memstat - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

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.

Use memstat online using onworks.net services