You will, however, need a very recent kernel (> 2.6.27). Show a pie chart of RSS labeled by name smem -pie name -s rss.Show a bar chart labeled by pid smem -bar pid -c 'pss uss'.Read data from capture tarball smem -source.Show mappings filtered by process smem -m -P volution.Show processes filtered by mapping smem -M libxml.Show different columns smem -c 'name user pss'.Show system view smem -R 4G -K /path/to/vmlinux -w.It also has a number of options to display memory usage (from website): Smem divides up the cost of libglib among the processes using it, to give a closer picture of reality.

Naive memory accounting counts the full libglib size against every process linking to it. Linux loads libglib into one block of memory and maps it into every process that wants libglib. PSS instead measures each application's 'fair share' of each shared area to give a realistic measure.Įxample: You start up GNOME, causing a number of processes to start, one for each applet and program. Smem introduces the concept of Proportional Set Size:īecause large portions of physical memory are typically shared among multiple applications, the standard measure of memory usage known as resident set size (RSS) will significantly overestimate memory usage. If you want greater accuracy, you'll need to look harder. For simple monitoring, gkrellmd, or nagios scripts is probably enough. Per process memory accounting is tricky for a number of reasons I'll get into in a minute.

Memory monitoring in linux