Memory Management

Memory management in the kernel is more constrained than memory management in user-space. For example, the kernel can’t deal well with memory allocation errors, and often the kernel must allocate memory without sleeping.

This section is about memory management in the kernel: how the kernel manages memory, and how to manage memory as a kernel developer.

Table of contents

  1. Pages
  2. Zones
  3. Getting pages
    1. GFP mask flags
      1. Zone Modifiers
      2. Type Flags
  4. Slab layer
  5. High Memory Mappings
  6. References


“The kernel treats physical pages as the basic unit of memory management.” The hardware memory management unit (MMU) that manages translation between virtual and physical memory, typically deals in pages. The MMU maintains the system’s page tables with page-size granularity, and so in terms of virtual memory, pages are the smallest size that matters [1, P. 231].

Each architecture determines its page size, and many architectures can support multiple page sizes. “Most 32-bit architectures have 4KB pages, whereas most 64-bit architectures have 8KB pages”. So a machine with 8KB pages and 1GB memory is split into 131,072 pages [1, P. 231].

The kernel represents a physical page with the page struct, defined in <linux/mm_types.h>. A simplified copy of the struct is:

struct page {
  unsigned long flags;
  atomic_t _count;
  atomic_t _mapcount;
  unsigned long private;
  struct address_space *mapping;
  pgoff_t index;
  struct list_head lru;
  void *virtual;

The flags field stores the status of the page. For example it can store whether the page is dirty or not, or whether it is locked in memory. The flag values are defined in <linux/page-flags.h>.

The _count field stores the usage count of the page: how many references there are to the page. If _count is -1 then the page is free. Instead of accessing _count directly, developers should use the page_count function to determine whether a page is free or not. page_count returns 0 if the page is free and a non-negative integer if the page is in use. A page can be in use by the page cache, as private data, or as a mapping in a process’s page table [1, P. 232].

The virtual field is the page’s virtual address. Although this is normally the page’s virtual memory address, some memory (called high memory) isn’t permanently mapped in the kernel’s address space. For high memory the value will be NULL [1, P. 232].

The page structure represents physical pages, rather than virtual pages.


Because of limits in the hardware, the kernel can’t treat all pages as equal. Some pages cannot be used for certain tasks because of their physical address. Because of this, the kernel divides pages with similar properties into zones [1, P. 232].

There are two main limits in hardware:

  1. Some hardware devices can only perform direct memory access (DMA) to certain address spaces.
  2. Some architectures can physically address larger areas than they can virtually address. As a consequence, some memory is not permanently mapped into the kernel address space.

There are four primary address zones:

  1. ZONE_DMA contains pages that can undergo DMA.
  2. ZONE_DMA32 contains pages that can undergo DMA and are only accessible by 32-bit devices.
  3. ZONE_NORMAL contains normal pages.
  4. ZONE_HIGHMEM contains high memory (pages not permanently mapped into the kernel address space.

[1, P. 233]

The use and layout of memory is architecure-specific. Some architectures have no problem performing DMA into any memory address. For those architectures, ZONE_DMA is empty, and ZONE_NORMAL is used for allocation. Conversely, “on the x86 architecture, ISA devices cannot perform DMA into the full 32-bit address space1 because ISA devices can access only the first 16MB of physical memory. Consequently, ZONE_DMA on x86 consists of all memory in the range 0MB–16MB” [1, P. 233].

ZONE_HIGHMEM is similar. “On 32-bit x86 systems, ZONE_HIGHMEM is all memory above the physical 896MB mark. On other architectures, ZONE_HIGHMEM is empty because all memory is directly mapped” [1, P. 233].

ZONE_NORMAL tends to be what is remaining after ZONE_DMA and ZONE_HIGHMEM. The following table shows the zones on x86 architecture:

Zone Description Physical Memory
ZONE_DMA DMA-able pages < 16MB
ZONE_NORMAL Normally addressable pages 16–896MB
ZONE_HIGHMEM “Dynamically mapped pages > 896MB

[1, P. 234]

Zones are used to allocate pages when they are needed. Although some allocations require pages from a particular zone, other allocations can use pages from multiple zones. For example, a normal allocation can come from ZONE_NORMAL or ZONE_DMA, but not both. Allocations must come from a single zone at once [1, P. 234].

