mstat is a command-line tool for measuring how much memory a program consumes over time. It uses the Linux control groups (cgroups) interface to track a process and the child processes created during its execution.
This approach is useful when profiling applications that launch subprocesses. Instead of following one PID and potentially missing memory consumed by its descendants, mstat measures the memory attributed to the process group as a whole.
The software is designed for developers and system administrators who need repeatable measurements of memory consumption during program execution. It writes sampled measurements to a file that can be examined or processed with other tools, making it suitable for benchmarking and resource analysis.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Uses Linux cgroups to measure the memory consumption of a program together with its descendant processes.
- Supports both the legacy cgroups v1 interface and the unified cgroups v2 hierarchy, automatically detecting the available configuration.
- Records memory measurements at configurable sampling frequencies, including high-frequency sampling for short-lived workloads.
- Writes measurements to tab-separated files suitable for further analysis, plotting and comparison.
- Can set environment variables for the monitored program, allowing different execution configurations to be tested.
- Reports additional memory accounting information on cgroups v1 systems, including kernel memory attributed to a process group.
- Requires permission to create and manage cgroups, typically through root privileges or an appropriately configured set-UID installation.
- Provides verbose output identifying the cgroup mode being used during execution.
Website: github.com/bpowers/mstat
Support:
Developer: Bobby Powers
License: ISC License
mstat is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Process Memory Tools | |
|---|---|
| ps_mem | Accurately reports memory usage of programs |
| pscircle | Visualizes Linux processes in a form of radial tree |
| psrecord | Record the CPU and memory activity of a process |
| smem2 | Reports on memory usage on Linux systems |
| process-mem | Display memory used by processes |
| process-map | Visualize the virtual memory of a process |
| Smemstat | Reports the physical memory usage |
| mstat | Measure memory usage of a program over time |
| alram | Helps when available memory is below threshold, with optional task killer |
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