diff --git a/src/util/virhostmem.c b/src/util/virhostmem.c
index 8734dafb72..b13c3fe38e 100644
--- a/src/util/virhostmem.c
+++ b/src/util/virhostmem.c
@@ -849,6 +849,14 @@ virHostMemGetFreePages(unsigned int npages,
     int cell;
     size_t i, ncounts = 0;
 
+    if (!virNumaIsAvailable() && lastCell == 0 &&
+        startCell == 0 && cellCount == 1) {
+        /* As a special case, if we were built without numactl and want to
+         * fetch info on the fake NUMA node set startCell to -1 to make the
+         * loop below fetch overall info. */
+        startCell = -1;
+    }
+
     if (startCell > lastCell) {
         virReportError(VIR_ERR_INTERNAL_ERROR,
                        _("start cell %d out of range (0-%d)"),
@@ -891,6 +899,14 @@ virHostMemAllocPages(unsigned int npages,
     int cell;
     size_t i, ncounts = 0;
 
+    if (!virNumaIsAvailable() && lastCell == 0 &&
+        startCell == 0 && cellCount == 1) {
+        /* As a special case, if we were built without numactl and want to
+         * allocate hugepages on the fake NUMA node set startCell to -1 to make
+         * the loop below operate on NUMA agnostic sysfs paths. */
+        startCell = -1;
+    }
+
     if (startCell > lastCell) {
         virReportError(VIR_ERR_INTERNAL_ERROR,
                        _("start cell %d out of range (0-%d)"),