12/12/2017 Interpreting /proc/meminfo and free output for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7 - Red Hat Customer

7 - Red Hat Customer Portal

Interpreting /proc/meminfo and free output for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6
and 7
$ SOLUTION VERIFIED - Updated November 22 2017 at 1:17 PM - English ()

Environment
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7

Issue
I need an interpretation of /proc/meminfo output.
I want to compare the output of free -k to cat /proc/meminfo .

Resolution
For definition of /proc/meminfo fields in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) releases prior to RHEL 5, please look at What is indicated by each
value in /proc/meminfo? (https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/1823)
Each field of cat /proc/meminfo will be discussed in the Diagnostics Steps.
The RHEL 5 output differs in some settings. This is also marked in the Diagnostic Steps.
RHEL 5 also has some fields no longer present in RHEL 6. For explanation on this issue have a look at Why are LowTotal, LowFree, HighTotal,
and HighFree missing from /proc/meminfo on x86_64 RHEL 6? (https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/205993)
For more information on the output of the free command see How do I view system memory utilization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
(https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/1169)
RHEL 7 has an additional field called MemAvailable in /proc/meminfo
RHEL 7 has a slightly changed output of the free command

Comparing the output

free -k output (RHEL 5 and RHEL 6):

total CUST O M E R (https://access.redhat.com/)

used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7778104 P 2971960
O R TA L 4806144 0 211756 1071092
-/+ buffers/cache: 1689112 6088992
Swap: 4194296 0 4194296

free -k output (RHEL 7):

total used free shared buff/cache available

Mem: 1012952 252740 158732 11108 601480 543584
Swap: 1048572 5380 1043192

Relevant fields from /proc/meminfo to match them against the output of free -k :

MemTotal: 7778104 kB
MemFree: 4806144 kB
Buffers: 211756 kB
Cached: 1071092 kB
SwapTotal: 4194296 kB
SwapFree: 4194296 kB

For RHEL 7 there is an additional field available, which is used instead of the calculation for -/+ buffers/cache line:

MemAvailable: 543584 kB

Matching output of free -k to /proc/meminfo

The following table shows how to get the free output matched to the /proc/meminfo fields.

free output coresponding /proc/meminfo fields

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12/12/2017 Interpreting /proc/meminfo and free output for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7 - Red Hat Customer Portal

free output coresponding /proc/meminfo fields


Mem: total MemTotal

Mem: used MemTotal - MemFree

Mem: free MemFree

Mem: shared (can be ignored nowadays. It has no meaning.) N/A

Mem: buffers Buffers

Mem: cached Cached

-/+ buffers/cache: used MemTotal - (MemFree + Buffers + Cached)

-/+ buffers/cache: free MemFree + Buffers + Cached

Swap: total SwapTotal

Swap: used SwapTotal - SwapFree

Swap: free SwapFree

Root Cause
Analyzing memory consumption

Diagnostic Steps
Most stuff is taken from the kernel documentation ( Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt and Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt )
High Level statistics
RHEL 5, RHEL 6 and RHEL 7

MemTotal: Total usable memory

MemFree: The amount of physical memory not used by the system
Buffers: Memory in buffer cache, so relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks. This shouldn't get very large.
Cached: Memory in the pagecache (Diskcache and Shared Memory)
SwapCached: Memory that is present within main memory, but also in the swapfile. (If memory is needed this area does not need to be
swapped out AGAIN because it is already in the swapfile. This saves I/O and increases performance if machine runs short on memory.)

RHEL 7 only

MemAvailable: An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new applications, without swapping.

Detailed Level statistics

RHEL 5, RHEL 6 and RHEL 7

Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not swapped out or reclaimed
Inactive: Memory that has not been used recently and can be swapped out or reclaimed

RHEL 6 and RHEL 7 only

Active(anon): Anonymous memory that has been used more recently and usually not swapped out
Inactive(anon): Anonymous memory that has not been used recently and can be swapped out
Active(file): Pagecache memory that has been used more recently and usually not reclaimed until needed
Inactive(file): Pagecache memory that can be reclaimed without huge performance impact
Unevictable: Unevictable pages can't be swapped out for a variety of reasons
Mlocked: Pages locked to memory using the mlock() system call. Mlocked pages are also Unevictable.

Memory statistics
RHEL 5, RHEL 6 and RHEL 7

SwapTotal: Total swap space available

SwapFree: The remaining swap space available
Dirty: Memory waiting to be written back to disk
Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to disk
AnonPages: Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
Mapped: Files which have been mmaped, such as libraries

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12/12/2017 Interpreting /proc/meminfo and free output for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7 - Red Hat Customer Portal
Slab: In-kernel data structures cache

PageTables: Amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page tables. This can increase to a high value if a lot of processes are attached
to the same shared memory segment.
NFS_Unstable: NFS pages sent to the server, but not yet commited to the storage
Bounce: Memory used for block device bounce buffers
CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ( vm.overcommit_ratio ), this is the total amount of memory currently available to be allocated
on the system. This limit is only adhered to if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in vm.overcommit_memory ).
Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system. The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which has
been allocated by processes, even if it has not been "used" by them as of yet.
VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
VmallocChunk: largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
HugePages_Total: Number of hugepages being allocated by the kernel (Defined with vm.nr_hugepages )
HugePages_Free: The number of hugepages not being allocated by a process
HugePages_Rsvd: The number of hugepages for which a commitment to allocate from the pool has been made, but no allocation has yet been
made.
Hugepagesize: The size of a hugepage (usually 2MB on an Intel based system)

RHEL 6 and RHEL 7 only

Shmem: Total used shared memory (shared between several processes, thus including RAM disks, SYS-V-IPC and BSD like SHMEM)
SReclaimable: The part of the Slab that might be reclaimed (such as caches)
SUnreclaim: The part of the Slab that can't be reclaimed under memory pressure
KernelStack: The memory the kernel stack uses. This is not reclaimable.
WritebackTmp: Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
HardwareCorrupted: The amount of RAM the kernel identified as corrupted / not working
AnonHugePages: Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
HugePages_Surp: The number of hugepages in the pool above the value in vm.nr_hugepages . The maximum number of surplus hugepages is
controlled by vm.nr_overcommit_hugepages .
DirectMap4k: The amount of memory being mapped to standard 4k pages
DirectMap2M: The amount of memory being mapped to hugepages (usually 2MB in size)

Product(s) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (/taxonomy/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux) Component kernel (/components/kernel)

Category Learn more (/category/learn-more) Tags memory (/tags/memory) performance (/tags/performance) rhel (/tags/rhel)

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