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[thirdparty/man-pages.git] / man2 / swapon.2

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.\" Copyright (c) 1992 Drew Eckhardt (drew@cs.colorado.edu), March 28, 1992
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.\" Modified by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
.\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
.\" Modified 1995-07-22 by Michael Chastain <mec@duracef.shout.net>
.\" Modified 1995-07-23 by aeb
.\" Modified 1996-10-22 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\" Modified 1998-09-08 by aeb
.\" Modified 2004-06-17 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
.\" Modified 2004-10-10 by aeb
.\" 2004-12-14 mtk, Anand Kumria: added new errors
.\" 2007-06-22 Ivana Varekova <varekova@redhat.com>, mtk
.\"     Update text describing limit on number of swap files.
.\"
.TH SWAPON 2 2007-06-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
swapon, swapoff \- start/stop swapping to file/device
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <unistd.h>
.br
.B #include <asm/page.h>     /* to find PAGE_SIZE */
.br
.B #include <sys/swap.h>
.sp
.BI "int swapon(const char *" path ", int " swapflags );
.br
.BI "int swapoff(const char *" path );
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR swapon ()
sets the swap area to the file or block device specified by
.IR path .
.BR swapoff ()
stops swapping to the file or block device specified by
.IR path .
.PP
.BR swapon ()
takes a
.I swapflags
argument.
If
.I swapflags
has the
.B SWAP_FLAG_PREFER
bit turned on, the new swap area will have a higher priority than default.
The priority is encoded within
.I swapflags
as:
.br
.sp
.I "    (prio << SWAP_FLAG_PRIO_SHIFT) & SWAP_FLAG_PRIO_MASK"
.br
.PP
These functions may only be used by a privileged process (one having the
.B CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability).
.SS Priority
Each swap area has a priority, either high or low.
The default priority is low.
Within the low-priority areas,
newer areas are even lower priority than older areas.
.PP
All priorities set with
.I swapflags
are high-priority, higher than default.
They may have any non-negative value chosen by the caller.
Higher numbers mean higher priority.
.PP
Swap pages are allocated from areas in priority order,
highest priority first.
For areas with different priorities,
a higher-priority area is exhausted before using a lower-priority area.
If two or more areas have the same priority,
and it is the highest priority available,
pages are allocated on a round-robin basis between them.
.PP
As of Linux 1.3.6, the kernel usually follows these rules,
but there are exceptions.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
On success, zero is returned.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EBUSY
(for
.BR swapon ())
The specified
.I path
is already being used as a swap area.
.TP
.B EINVAL
The file
.I path
exists, but refers neither to a regular file nor to a block device;
or, for
.BR swapon (),
the indicated path does not contain a valid swap signature or
resides on an in-memory filesystem like tmpfs; or, for
.BR swapoff (),
.I path
is not currently a swap area.
.TP
.B ENFILE
The system limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
.TP
.B ENOENT
The file
.I path
does not exist.
.TP
.B ENOMEM
The system has insufficient memory to start swapping.
.TP
.B EPERM
The caller does not have the
.B CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability.
Alternatively, the maximum number of swap files are already in use;
see NOTES below.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
These functions are Linux specific and should not be used in programs
intended to be portable.
The second
.I swapflags
argument was introduced in Linux 1.3.2.
.SH NOTES
The partition or path must be prepared with
.BR mkswap (8).

There is an upper limit on the number of swap files that may be used,
defined by the kernel constant MAX_SWAPFILES.
Before kernel 2.6.10, MAX_SWAPFILES has the value 8;
since kernel 2.6.10, it has the value 32.
Since kernel 2.6.18, the limit is decreased by 2 (thus: 30)
if the kernel is built with the
.B CONFIG_MIGRATION
option
(which reserves two swap table entries for the page migration features of
.BR mbind (2)
and
.BR migrate_pages (2)).
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mkswap (8),
.BR swapoff (8),
.BR swapon (8)