invalidate_mapping_pages(9)

🦋 invalidate_mapping_pages(9) 🦋

hiii bestie!! welcome to the Kernel API Manual page for invalidate_mapping_pages(9) 💖 this one is lowkey iconic if you’re messing with page cache and need to yeet only the chill stuff. Let’s get into it ✨

💖 NAME 💖

invalidate_mapping_pages - Invalidate all clean, unlocked cache of one inode 🧚

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

unsigned long invalidate_mapping_pages (struct address_space *mapping , pgoff_t start , pgoff_t end );

🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

• mapping — the address_space which holds the cache to invalidate 💅
• start — the offset 'from' which to invalidate 🫶
• end — the offset 'to' which to invalidate (inclusive) ⭐

🔥 DESCRIPTION 🔥

okay so here’s the tea ☕: this function removes pages that are clean, unmapped and unlocked, as well as shadow entries. It will not block on IO activity — no waiting around for IO, bestie 😭

if you want to remove all the pages of one inode, regardless of their use and writeback state, use truncate_inode_pages instead 👑 that’s the one for the full send.

⭐ RETURN ⭐

the number of indices that had their contents invalidated ✨ (yes, a count, not a vibe check 💀)

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

all from the kernel file ./mm/truncate.c — go say hi to these besties 🦋:

• folio_invalidate(9)
• mapping_evict_folio(9)
• truncate_inode_pages_range(9)
• truncate_inode_pages(9)
• truncate_inode_pages_final(9)
• mapping_try_invalidate(9)
• invalidate_inode_pages2_range(9)
• invalidate_inode_pages2(9)
• truncate_pagecache(9)
• truncate_setsize(9)
• pagecache_isize_extended(9)
• truncate_pagecache_range(9)

xoxo, signed off from the ./mm source/version, dated October 2026 — catch u later, bestie 🫶💋