NAME¶
memstat - Identify what's using up virtual memory.
SYNOPSIS¶
memstat [
-n]
[-v
][
-w]
[-p PID
]
DESCRIPTION¶
memstat lists all accessible processes, executables, and shared libraries
that are using up virtual memory. To get a complete list
memstat has to
be run as root to be able to access the data of all running processes.
First, the processes are listed. An amount of memory is shown along with a
process ID and the name of the executable which the process is running. The
amount of memory shown does not include shared memory: it only includes memory
which is private to that process. So, if a process is using a shared library
like libc, the memory used to hold that library is not included. The memory
used to hold the executable's text-segment is also not included, since that
too is shareable.
After the processes, the shared objects are listed. The amount of memory is
shown along with the filename of the shared object, followed by a list of the
processes using the shared object. The memory is listed as the total amount of
memory allocated to this object throughout the whole namespace. In brackets
also the amount that is really shared is listed.
Finally, a grand total is shown. Note that this program shows the amount of
virtual (not real) memory used by the various items.
memstat gets its input from the /proc filesystem. This must be compiled
into your kernel and mounted for
memstat to work. The pathnames shown
next to the shared objects are also read from /proc filesystem if this
information is available. If not,
memstat scans the disk to translate
inode information to filesnames. For this
memstat uses a configuration
file,
/etc/memstat.conf, to determine which directories to scan. This
file should include all the major bin and lib directories in your system, as
well as the /dev directory. These directories are scanned recursively, so that
files stored in subdirectories are seen by
memstat as well. Note that
this traversal of directory trees significantly increases run time.
Executables or shared objects not found will be listed as
``[dev]:<inode>''.
Options¶
The
-n switch causes inode information to be printed as-is, if no file
information was given and to not traverse the configured directory trees.
The
-v switch prints version information and exits.
The
-w switch causes a wide printout: lines are not truncated at 80
columns.
The
-p switch causes
memstat to only print data gathered from
looking at the process with the given PID.
NOTES¶
These reports are intended to help identify programs that are using an excessive
amount of memory, and to reduce overall memory waste.
FILES¶
/etc/memstat.conf
/proc/*/maps
SEE ALSO¶
ps(1),
top(1),
free(1),
vmstat(8),
lsof(8),
/usr/share/doc/memstat/memstat-tutorial.txt.gz
BUGS¶
memstat ignores all devices that just map main memory, though this may
cause
memstat to ignore some memory usage.
Memory used by the kernel itself is not listed.
AUTHOR¶
Originally written by Joshua Yelon <jyelon@uiuc.edu> and patched by Bernd
Eckenfels <ecki@debian.org>. Taken over and rewritten by Michael Meskes
<meskes@debian.org>.