Memory Management¶

Linux memory management subsystem is responsible, as the name implies,for managing the memory in the system. This includes implemnetation ofvirtual memory and demand paging, memory allocation both for kernelinternal structures and user space programms, mapping of files intoprocesses address space and many other cool things.

Linux memory management is a complex system with many configurablesettings. Most of these settings are available via/procfilesystem and can be quired and adjusted usingsysctl. These APIsare described in Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst and inman 5 proc.

Linux memory management has its own jargon and if you are not yetfamiliar with it, consider readingDocumentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst.

Here we document in detail how to interact with various mechanisms inthe Linux memory management.