How to disable transparent hugepages (THP) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Solution Verified - Updated 5 Feb 2026

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or later major version
transparent hugepages (THP)
tuned

Issue

How to disable transparent hugepages (THP) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or later?
Disabling transparent hugepages (THP) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is not taking effect.

Resolution

Follow the steps below

Add the transparent_hugepage=never to kernel command line.

  # grubby --args="transparent_hugepage=never" --update-kernel=ALL

Execute the zipl command for the s390x arch systems after making the above changes in the kernel commandline, to bring these changes into effect. Then follow the remaining steps as mentioned below.
System needs to be rebooted to apply the changes.
```
  # systemctl reboot
```

After rebooting there are several ways to confirm the change:

  # cat /proc/cmdline
  ( the transparent_hugepage=never argument should appear )

  # cat /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
  always madvice [never]

  # grep AnonHugePages: /proc/meminfo
  AnonHugePages:        0 kB

  # grep nr_anon_transparent_hugepages /proc/vmstat
  nr_anon_transparent_hugepages 0

If Transparent Huge Pages (THP) is still not disabled, continue and use one of the options below.

Option 1: (Recommended) create a customized tuned profile with disabled THP
- With this resolution we will create a customized version of the currently running profile. The customized version will disable THP.
- Find out which profile is active, create a copy. In the following example we currently use the throughput-performance profile:
```
  # tuned-adm active
  Current active profile: throughput-performance
```
- To create customized profile, create a new directory in /etc/tuned directory with desired profile name.
```
  # mkdir /etc/tuned/myprofile-nothp
```
- Then create a new tuned.conf file for myprofile-nothp, and insert the new tuning info:
```
  # cat /etc/tuned/myprofile-nothp/tuned.conf 
  [main]
  include=throughput-performance

  [vm]
  transparent_hugepages=never
```
- Make the script executable:
```
  # chmod +x /etc/tuned/myprofile-nothp/tuned.conf 
```
- Enable myprofile like so:
```
  # tuned-adm profile myprofile-nothp
```
- This change will immediately take effect and persist reboots.
- To verify if THP are disabled or not, run below command:
```
  # cat /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
```
Option 2: (Alternative) Disable tuned services
- This resolution will disable the tuned services.
```
  # systemctl stop tuned
  # systemctl disable tuned
```
- OR
```
  # tuned-adm off
```
- Now add "transparent_hugepage=never" kernel parameter in grub2 configuration file as explained in steps 1-3 above.
- Reboot the server for changes to take effect.

Note: To enable transparent hugepages (THP) this process can be followed in reverse. Use...

    # grubby --remove-args=transparent_hugepage --update-kernel=ALL

    # systemctl reboot

SBR

Kernel

Product(s)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Components

kernel

Category

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Tags

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