From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 6 08:18:33 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5D6316AC24 for ; Tue, 6 Jun 2006 08:11:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E65D43D46 for ; Tue, 6 Jun 2006 08:11:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 993CF46C1D; Tue, 6 Jun 2006 04:11:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 09:11:10 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: "Wilkinson, Alex" In-Reply-To: <20060606073436.GK27880@squash.dsto.defence.gov.au> Message-ID: <20060606090919.U68996@fledge.watson.org> References: <20060606071736.J68996@fledge.watson.org> <20060606073436.GK27880@squash.dsto.defence.gov.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: libmemstat(3) - Library for monitoring kernel memory use X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 08:18:37 -0000 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@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