int swapon(const char *path, int swapflags); int swapoff(const char *path);
DESCRIPTION
swapon()
sets the swap area to the file or block device specified by
path.
swapoff()
stops swapping to the file or block device specified by
path.
swapon()
takes a
swapflags
argument.
If
swapflags
has the
SWAP_FLAG_PREFER
bit turned on, the new swap area will have a higher priority than default.
The priority is encoded within
swapflags
as:
These functions may only be used by a privileged process (one having the
CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability).
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.
All priorities set with
swapflags
are high-priority, higher than default.
They may have any non-negative value chosen by the caller.
Higher numbers mean higher priority.
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.
As of Linux 1.3.6, the kernel usually follows these rules,
but there are exceptions.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On error, -1 is returned, and
errno
is set appropriately.
ERRORS
EBUSY
(for
swapon())
The specified
path
is already being used as a swap area.
EINVAL
The file
path
exists, but refers neither to a regular file nor to a block device;
or, for
swapon(),
the indicated path does not contain a valid swap signature or
resides on an in-memory file system like tmpfs; or, for
swapoff(),
path
is not currently a swap area.
ENFILE
The system limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
ENOENT
The file
path
does not exist.
ENOMEM
The system has insufficient memory to start swapping.
EPERM
The caller does not have the
CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability.
Alternatively, the maximum number of swap files are already in use;
see NOTES below.
CONFORMING TO
These functions are Linux-specific and should not be used in programs
intended to be portable.
The second
swapflags
argument was introduced in Linux 1.3.2.
NOTES
The partition or path must be prepared with
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 2.4.10,
MAX_SWAPFILES
has the value 8;
since kernel 2.4.10, 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
CONFIG_MIGRATION
option
(which reserves two swap table entries for the page migration features of
mbind(2)
and
migrate_pages(2)).
This page is part of release 3.14 of the Linux
man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
