xref: /freebsd/lib/libsys/swapon.2 (revision e2257b31)
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28.Dd December 8, 2021
29.Dt SWAPON 2
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm swapon , swapoff
33.Nd control devices for interleaved paging/swapping
34.Sh LIBRARY
35.Lb libc
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.It vm/vm_param.h
38.It vm/swap_pager.h
39.In unistd.h
40.Ft int
41.Fn swapon "const char *special"
42.Ft int
43.Fn swapoff "const char *special" "u_int flags"
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Fn swapon
47system call
48makes the block device
49.Fa special
50available to the system for
51allocation for paging and swapping.
52The names of potentially
53available devices are known to the system and defined at system
54configuration time.
55The size of the swap area on
56.Fa special
57is calculated at the time the device is first made available
58for swapping.
59.Pp
60The
61.Fn swapoff
62system call disables paging and swapping on the given device.
63All associated swap metadata are deallocated, and the device
64is made available for other purposes.
65.Pp
66The
67.Fa special
68argument points to the name of the device or file used for swapping.
69.The
70.Va flags
71argument takes the following flags:
72.Bl -tag -width SWAPOFF_FORCE
73.It Dv SWAPOFF_FORCE
74Overrides a very conservative check that prevents swapoff
75if the total amount of free memory and remaining swap
76devices space might be unsufficient for the system to continue
77operating.
78.El
79.Sh RETURN VALUES
80If an error has occurred, a value of -1 is returned and
81.Va errno
82is set to indicate the error.
83.Sh ERRORS
84Both
85.Fn swapon
86and
87.Fn swapoff
88can fail if:
89.Bl -tag -width Er
90.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
91A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
92.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
93A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
94or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
95.It Bq Er ENOENT
96The named device does not exist.
97.It Bq Er EACCES
98Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
99.It Bq Er ELOOP
100Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
101.It Bq Er EPERM
102The caller is not the super-user.
103.It Bq Er EFAULT
104The
105.Fa special
106argument
107points outside the process's allocated address space.
108.El
109.Pp
110Additionally,
111.Fn swapon
112can fail for the following reasons:
113.Bl -tag -width Er
114.It Bq Er ENOTBLK
115The
116.Fa special
117argument
118is not a block device.
119.It Bq Er EBUSY
120The device specified by
121.Fa special
122has already
123been made available for swapping
124.It Bq Er ENXIO
125The major device number of
126.Fa special
127is out of range (this indicates no device driver exists
128for the associated hardware).
129.It Bq Er EIO
130An I/O error occurred while opening the swap device.
131.It Bq Er EINTEGRITY
132Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system to open the
133swap device.
134.El
135.Pp
136Lastly,
137.Fn swapoff
138can fail if:
139.Bl -tag -width Er
140.It Bq Er EINVAL
141The system is not currently swapping to
142.Fa special .
143.It Bq Er ENOMEM
144Not enough virtual memory is available to safely disable
145paging and swapping to the given device.
146.El
147.Sh SEE ALSO
148.Xr config 8 ,
149.Xr swapon 8 ,
150.Xr sysctl 8
151.Sh HISTORY
152The
153.Fn swapon
154system call appeared in
155.Bx 4.0 .
156The
157.Fn swapoff
158system call appeared in
159.Fx 5.1 .
160