparts  in  the  POSIX-specified
       posix_madvise(3),  and  may  or  may  not  have  counterparts  in  the madvise() interface
       available on other implementations.   Note  that  some  of  these  operations  change  the
       semantics of memory accesses.

       MADV_REMOVE (since Linux 2.6.16)
              Free  up  a  given  range  of  pages  and  its  associated  backing store.  This is
              equivalent to punching a hole in the corresponding byte range of the backing  store
              (see  fallocate(2)).   Subsequent  accesses in the specified address range will see
              bytes containing zero.

              The specified address range must be mapped shared and writable.  This  flag  cannot
              be applied to locked pages, Huge TLB pages, or VM_PFNMAP pages.

              In  the  initial  implementation, only shmfs/tmpfs supported MADV_REMOVE; but since
              Linux 3.5, any filesystem which supports the fallocate(2) FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE mode
              also  supports  MADV_REMOVE.   Hugetlbfs  will fail with the error EINVAL and other
              filesystems fail with the error EOPNOTSUPP.

       MADV_DONTFORK (since Linux 2.6.16)
              Do not make the pages in this range available to the child after a  fork(2).   This
              is useful to prevent copy-on-write semantics from changing the physical location of
              a page if the parent writes to it after a fork(2).  (Such  page  relocations  cause
              problems for hardware that DMAs into the page.)

       MADV_DOFORK (since Linux 2.6.16)
              Undo the effect of MADV_DONTFORK, restoring the default behavior, whereby a mapping
              is inherited across fork(2).

       MADV_HWPOISON (since Linux 2.6.32)
              Poison a page and handle it like a hardware memory corruption.  This  operation  is
              available only for privileged (CAP_SYS_ADMIN) processes.  This operation may result
              in the calling process receiving a SIGBUS and the page being unmapped.

              This feature is intended for testing of memory error-handling code; it is available
              only if the kernel was configured with CONFIG_MEMORY_FAILURE.

       MADV_SOFT_OFFLINE (since Linux 2.6.33)
              Soft  offline  the  pages in the range specified by addr and length.  The memory of
              each page in the specified range is preserved (i.e., when next accessed,  the  same
              content  will  be visible, but in a new physical page frame), and the original page
              is offlined (i.e., no longer used, and taken out of normal memory management).  The
              effect  of  the  MADV_SOFT_OFFLINE operation is invisible to (i.e., does not change
              the semantics of) the calling process.

              This feature is intended for testing of memory error-handling code; it is available
              only if the kernel was configured with CONFIG_MEMORY_FAILURE.

       MADV_MERGEABLE (since Linux 2.6.32)
              Enable  Kernel  Samepage Merging (KSM) for the pages in the range specified by addr
              and length.  The kernel regularly scans those areas of user memory that  have  been
              marked  as mergeable, looking for pages with identical content.  These are replaced
              by a single write-protected page (which is automatically copied if a process  later
              wants  to update the content of the page).  KSM merges only private anonymous pages
              (see mmap(2)).

              The KSM feature is intended for applications that generate many  instances  of  the
              same  data  (e.g.,  virtualization  systems  such as KVM).  It can consume a lot of
              processing  power;  use  with   care.    See   the   Linux   kernel   source   file
              Documentation/vm/ksm.txt for more details.

              The MADV_MERGEABLE and MADV_UNMERGEABLE operations are available only if the kernel
              was configured with CONFIG_KSM.

       MADV_UNMERGEABLE (since Linux 2.6.32)
              Undo the effect of an earlier MADV_MERGEABLE operation  on  the  specified  address
              range;  KSM unmerges whatever pages it had merged in the address range specified by
              addr and length.

       MADV_HUGEPAGE (since Linux 2.6.38)
              Enable Transparent Huge Pages (THP) for pages in the range specified  by  addr  and
              length.   Currently,  Transparent Huge Pages work only with private anonymous pages
              (see mmap(2)).  The kernel will regularly  scan  the  areas  marked  as  huge  page
              candidates  to  replace  them  with huge pages.  The kernel will also allocate huge
              pages directly when the region is naturally aligned to  the  huge  page  size  (see
              posix_memalign(2)).

