From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from westrelay05.boulder.ibm.com (westrelay05.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.193.33]) by e31.co.us.ibm.com (8.12.9/8.12.2) with ESMTP id h390n2gJ078948 for ; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 20:49:02 -0400 Received: from nighthawk.sr71.net (dyn9-47-17-110.beaverton.ibm.com [9.47.17.110]) by westrelay05.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.8/NCO/VER6.5) with ESMTP id h390o9WE144312 for ; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 18:50:09 -0600 Received: from us.ibm.com (dave@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nighthawk.sr71.net (8.12.3/8.12.3/Debian-6.3) with ESMTP id h390nkT7016548 for ; Tue, 8 Apr 2003 17:49:47 -0700 Message-ID: <3E936E2A.4080400@us.ibm.com> Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 17:49:46 -0700 From: Dave Hansen MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: meminfo documentation Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: I'm trying to document all of the fields in /proc/meminfo for future inclusion into Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt Does anyone has comments to add, or corrections for mine? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a 16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields. MemTotal: 16344972 kB MemFree: 13634064 kB Buffers: 3656 kB Cached: 1195708 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 891636 kB Inactive: 1077224 kB HighTotal: 15597528 kB HighFree: 13629632 kB LowTotal: 747444 kB LowFree: 4432 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB Dirty: 968 kB Writeback: 0 kB Mapped: 280372 kB Slab: 684068 kB Committed_AS: 1576424 kB PageTables: 24448 kB ReverseMaps: 1080904 VmallocTotal: 112216 kB VmallocUsed: 428 kB VmallocChunk: 111088 kB MemTotal: HighTotal + LowTotal MemFree: LowFree + HighFree Buffers: relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so) Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the page cache) SwapCached: things which were "Cached", but have now been swapped out to disk. Active: Inactive: HighTotal: HighFree: Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or for the pagecache. LowTotal: LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that highmem can be used for, but it is also availble for the kernel's use. Among many other things, it is where everything from the Slab is allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem. SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily on the disk Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries Slab: in-kernel data structures cache Committed_AS: PageTables: ReverseMaps: number of rmap pte chains 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 -- Dave Hansen haveblue@us.ibm.com -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: aart@kvack.org