pcp-buddyinfo(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PCP-BUDDYINFO(1)         General Commands Manual         PCP-BUDDYINFO(1)

NAME         top

       pcp-buddyinfo - report Linux kernel buddy algorithm statistics

SYNOPSIS         top

       pcp [pcp options] buddyinfo [-uVz?]  [-s samples] [-a archive] [-Z
       timezone]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The pcp-buddyinfo command is used for viewing different stats
       related to buddyinfo.  It helps users analyze the dynamic
       behaviour of the buddy algorithm used in the Linux kernel virtual
       memory subsystem.  The information includes the total number of
       zones that are currently active, counts of different order pages,
       and so on.  By default, pcp-buddyinfo reports live data for the
       local host.

       The statistics shown are as follows:

       HEADER          DESCRIPTION
       _               _
       Normal          zones available
       Nodes           available nodes
       Order0          available pages of order 0
       Order1          available pages of order 1
       Order2          available pages of order 2
       Order3          available pages of order 3
       Order4          available pages of order 4
       Order5          available pages of order 5
       Order6          available pages of order 6
       Order7          available pages of order 7
       Order8          available pages of order 8
       Order9          available pages of order 9
       Order10         available pages of order 10

       Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order (a
       certain size) that are available at any given time. For example,
       for zone DMA (direct memory access), there are 90 of
       2^(0*PAGE_SIZE) chunks of memory. Similarly, there are 6 of
       2^(1*PAGE_SIZE) chunks, and 2 of 2^(2*PAGE_SIZE) chunks of memory
       available.

       The DMA row references the first 16 MB on a system, the HighMem
       row references all memory greater than 4 GB on a system, and the
       Normal row references all memory in between.

OPTIONS         top

       -a file, --archive=file
              Fetch buddyinfo metrics from the specified PCP archive.

       -s count, --samples=count
              Limit reporting to count samples of buddyinfo statistics.

       -u, --no-interpol
              disable the default interpolation mode when replaying an
              archive.  With the -u option, interpolated reporting is
              disabled and each sample is reported according to native
              sampling intervals in the archive.  In this mode the -t
              option is ignored.  Additionally, non-interpolated replay
              makes sense only when replaying an archive (using the -a
              option described above), so the -a option is mandatory when
              -u is specified.

       -z, --hostzone
              Use the local timezone of the host that is the source of
              the performance metrics, as identified by either the -h or
              the -a options.  The default is to use the timezone of the
              local host.

       -Z timezone, --timezone=timezone
              Use timezone for the date and time.  Timezone is in the
              format of the environment variable TZ as described in
              environ(7).

       -V, --version
              Display version number and exit.

       -?, --help
              Display usage message and exit.

NOTES         top

       pcp-buddyinfo reports information extracted from the
       /proc/buddyinfo Linux kernel procfs file.

       If the default interpolation mode is disabled, it is possible that
       some metrics (recorded at different intervals) will be reported as
       having missing values for some samples even if they were recorded.

PCP ENVIRONMENT         top

       Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to
       parameterize the file and directory names used by PCP. On each
       installation, the file /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for
       these variables. The $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an
       alternative configuration file, as described in pcp.conf(5).

       For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see
       pmGetOptions(3).

SEE ALSO         top

       PCPIntro(1), pcp(1), pmGetOptions(3), pcp.conf(5) and environ(7).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, send it to pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2025-02-02.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2025-01-30.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP                   PCP-BUDDYINFO(1)