MEMSTAT(1)

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>.