Each zone is represented by a zone struct:

struct zone {
  unsigned long watermark[NR_WMARK];
  unsigned long lowmem_reserve[MAX_NR_ZONES];
  struct per_cpu_pageset pageset[NR_CPUS];
  spinlock_t lock;
  struct free_area free_area[MAX_ORDER]
  spinlock_t lru_lock;
  struct zone_lru {
  struct list_head list;
  unsigned long nr_saved_scan;
  } lru[NR_LRU_LISTS];
  struct zone_reclaim_stat reclaim_stat;
  unsigned long pages_scanned;
  unsigned long flags;
  atomic_long_t vm_stat[NR_VM_ZONE_STAT_ITEMS];
  int prev_priority;
  unsigned int inactive_ratio;
  wait_queue_head_t *wait_table;
  unsigned long wait_table_hash_nr_entries;
  unsigned long wait_table_bits;
  struct pglist_data *zone_pgdat;
  unsigned long zone_start_pfn;
  unsigned long spanned_pages;
  unsigned long present_pages;
  const char *name;

lock is a spin lock that protects the structure from concurrent access.

The watermark array holds the minimum low and high watermarks for the zone. Watermarks are used to set benchmarks for suitable per-zone memory consumption [1, P. 235].

Getting pages

The main function to allocate memory from the kernel is alloc_pages():

struct page * alloc_pages(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)

This allocates 2^order contiguous pages, and returns a pointer to the first pages page struct. On error, alloc_pages() returns NULL.

You can convert a given page to its logical address with page_address():

void * page_address(struct page *page)

This returns a pointer to the logical address where the given physical page currently resides. If you have no need for the actual page struct, you can call __get_free_pages():

unsigned long __get_free_pages(gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)

__get_free_pages() works like alloc_pages() except it returns the logical address of the first page, instead of the page struct.

If you just need a single page, you can use the following helper functions:

struct page * alloc_page(gfp_t gfp_mask)
unsigned long __get_free_page(gfp_t gfp_mask)

get_zeroed_page() returns a page filled with zeros:

unsigned long get_zeroed_page(unsigned int gfp_mask)

This should be used when pages are given to user-space, because the previous memory might have contained sensitive information.

You free pages with the free() family of functions:

void __free_pages(struct page *page, unsigned int order)
void free_pages(unsigned long addr, unsigned int order)
void free_page(unsigned long addr)

kmalloc() can be used to allocate byte sized chunks. kmalloc() works similarly to malloc(), except it also takes a flags parameter. kmalloc() returns a pointer to a byte size chunk that is at least bytes size in length. On error it returns NULL [1, P. 238].

GFP mask flags

gfp mask flags are flags that are passed to kernel allocator functions. GFP stands for __get_free_pages [1, P. 238]

gfp flags are represented with the gfp_t type. There are three types of flags:

  • Action modifiers. specify how the kernel should allocate memory.
  • Zone modifiers specify what zone to allocate from.
  • Type flags specify a combination of a zone and an action type.

[1, Pp. 238-9]

The flags are declared in <linux/gfp.h>, which is included in <linux/slab.h> [1, P. 239].

You can see the action modifiers in the following table:

Flag Description
__GFP_WAIT The allocator can sleep.
__GFP_HIGH The allocator can access emergency pools.
__GFP_IO The allocator can start disk I/O.
__GFP_FS The allocator can start filesystem I/O.
__GFP_COLD The allocator should use cache cold pages.
__GFP_NOWARN The allocator does not print failure warnings.
__GFP_REPEAT The allocator repeats the allocation if it fails, but the allocation can potentially fail.
__GFP_NOFAIL The allocator indefinitely repeats the allocation. The allocation cannot fail.
__GFP_NORETRY The allocator never retries if the allocation fails.
__GFP_NOMEMALLOC The allocator does not fall back on reserves.
__GFP_HARDWALL The allocator enforces “hardwall” cpuset boundaries.
__GFP_RECLAIMABLE The allocator marks the pages reclaimable.
__GFP_COMP The allocator adds compound page metadata (used internally by the hugetlb code).

[1, P. 239]

These flags can be specified together. For example:

ptr = kmalloc(size, __GFP_WAIT | __GFP_IO | __GFP_FS);

Zone Modifiers

Zone modifiers specify the zones that the memory allocation should originate from. Normally the allocation will happen from any zone, with the kernel preferring ZONE_NORMAL.

