home   contributing   bugs   download   online pages  

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | CONFORMING TO | SEE ALSO | COLOPHONThe Linux Programming Interface


READAHEAD(2)                  Linux Programmer's Manual                  READAHEAD(2)

NAME         top

       readahead - perform file readahead into page cache

SYNOPSIS         top

       #define _GNU_SOURCE             /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
       #include <fcntl.h>

       ssize_t readahead(int fd, off64_t offset, size_t count);

DESCRIPTION         top

       readahead() populates the page cache with data from a file so that subsequent
       reads from that file will not block on disk I/O.  The fd argument is a file
       descriptor identifying the file which is to be read.  The offset argument
       specifies the starting point from which data is to be read and count specifies
       the number of bytes to be read.  I/O is performed in whole pages, so that
       offset is effectively rounded down to a page boundary and bytes are read up to
       the next page boundary greater than or equal to (offset+count).  readahead()
       does not read beyond the end of the file.  readahead() blocks until the
       specified data has been read.  The current file offset of the open file
       referred to by fd is left unchanged.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, readahead() returns 0; on failure, -1 is returned, with errno set
       to indicate the cause of the error.

ERRORS         top

       EBADF  fd is not a valid file descriptor or is not open for reading.

       EINVAL fd does not refer to a file type to which readahead() can be applied.

VERSIONS         top

       The readahead() system call appeared in Linux 2.4.13; glibc support has been
       provided since version 2.3.

CONFORMING TO         top

       The readahead() system call is Linux-specific, and its use should be avoided
       in portable applications.

SEE ALSO         top

       lseek(2), madvise(2), mmap(2), posix_fadvise(2), read(2)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.32 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/.

Linux                                 2010-09-10                         READAHEAD(2)

HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface

customisable
counter