.\" Copyright (C) 2003, Michael Kerrisk (mtk.manpages@gmail.com)
.\"
.\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
.\" permission notice identical to this one.
.\"
.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
.\" professionally.
.\"
.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\" %%%LICENSE_END
.\"
.\" 2003-12-10 Initial creation, Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
.\" 2004-10-28 aeb, corrected prototype, prot must be 0
.\"
.TH REMAP_FILE_PAGES 2 2014-05-28 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
remap_file_pages \- create a nonlinear file mapping
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.BR "#define _GNU_SOURCE" "         /* See feature_test_macros(7) */"
.B #include <sys/mman.h>
.sp
.BI "int remap_file_pages(void *" addr ", size_t " size ", int " prot ,
.BI "                     size_t " pgoff ", int " flags );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR Note :
.\" commit 33041a0d76d3c3e0aff28ac95a2ffdedf1282dbc
.\" http://lwn.net/Articles/597632/
this system call is (since Linux 3.16) deprecated and will
eventually be replaced by a slower in-kernel emulation.
Those few applications that use this system call should
consider migrating to alternatives.

The
.BR remap_file_pages ()
system call is used to create a nonlinear mapping, that is, a mapping
in which the pages of the file are mapped into a nonsequential order
in memory.
The advantage of using
.BR remap_file_pages ()
over using repeated calls to
.BR mmap (2)
is that the former approach does not require the kernel to create
additional VMA (Virtual Memory Area) data structures.

To create a nonlinear mapping we perform the following steps:
.TP 3
1.
Use
.BR mmap (2)
to create a mapping (which is initially linear).
This mapping must be created with the
.B MAP_SHARED
flag.
.TP
2.
Use one or more calls to
.BR remap_file_pages ()
to rearrange the correspondence between the pages of the mapping
and the pages of the file.
It is possible to map the same page of a file
into multiple locations within the mapped region.
.LP
The
.I pgoff
and
.I size
arguments specify the region of the file that is to be relocated
within the mapping:
.I pgoff
is a file offset in units of the system page size;
.I size
is the length of the region in bytes.

The
.I addr
argument serves two purposes.
First, it identifies the mapping whose pages we want to rearrange.
Thus,
.I addr
must be an address that falls within
a region previously mapped by a call to
.BR mmap (2).
Second,
.I addr
specifies the address at which the file pages
identified by
.I pgoff
and
.I size
will be placed.

The values specified in
.I addr
and
.I size
should be multiples of the system page size.
If they are not, then the kernel rounds
.I both
values
.I down
to the nearest multiple of the page size.
.\" This rounding is weird, and not consistent with the treatment of
.\" the analogous arguments for munmap()/mprotect() and for mlock().
.\" MTK, 14 Sep 2005

The
.I prot
argument must be specified as 0.

The
.I flags
argument has the same meaning as for
.BR mmap (2),
but all flags other than
.B MAP_NONBLOCK
are ignored.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success,
.BR remap_file_pages ()
returns 0.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EINVAL
.I addr
does not refer to a valid mapping
created with the
.B MAP_SHARED
flag.
.TP
.B EINVAL
.IR addr ,
.IR size ,
.IR prot ,
or
.I pgoff
is invalid.
.\" And possibly others from vma->vm_ops->populate()
.SH VERSIONS
The
.BR remap_file_pages ()
system call appeared in Linux 2.5.46;
glibc support was added in version 2.3.3.
.SH CONFORMING TO
The
.BR remap_file_pages ()
system call is Linux-specific.
.SH NOTES
Since Linux 2.6.23,
.\" commit 3ee6dafc677a68e461a7ddafc94a580ebab80735
.BR remap_file_pages ()
creates non-linear mappings only
on in-memory file systems such as tmpfs, hugetlbfs or ramfs.
On filesystems with a backing store,
.BR remap_file_pages ()
is not much more efficient than using
.BR mmap (2)
to adjust which parts of the file are mapped to which addresses.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR getpagesize (2),
.BR mmap (2),
.BR mmap2 (2),
.BR mprotect (2),
.BR mremap (2),
.BR msync (2)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux
.I 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/.