Commit Graph

14 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Jaromir Capik
2f96eef7f8 library: reverting tmpfs subtraction from cached (18-FEB-2014)
The subtraction was marked as reinforcing the misconception,
that memory in the page cache can be considered free.
The Cached value is not a sum of page cache and tmpfs,
as the tmpfs memory lives in the page cache and therefore
it's an inseparable part of it.
2014-04-30 13:59:34 +02:00
Jakob Unterwurzacher
3569c0351f library: properly handle memory used by tmpfs
tmpfs has become much more widely used since distributions use it for
/tmp (Fedora 18+). In /proc/meminfo, memory used by tmpfs is accounted
into "Cached" (aka "NR_FILE_PAGES",
 http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/mm/shmem.c#L301 ).

The tools just pass it on, so what top, free and vmstat report as
"cached" is the sum of page cache and tmpfs.

free has the extremely useful "-/+ buffers/cache" output. However, now
that tmpfs is accounted into "cached", those numbers are way off once
you have big files in /tmp.

Fortunately, kernel 2.6.32 introduces "Shmem", which makes tmpfs memory
usage accessible from userspace (
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4b02108ac1b3354a22b0d83c684797692efdc395 ).

This patch substracts Shmem from Cached to get the actual page cache
memory. This makes both issues mentioned above disappear. For older
kernels, Shmem is not available (hence zero) and this patch is no-op.

Additionally:
* Update the man pages of free and vmstat to explain what is happening
* Finally drop "MemShared" from the /proc/meminfo parser, it has been
  dead for 10+ years and is only causing confusion ( removed in kernel
  2.5.54, see
  https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tglx/history.git/commit/?id=fe04e9451e5a159247cf9f03c615a4273ac0c571 )
2014-02-27 14:07:10 +01:00
Adrian Brzezinski
13f20a4811 free: reusing 'shared' for Shmem
Previously the shared memory column was always zero
for 2.6 series kernels (and later) due to the fact,
that the value was taken from the MemShared entry
that disappeared with 2.6 series kernels.
Later a new Shmem entry appeared in the /proc/meminfo
file and the 'shared' column now displays either
the MemShared or the Shmem value (depending on their
presence - the presence is mutually exclusive).
If none of the two entries is exported by the kernel,
then the column is zero.
2013-09-09 16:54:00 +02:00
Jaromir Capik
827fc0302e free: clarification of credits for the Shmem support
An unpleasant thing happened when I comitted the shmem support
for the 'free' tool. We already had a merge request from
Adrian Brzezinski in the queue, doing exactly the same.
As Adrian deserves credits, I'm reverting the change
and re-applying with the next commit in order to make
him a part of the project history.
2013-09-09 16:54:00 +02:00
Jaromir Capik
9315d00f01 free: reusing 'shared' for Shmem
Previously the shared memory column was always zero
for 2.6 series kernels (and later) due to the fact,
that the value was taken from the MemShared entry
that disappeared with 2.6 series kernels.
Later a new Shmem entry appeared in the /proc/meminfo
file and the 'shared' column now displays either
the MemShared or the Shmem value (depending on their
presence - the presence is mutually exclusive).
If none of the two entries is exported by the kernel,
then the column is zero.
2013-08-07 18:21:43 +02:00
Jim Warner
fe75e26ab6 miscellaneous: clean up trailing whitespace throughout
The entire tree's polluted with inappropriate trailing
whitespace. This commit rids our environment of all of
those useless keystrokes. Unfortunately, it sure ain't
a permanent solution and requires every contributor to
instruct their editor(s) to prevent or eliminate them.

Plus it's strongly recommended we all insert something
like what's shown below to our '.gitconfig' file so as
to provide at least some warnings when we try to apply
any patches (git am) that do contain the #@!%& things!

References(s):
~/.gitconfig excerpt ---------------------------------
[core]
  whitespace = trailing-space, space-before-tab, blank-at-eof
[apply]
  whitespace = warn
--------------------------------- ~/.gitconfig excerpt

Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
2013-03-14 12:36:47 +01:00
Sami Kerola
47100a8125 docs: fix manual page warnings
All warnings where about unnecessary quoting.  The scriptlet
below will tell what was wrong.

for I in ./top/top.1 ./ps/ps.1 ./*.[0-9]; do
    echo "== $I warnings =="
    man --warnings=all $I > /dev/null
done

This should probably be turned to 'make check' script.

Signed-off-by: Sami Kerola <kerolasa@iki.fi>
2012-04-16 12:55:53 +02:00
Sami Kerola
aa2284c820 docs: fix free.1 groff syntax
Signed-off-by: Sami Kerola <kerolasa@iki.fi>
2011-12-20 17:17:03 +01:00
Sami Kerola
11049a7c98 docs: free great modernization manual page fixes
Mention long options, and new options, in manual page.

Signed-off-by: Sami Kerola <kerolasa@iki.fi>
2011-04-28 10:10:02 +02:00
Jan Görig
039e2bb7df Manual pages fixes
Taken from Debian with small changes added

Authors: Craig Small <csmall@debian.org>, Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>
2011-02-23 09:17:54 +01:00
albert
fbadfaa850 protect against BSD pty w/ 20-bit minor 2004-02-24 04:14:36 +00:00
albert
9cd9c44fb8 abuse of the English language 2003-07-29 02:34:01 +00:00
albert
118854162d crossed the Rubicon, and no, it wasn't fun 2002-10-06 21:34:17 +00:00
csmall
03a9b5a30f procps 010114 2002-02-01 22:47:29 +00:00