Probably a stupid question, but other than "top" is there a quick and easy way to see how much usable RAM (not swap) is left on a box? I am trying to tune some caching systems and would like to monitor the cache and free mem for a few days...

you mean like this

:/proc$ cat meminfo
MemTotal:      1555656 kB
MemFree:        718176 kB
Buffers:        27056 kB
Cached:        379328 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:        462252 kB
Inactive:      292772 kB
HighTotal:      655040 kB
HighFree:        1144 kB
LowTotal:      900616 kB
LowFree:        717032 kB
SwapTotal:    4915880 kB
SwapFree:      4915880 kB
Dirty:              64 kB
Writeback:          0 kB
AnonPages:      348676 kB
Mapped:          95268 kB
Slab:            50088 kB
SReclaimable:    35920 kB
SUnreclaim:      14168 kB
PageTables:      2924 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
CommitLimit:  5693708 kB
Committed_AS:  1120400 kB
VmallocTotal:  114680 kB
VmallocUsed:    15956 kB
VmallocChunk:    97120 kB

lots of cool shit in there
/proc$ cat stat
cpu  20823 111 2260 208161 9617 494 180 0
cpu0 13793 5 1572 97490 7317 494 177 0
cpu1 7029 106 688 110671 2299 0 3 0
intr 595492 302441 1813 0 2 0 0 0 0 34 7884 0 0 1693 0 20531 3040 112825 0 117301 381 18535 0 2 9010 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
ctxt 1822064
btime 1190267920
processes 7013
procs_running 1
procs_blocked 1

i forgot about that thanx for reminding me

Hey nop - that looks delightful, but where would the meminfo file or stream live? Can't find it on my unix or

linux

  boxes

maybe it some strange

linux

  system, i do not know if unix have this.
they do not have a /proc directory
all that stuff live in /proc

search on G for "/proc"
freebsd have this directory etc.

woops forgot to mention
if my faulty memory serves me correct be careful when playing with those files in that directory, especially if u root.
i can not remember the exact details, or maybe it another directory
but you could use it to modify memory.

/proc/meminfo doesn't exist in freebsd (whch

mac

 os is based on)

Maybe try "sysctl -a" or "pstat" to get you started.......?

HTH,
td

@Nop - found it in RedHat 9 - probably elsewhere as well, but that's a start thanks. As it turns out, the place I need to monitor is that system, so that's a plus for now anyhoo...

@TD - sysctl is there - cripes what a list (sysctl -A) - what is pstat? Can't find that one...

BSD specific I believe perk

Late to the party (what else is new?).  Also check out "free" and "vmstat" ("vm_stat" on OS X).

What someone else said about /proc...be careful in there as root, you can hork up your system pretty easily.

=RT=

$<parse> =  shell_exec('free');



Like it RT

I live to serve!  You're welcome.