You can see the zone modifiers in the following table:

Flag Description
__GFP_DMA Allocates only from ZONE_DMA
__GFP_DMA32 Allocates only from ZONE_DMA32

[1, P. 240]

Type Flags

The type flags are a combination of action modifiers and zone modifiers, which makes allocations easier.

You can see the type flags in the following table:

Flag Description
GFP_ATOMIC The allocation is high priority and must not sleep. This is the flag to use in interrupt handlers, in bottom halves, while holding a spinlock, and in other situations where you cannot sleep.
GFP_NOWAIT Like GFP_ATOMIC, except that the call will not fallback on emergency memory pools. This increases the liklihood of the memory allocation failing.
GFP_NOIO This allocation can block, but must not initiate disk I/O. This is the flag to use in block I/O code when you cannot cause more disk I/O, which might lead to some unpleasant recursion.
GFP_NOFS This allocation can block and can initiate disk I/O, if it must, but it will not initiate a filesystem operation. This is the flag to use in filesystem code when you cannot start another filesystem operation.
GFP_KERNEL This is a normal allocation and might block. This is the flag to use in process context code when it is safe to sleep. The kernel will do whatever it has to do to obtain the memory requested by the caller. This flag should be your default choice.
GFP_USER This is a normal allocation and might block. This flag is used to allocate memory for user-space processes.
GFP_HIGHUSER This is an allocation from ZONE_HIGHMEM and might block. This flag is used to allocate memory for user-space processes.
GFP_DMA This is an allocation from ZONE_DMA. Device drivers that need DMA-able memory use this flag, usually in combination with one of the preceding flags.

[1, Pp. 241-2]

The majority of allocations in the kernel use the GFP_KERNEL flag. “The resulting allocation is a normal priority allocation that might sleep”. This flag can only be used from process context, because it might block [1, P. 242].

Memory allocated with kmalloc() should be freed with kfree().

A alternative to kmalloc() is vmalloc(). While kmalloc() returns a pointer to a chunk of contiguous physical and virtual memory, vmalloc() only guarantees contiguous virtual memory. vmalloc() updates page tables to ensure that the memory block it returns is virtually contiguous [1, P. 244].

Slab layer

The slab layer is an abstraction to make free lists more efficient.

A free list is a block of pre-allocated memory that is used to allocate memory from for objects in the future. When the data is no longer needed, it’s returned to the free list rather than deallocating [1, P. 245].

The problem with free lists in the kernel is that there isn’t any global control. If memory is low then there is no way for the kernel to communicate with the free lists in order to free some of their cached memory. The slab layer solves this problem [1, P. 245].

The slab layer follows several tenets:

  • Frequently used data structures tend to be allocated and freed often, so cache them.
  • Cached free lists avoid fragmentation because they are arranged contiguously.
  • Free lists improve performance during frequent allocation and deallocation.
  • The allocator can make more intelligent decisions if it’s aware of object size, page size, and total cache size.
  • Allocations on SMP can be made without a lock if cache is per-processor.
  • Allocator can fulfill allocations from same node as requester if allocator is NUMA aware.
  • Coloring can be used to prevent multiple objects from mapping to the same cache line.

[1, P. 246]

The slab layer divides objects into groups called caches. Each cache stores a different object. For example, one cache is for task_struct structs, and another for inode structs. kmalloc() is built on top of the slab allocator using general purpose caches [1, P. 246].

Caches are divided into slabs. Slabs can consist of multiple contiguous pages, although normally they are only a single page [1, P. 246].

Each slab contains a number of objects (the data structure that’s being cached). A slab is in one of three states: full, partial, or empty. When the kernel requests a new object, the request is satisfied by a partial slab if one exists, otherwise an empty slab is used [1, P. 246].

Take the inode structure. An inode is a filesystem structure that represents a disk inode, and is allocated by the slab allocated [1, P. 247].

An inode is allocated from the inode_cachep cache (this is the standard naming convention). The cache is made up from many slabs, and each slab contains as many inode objects as can fit. When the kernel requests a new inode object, the slab allocator returns a pointer to an already allocated, but currently unused structure from a partial slab if one exists, or an empty slab if one does not. When the kernel is finished with the inode, the slab allocator will mark the object as free.

Figure: The relationship between caches, slabs, and objects [1, P. 247]

A cache is represented with a kmem_cache structure. The structure contains three lists stored inside a kmem_list3 structure: slabs_full, slabs_partial, and slabs_empty. The list contains all slabs associated with the cache.

