NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
|
|
PCP-FREE(1) General Commands Manual PCP-FREE(1)
pcp-free - report on free and used memory in the system
pcp [pcp options] free [-bkmgroltVw?] [-c count] [-s interval]
pcp-free gives a summary display of the total amount of free and used physical memory and swap in the system, as well as the caches used by the kernel. When invoked via the pcp(1) command, the -h/--host, -a/--archive, -O/--origin, -s/--samples, -t/--interval, -Z/--timezone and several other pcp options become indirectly available, see PCPIntro(1) for their descriptions. The displayed columns are: total Total installed memory (MemTotal and SwapTotal in /proc/meminfo) used Used memory (calculated as total - free - buffers - cache) free Unused memory (MemFree and SwapFree in /proc/meminfo) shared Memory used (mostly) by tmpfs (Shmem in /proc/meminfo) buffers Memory used by kernel buffers (Buffers in /proc/meminfo) cache Memory used by the page cache and slabs (Cached and SReclaimable in /proc/meminfo) buff/cache Sum of buffers and cache available Estimation of how much memory is available for starting new applications, without swapping. Unlike the data provided by the cache or free fields, this field takes into account page cache and also that not all reclaimable memory slabs will be reclaimed due to items being in use (MemAvailable in /proc/meminfo).
The available command line options are: -b, --bytes Display the amount of memory in bytes. -c count, --samples=count, --count=count Terminate the display after count iterations. See also -s. -g, --gigabytes Display the amount of memory in gigabytes. -k, --kilobytes Display the amount of memory in kilobytes. This is the default. -l, --lohi Display detailed low and high memory statistics. -m, --megabytes Display the amount of memory in megabytes. -o Disable the display of a "buffer adjusted" line. If the -o option is not specified, free subtracts buffer memory from the used memory and adds it to the free memory reported. -r, --terabytes Display the amount of memory in terabytes. -s delay, --interval=delay, --seconds=delay Activate continuous polling delay seconds apart. You may specify any floating point number for delay, or indeed any valid pmParseInterval(3) specification, which includes microsecond resolution delay times. This can be used in conjunction with the -c option. -t, --total Display a line containing the totals. -V, --version Display version number and exit. -w, --wide Switch to the wide mode. The wide mode produces lines longer than 80 characters. In this mode buffers and cache are reported in two separate columns. -?, --help Display usage message and exit.
pcp-free is inspired by the free(1) command and aims to be command line and output compatible with it.
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).
PCPIntro(1), pcp(1), free(1), pmParseInterval(3) and environ(7).
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 2024-06-14.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
in the repository was 2024-06-14.) 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-FREE(1)
Pages that refer to this page: pcp(1)