libmemstat(3) - Library for monitoring kernel memory use

[Robert Watson]

On Tue, 6 Jun 2006, Wilkinson, Alex wrote:

>    0n Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 07:20:39AM +0100, Robert Watson wrote:
>
>    >
>    >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.
>    >
>    >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.
>
> Erm, Robert, where does memtop live ? I can find it in ports nor base 
> system.

memtop is an experimental monitoring tool based on libmemstat, you can find 
the source here:

     http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/libmemstat/

Possibly something like this could be integrated into systat, but my ncurses 
knowledge is a bit weak, and I've not had a chance to investigate further. 
As with vmstat, the interpretation of the output requires a moderate amount of 
insight into how the kernel works, so I've been a bit reluctant to push it as 
a debugging tool without some more refinement.  I think it would be neat if 
someone picked it up and did something useful with it, though :-).

Robert N M Watson