topic vmstat - getting memory and CPU utlization in Operating System - Linux

vmstat - getting memory and CPU utlization

Danny Fang — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:10:11 GMT

HI,
I would like to get the memory used (in MB) for a particular running application with vmstat (see output from vmstat).

I would like to obtain the active memory of a particular application by specifying the -a option:
bash-2.03$ vmstat -a 10 10
Usage: vmstat [-cipsS] [disk ...] [interval [count]]
bash-2.03$ vmstat -a 10 10

May I know how I could obtain the active memory from vmstat? Also, I'd like to verify if by getting the active memory would tell me the amount of memory consumed(in MB) for an application?

As for the CPU utilization for an application, do I refer to the "sys" or "usr" column under the heading "cpu" from the vmstat output?

Could anyone help me out?

Thanks

Re: vmstat - getting memory and CPU utlization

Raj D. — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:26:13 GMT

Hi Danny ,

vmstat will give virtual memory statistics , and you can check paging/swapping and cpu usage as well.

Use top command to check Memory usauge , for the processes. You can also use ps -ef , with grep also , for top process.

Cheers.
Raj

Re: vmstat - getting memory and CPU utlization

RAC_1 — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:56:03 GMT

vmstat is not for calculating memory usage of a process. It is tool for looking at overall system memory usage.

You can check a memeory usage of a process as follows.

UNIX95= ps -C"process_name" -o "vsz,args,ppid,pid"

The value of vsz is in KB.
you can also do
ps -lp"process_pid" and check SZ columns. (the value here is in pages. Ususally the page size is 4096 bytes)