A slab struct represents a slab:

struct slab {
  struct list_head list; /* full, partial, or empty list */
  unsigned long colouroff; /* offset for the slab coloring */
  void *s_mem; /* first object in the slab */
  unsigned int inuse; /* allocated objects in the slab */
  kmem_bufctl_t free; /* first free object, if any */

“Slab descriptors are allocated either outside the slab in a general cache or inside the slab itself, at the beginning. The descriptor is stored inside the slab if the total size of the slab is sufficiently small, or if internal slack space is sufficient to hold the descriptor.” [1, P. 248]

The slab allocator creates new slabs with the __get_free_pages() function:

static void *kmem_getpages(struct kmem_cache *cachep, gfp_t flags, int nodeid)
  struct page *page;
  void *addr;
  int i;

  flags |= cachep->gfpflags;
  if (likely(nodeid == -1)) {
    addr = (void*)__get_free_pages(flags, cachep->gfporder);
    if (!addr)
      return NULL;
    page = virt_to_page(addr);
  } else {
    page = alloc_pages_node(nodeid, flags, cachep->gfporder);
    if (!page)
      return NULL;
    addr = page_address(page);

  i = (1 << cachep->gfporder);
  if (cachep->flags & SLAB_RECLAIM_ACCOUNT)
    atomic_add(i, &slab_reclaim_pages);
  add_page_state(nr_slab, i);
  while (i––) {
  return addr;

Memory is freed by kmem_freepages(), which calls free_pages() on the given cache’s pages. The freeing function is only called when available memory grows low, or when a cache is explicitly destroyed [1, P. 249].

A new cache is created with kmem_cache_create():

struct kmem_cache * kmem_cache_create(const char *name,
  size_t size,
  size_t align,
  unsigned long flags,
  void (*ctor)(void *));

name is the cache name. size is the size of each element in the cache. align is the offset of the first element in a cache, this is done to ensure a particular alignment in the first page. ctor is a constructor for the cache. It’s called whenever a new item is added to the cache. You can pass NULL for ctor [1, Pp. 249-50].

flags is a flags parameter used to control the behavior of the cache. It takes the following options:

  • SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN instructs the slab layer to align each object within a slab to a cache line.
  • SLAB_POISON causes the slab layer to fill the slab with a known value. This is called poisoning, and can be useful to catch access to uninitialized memory.
  • SLAB_RED_ZONE causes the slab layer to insert red zones around the cache to detect buffer overflows.
  • SLAB_PANIC causes the kernel to panic if the slab allocation fails.
  • SLAB_CACHE_DMA instructs slab layer to allocate each slab in DMA-able memory.

[1, Pp. 249-50]

On success, kmem_cache_create() returns a pointer to the created cache. To destroy a cache, you call kmem_cache_destroy():

int kmem_cache_destroy(struct kmem_cache *cachep)

Once a cache is created, you can allocate objects from it using kmem_cache_alloc():

void * kmem_cache_alloc(struct kmem_cache *cachep, gfp_t flags)

To later free an object and return it to its originating slab, use kmem_cache_free():

void kmem_cache_free(struct kmem_cache *cachep, void *objp)

This marks the object objp in cachep as free [1, P. 251].

High Memory Mappings

Pages in high memory might not be permanently mapped into the kernel address space. Thus, pages obtained via alloc_pages() with the __GFP_HIGHMEM flag might not have a logical address [1, P. 253].

To map a page structure into the kernel’s address space, use kmap, declared in <linux/highmem.h>:

void *kmap(struct page *page)

kmap() works on both high memory and low memory. If the page structure represents a page in low memory, then the virtual address is simply returned. If the page is in low memory, a permanent mapping is created and the address is returned. kmap() may sleep, so it works only in process context [1, P. 254].

Since the number of permanent mappings of high memory are limited, you should unmap high memory when it’s no longer needed. You do this with the kunmap() function.

When you need to create a mapping but the current context can’t sleep, you can create a temporary mapping. “These are a set of reserved mappings that can hold a temporary mapping. The kernel can atomically map a high memory page into one of these reserved mappings” [1, P. 254].

Setting up a temporary mapping is done with kmap_atomic():

void *kmap_atomic(struct page *page, enum km_type type)

type is one of the following enums:

enum km_type {

The mapping is undone wit kunmap_atomic().


  1. [1] L. R., Linux Kernel Development (Developer’s Library), 3rd ed. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010.