alloc_hugepages(2) — Linux manual page

alloc_hugepages(2)         System Calls Manual        alloc_hugepages(2)

NAME

       alloc_hugepages, free_hugepages - allocate or free huge pages

SYNOPSIS

       void *syscall(SYS_alloc_hugepages, int key, void addr[.len], size_t len,
                     int prot, int flag);
       int syscall(SYS_free_hugepages, void *addr);

       Note: glibc provides no wrappers for these system calls,
       necessitating the use of syscall(2).

DESCRIPTION

       The system calls alloc_hugepages() and free_hugepages() were
       introduced in Linux 2.5.36 and removed again in Linux 2.5.54.
       They existed only on i386 and ia64 (when built with
       CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE).  In Linux 2.4.20, the syscall numbers
       exist, but the calls fail with the error ENOSYS.

       On i386 the memory management hardware knows about ordinary pages
       (4 KiB) and huge pages (2 or 4 MiB).  Similarly ia64 knows about
       huge pages of several sizes.  These system calls serve to map
       huge pages into the process's memory or to free them again.  Huge
       pages are locked into memory, and are not swapped.

       The key argument is an identifier.  When zero the pages are
       private, and not inherited by children.  When positive the pages
       are shared with other applications using the same key, and
       inherited by child processes.

       The addr argument of free_hugepages() tells which page is being
       freed: it was the return value of a call to alloc_hugepages().
       (The memory is first actually freed when all users have released
       it.)  The addr argument of alloc_hugepages() is a hint, that the
       kernel may or may not follow.  Addresses must be properly
       aligned.

       The len argument is the length of the required segment.  It must
       be a multiple of the huge page size.

       The prot argument specifies the memory protection of the segment.
       It is one of PROT_READ, PROT_WRITE, PROT_EXEC.

       The flag argument is ignored, unless key is positive.  In that
       case, if flag is IPC_CREAT, then a new huge page segment is
       created when none with the given key existed.  If this flag is
       not set, then ENOENT is returned when no segment with the given
       key exists.

RETURN VALUE

       On success, alloc_hugepages() returns the allocated virtual
       address, and free_hugepages() returns zero.  On error, -1 is
       returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       ENOSYS The system call is not supported on this kernel.

FILES

       /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
              Number of configured hugetlb pages.  This can be read and
              written.

       /proc/meminfo
              Gives info on the number of configured hugetlb pages and
              on their size in the three variables HugePages_Total,
              HugePages_Free, Hugepagesize.

STANDARDS

       Linux on Intel processors.

HISTORY

       These system calls are gone; they existed only in Linux 2.5.36
       through to Linux 2.5.54.

NOTES

       Now the hugetlbfs filesystem can be used instead.  Memory backed
       by huge pages (if the CPU supports them) is obtained by using
       mmap(2) to map files in this virtual filesystem.

       The maximal number of huge pages can be specified using the
       hugepages= boot parameter.

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
       user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
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       for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
       This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.9.1.tar.gz
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       man-pages@man7.org

Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02             alloc_hugepages(2)

Pages that refer to this page: syscalls(2), unimplemented(2)

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