--- name: "posix_madvise" section: "2" platform: "linux" package: "freebsd-manpages" version: "6.0-5" release: "Debian 4.0 (Etch)" platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "macos"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/posix_madvise" --- # posix\_madvise(2) give advice about use of memory ## NAME **madvise**, **posix\_madvise** – give advice about use of memory ## LIBRARY Standard C Library (libc, -lc) ## SYNOPSIS **#include \** *int*\ **madvise**(*void \*addr*, *size\_t len*, *int behav*); *int*\ **posix\_madvise**(*void \*addr*, *size\_t len*, *int behav*); ## DESCRIPTION The **madvise**() system call allows a process that has knowledge of its memory behavior to describe it to the system. The **posix\_madvise**() interface is identical and is provided for standards conformance. The known behaviors are: - MADV\_NORMAL Tells the system to revert to the default paging behavior. - MADV\_RANDOM Is a hint that pages will be accessed randomly, and prefetching is likely not advantageous. - MADV\_SEQUENTIAL Causes the VM system to depress the priority of pages immediately preceding a given page when it is faulted in. - MADV\_WILLNEED Causes pages that are in a given virtual address range to temporarily have higher priority, and if they are in memory, decrease the likelihood of them being freed. Additionally, the pages that are already in memory will be immediately mapped into the process, thereby eliminating unnecessary overhead of going through the entire process of faulting the pages in. This WILL NOT fault pages in from backing store, but quickly map the pages already in memory into the calling process. - MADV\_DONTNEED Allows the VM system to decrease the in-memory priority of pages in the specified range. Additionally future references to this address range will incur a page fault. - MADV\_FREE Gives the VM system the freedom to free pages, and tells the system that information in the specified page range is no longer important. This is an efficient way of allowing [malloc(3)](/malloc/3.md) to free pages anywhere in the address space, while keeping the address space valid. The next time that the page is referenced, the page might be demand zeroed, or might contain the data that was there before the MADV\_FREE call. References made to that address space range will not make the VM system page the information back in from backing store until the page is modified again. - MADV\_NOSYNC Request that the system not flush the data associated with this map to physical backing store unless it needs to. Typically this prevents the file system update daemon from gratuitously writing pages dirtied by the VM system to physical disk. Note that VM/file system coherency is always maintained, this feature simply ensures that the mapped data is only flush when it needs to be, usually by the system pager. This feature is typically used when you want to use a file-backed shared memory area to communicate between processes (IPC) and do not particularly need the data being stored in that area to be physically written to disk. With this feature you get the equivalent performance with mmap that you would expect to get with SysV shared memory calls, but in a more controllable and less restrictive manner. However, note that this feature is not portable across UNIX platforms (though some may do the right thing by default). For more information see the MAP\_NOSYNC section of [mmap(2)](/mmap/2.md) - MADV\_AUTOSYNC Undoes the effects of MADV\_NOSYNC for any future pages dirtied within the address range. The effect on pages already dirtied is indeterminate - they may or may not be reverted. You can guarantee reversion by using the [msync(2)](/msync/2.md) or [fsync(2)](/fsync/2.md) system calls. - MADV\_NOCORE Region is not included in a core file. - MADV\_CORE Include region in a core file. - MADV\_PROTECT Informs the VM system this process should not be killed when the swap space is exhausted. The process must have superuser privileges. This should be used judiciously in processes that must remain running for the system to properly function. Portable programs that call the **posix\_madvise**() interface should use the aliases POSIX\_MADV\_NORMAL, POSIX\_MADV\_SEQUENTIAL, POSIX\_MADV\_RANDOM, POSIX\_MADV\_WILLNEED, and POSIX\_MADV\_DONTNEED rather than the flags described above. ## RETURN VALUES The **madvise()** function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error. ## ERRORS The **madvise**() system call will fail if: - \[EINVAL\] The *behav* argument is not valid. - \[ENOMEM\] The virtual address range specified by the *addr* and *len* arguments is not valid. - \[EPERM\] MADV\_PROTECT was specified and the process does not have superuser privileges. ## SEE ALSO [mincore(2)](/mincore/2.md), [mprotect(2)](/mprotect/2.md), [msync(2)](/msync/2.md), [munmap(2)](/munmap/2.md) ## STANDARDS The **posix\_madvise**() interface conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”). ## HISTORY The **madvise**() system call first appeared in 4.4BSD.