SLABTOP(1)
NAME
slabtop - display kernel slab cache information in real time
SYNOPSIS
slabtop [options]
DESCRIPTION
slabtop displays detailed kernel slab cache information in real time.
It displays a listing of the top caches sorted by one of the listed
sort criteria. It also displays a statistics header filled with slab
layer information.
OPTIONS
Normal invocation of slabtop does not require any options. The behavior, however, can be fine-tuned by specifying one or more of the following flags:
- --delay=n, -d n
- Refresh the display every n in seconds. By default, slabtop refreshes the display every three seconds. To exit the program, hit q.
- --sort=S, -s S
- Sort by S, where S is one of the sort criteria.
- --once, -o
- Display the output once and then exit.
- --version, -V
- Display version information and exit.
- --help Display usage information and exit.
SORT CRITERIA
The following are valid sort criteria used to sort the individual slab
caches and thereby determine what are the "top" slab caches to display.
The default sort criteria is to sort by the number of objects ("o").
The sort criteria can also be changed while slabtop is running by
pressing the associated character.
a: sort by number of active objects
b: sort by objects per slab
c: sort by cache size
l: sort by number of slabs
v sort by number of active slabs
n: sort by name
o: sort by number of objects
p: sort by pages per slab
s: sort by object size
u: sort by cache utilization
COMMANDS
slabtop accepts keyboard commands from the user during use. The following are supported. In the case of letters, both cases are accepted.
Each of the valid sort characters are also accepted, to change the sort
routine. See the section SORT CRITERIA.
- <SPACEBAR>
- Refresh the screen.
- Q Quit the program.
FILES
- /proc/slabinfo
- slab information
SEE ALSO
free(1), ps(1), top(1), vmstat(8)
NOTES
Currently, slabtop requires a 2.4 or later kernel (specifically, a version 1.1 or later /proc/slabinfo). Kernel 2.2 should be supported in
the future.
The slabtop statistic header is tracking how many bytes of slabs are
being used and it not a measure of physical memory. The 'Slab' field in
the /proc/meminfo file is tracking information about used slab physical
memory.
AUTHORS
Written by Chris Rivera and Robert Love.
slabtop was inspired by Martin Bligh's perl script, vmtop. The procps
package is maintained by Albert Cahalan <albert@users.sf.net>.
- Please send bug reports to <procps-feedback@lists.sf.net>.