Entries in /proc/meminfo

linux memory procfs
AIB picture AIB · Mar 18, 2009 · Viewed 52.5k times · Source

I can make sense of most of the information contained in /proc/meminfo like total memory, buffers, cache etc. Could you tell me what do the less obvious ones like the ones listed below mean?

  • AnonPages
  • Mapped
  • Slab
  • NFS_Unstable
  • Bounce
  • VmallocTotal
  • VmallocUsed
  • VmallocChunk

If anyone is wondering, I am talking about the output of the linux command cat /proc/meminfo

Answer

ephemient picture ephemient · Mar 18, 2009

The canonical source of this information is /usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt. Specifically,

   AnonPages: Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
      Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
        Slab: in-kernel data structures cache
NFS_Unstable: NFS pages sent to the server, but not yet committed to stable
        storage
      Bounce: Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
 VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free

Related questions

How can I measure the actual memory usage of an application or process?

This question is covered here in great detail. How do you measure the memory usage of an application or process in Linux? From the blog article of Understanding memory usage on Linux, ps is not an accurate tool to use …

Read More
Command-line Tool to find Java Heap Size and Memory Used (Linux)?

Is there a Command-line Tool (Linux) to check Heap Size (and Used Memory) of a Java Application? I have tried through jmap. But it gives info. about internal memory areas like Eden/ PermGen etc., which is not useful to me. …

Read More
How to see top processes sorted by actual memory usage?

I have a server with 12G of memory. A fragment of top is shown below: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 12979 frank 20 0 206m 21m 12m S 11 0.2 26667:24 krfb 13 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 36:25.04 ksoftirqd/3 59 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 4:53.00 …

Read More