libmemstat(3) - Library for monitoring kernel memory use

[Robert Watson]

On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 bhuvan.kumarmital at wipro.com wrote:

>    Saw your tool (memtop) for monitoring kernel memory. I'd like to use a 
> similar tool for linux, i believe your tool is bsd based. Could you tell me 
> a similar tool, or perhaps another version of memtop built for linux. I'd 
> really appreciate you help. Please reply on my email address.

Bhuvan,

You are correct that libmemstat and derived tools currently rely on features 
present in the FreeBSD kernel.  The library provides a general monitoring 
abstraction over a set of specific kernel memory allocators -- specifically, 
the FreeBSD malloc(9) and uma(9) allocators.  It is relatively straight 
forward to implement that abstraction for other memory allocators, such as 
user space allocators or kernel allocators from other platforms, but that work 
has not been done (as far as I know).  I'm not aware of specific monitoring 
tools for the Linux operating system that are able to perform this type of 
profiling/monitoring, although I presume some sort of kernel memory profiling 
tool does exist.

Thanks,

Robert N M Watson