              This feature is primarily aimed at applications that use large mappings of data and
              access large regions of that memory at a time (e.g., virtualization systems such as
              QEMU).   It  can  very  easily  waste  memory  (e.g.,  a 2MB mapping that only ever
              accesses 1 byte will result in 2MB of wired memory instead of one 4KB  page).   See
              the Linux kernel source file Documentation/vm/transhuge.txt for more details.

              The  MADV_HUGEPAGE  and MADV_NOHUGEPAGE operations are available only if the kernel
              was configured with CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE.

       MADV_NOHUGEPAGE (since Linux 2.6.38)
              Ensures that memory in the address range specified by addr and length will  not  be
              collapsed into huge pages.

       MADV_DONTDUMP (since Linux 3.4)
              Exclude  from  a  core  dump those pages in the range specified by addr and length.
              This is useful in applications that have large areas of memory that are  known  not
              to be useful in a core dump.  The effect of MADV_DONTDUMP takes precedence over the
              bit mask that is set via the /proc/PID/coredump_filter file (see core(5)).

       MADV_DODUMP (since Linux 3.4)
              Undo the effect of an earlier MADV_DONTDUMP.

RETURN VALUE

       On  success,  madvise()  returns  zero.   On  error,  it  returns  -1  and  errno  is  set
       appropriately.

ERRORS

       EACCES advice  is  MADV_REMOVE,  but  the specified address range is not a shared writable
              mapping.

       EAGAIN A kernel resource was temporarily unavailable.

       EBADF  The map exists, but the area maps something that isn't a file.

       EINVAL addr is not page-aligned or length is negative.

       EINVAL advice is not a valid.

       EINVAL advice is MADV_DONTNEED or MADV_REMOVE and the  specified  address  range  includes
              locked, Huge TLB pages, or VM_PFNMAP pages.

       EINVAL advice  is  MADV_MERGEABLE  or  MADV_UNMERGEABLE, but the kernel was not configured
              with CONFIG_KSM.

       EIO    (for MADV_WILLNEED) Paging in this area would exceed the process's maximum resident
              set size.

       ENOMEM (for MADV_WILLNEED) Not enough memory: paging in failed.

       ENOMEM Addresses  in  the  specified  range  are  not currently mapped, or are outside the
              address space of the process.

       EPERM  advice is MADV_HWPOISON, but the caller does not have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability.

VERSIONS

       Since Linux 3.18, support for this system call is optional, depending on  the  setting  of
       the CONFIG_ADVISE_SYSCALLS configuration option.

CONFORMING TO

       madvise() is not specified by any standards.  Versions of this system call, implementing a
       wide variety of advice values, exist on many other implementations.  Other implementations
       typically  implement  at  least  the  flags  listed above under Conventional advice flags,
       albeit with some variation in semantics.

       POSIX.1-2001    describes    posix_madvise(3)    with     constants     POSIX_MADV_NORMAL,
       POSIX_MADV_RANDOM,  POSIX_MADV_SEQUENTIAL,  POSIX_MADV_WILLNEED,  and POSIX_MADV_DONTNEED,
       and so on, with behavior close to the similarly named flags listed  above.   (POSIX.1-2008
       adds a further flag, POSIX_MADV_NOREUSE, that has no analog in madvise(2).)

NOTES

   Linux notes
       The Linux implementation requires that the address addr be page-aligned, and allows length
       to be zero.  If there are some parts of the specified address range that are  not  mapped,
       the  Linux version of madvise() ignores them and applies the call to the rest (but returns
       ENOMEM from the system call, as it should).

SEE ALSO

       getrlimit(2), mincore(2), mmap(2),  mprotect(2),  msync(2),  munmap(2),  posix_madvise(3),
       prctl(2), core(5)

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part of release 4.04 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.