Manpages - memusage.1
Table of Contents
NAME
memusage - profile memory usage of a program
SYNOPSIS
memusage [option]... program [programoption]...
DESCRIPTION
memusage is a bash script which profiles memory usage of the program, program. It preloads the libmemusage.so library into the caller’s environment (via the LD_PRELOAD environment variable; see ld.so*(8)). The *libmemusage.so library traces memory allocation by intercepting calls to *malloc*(3), *calloc*(3), *free*(3), and *realloc*(3); optionally, calls to *mmap*(2), *mremap*(2), and *munmap*(2) can also be intercepted.
memusage can output the collected data in textual form, or it can use memusagestat*(1) (see the *-p option, below) to create a PNG file containing graphical representation of the collected data.
Memory usage summary
The “Memory usage summary” line output by memusage contains three fields:
- heap total
- Sum of size arguments of all *malloc*(3) calls, products of arguments (nmemb/*/size) of all *calloc*(3) calls, and sum of length arguments of all *mmap*(2) calls. In the case of *realloc*(3) and *mremap*(2), if the new size of an allocation is larger than the previous size, the sum of all such differences (new size minus old size) is added.
- heap peak
- Maximum of all size arguments of *malloc*(3), all products of nmemb/*/size of *calloc*(3), all size arguments of *realloc*(3), length arguments of *mmap*(2), and new_size arguments of *mremap*(2).
- stack peak
- Before the first call to any monitored function, the stack pointer address (base stack pointer) is saved. After each function call, the actual stack pointer address is read and the difference from the base stack pointer computed. The maximum of these differences is then the stack peak.
Immediately following this summary line, a table shows the number calls, total memory allocated or deallocated, and number of failed calls for each intercepted function. For *realloc*(3) and *mremap*(2), the additional field “nomove” shows reallocations that changed the address of a block, and the additional “dec” field shows reallocations that decreased the size of the block. For *realloc*(3), the additional field “free” shows reallocations that caused a block to be freed (i.e., the reallocated size was 0).
The “realloc/total memory” of the table output by memusage does not reflect cases where *realloc*(3) is used to reallocate a block of memory to have a smaller size than previously. This can cause sum of all “total memory” cells (excluding “free”) to be larger than the “free/total memory” cell.
Histogram for block sizes
The “Histogram for block sizes” provides a breakdown of memory allocations into various bucket sizes.
OPTIONS
- -n */name/, *–progname=**/name/
- Name of the program file to profile.
- -p */file/, *–png=**/file/
- Generate PNG graphic and store it in file.
- -d */file/, *–data=**/file/
- Generate binary data file and store it in file.
- -u, –unbuffered
- Do not buffer output.
- -b */size/, *–buffer=**/size/
- Collect size entries before writing them out.
- –no-timer
- Disable timer-based (SIGPROF) sampling of stack pointer value.
- -m, –mmap
- Also trace *mmap*(2), *mremap*(2), and *munmap*(2).
- -?, –help
- Print help and exit.
- –usage
- Print a short usage message and exit.
- -V, –version
- Print version information and exit.
- The following options apply only when generating graphical output:
- -t, –time-based
- Use time (rather than number of function calls) as the scale for the X axis.
- -T, –total
- Also draw a graph of total memory use.
- **–title=**/name/
- Use name as the title of the graph.
- -x */size/, *–x-size=**/size/
- Make the graph size pixels wide.
- -y */size/, *–y-size=**/size/
- Make the graph size pixels high.
EXIT STATUS
The exit status of memusage is equal to the exit status of the profiled program.
BUGS
To report bugs, see [[http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/bugs.html][]]
EXAMPLES
Below is a simple program that reallocates a block of memory in cycles that rise to a peak before then cyclically reallocating the memory in smaller blocks that return to zero. After compiling the program and running the following commands, a graph of the memory usage of the program can be found in the file memusage.png:
$ memusage --data=memusage.dat ./a.out
...
Memory usage summary: heap total: 45200, heap peak: 6440, stack peak: 224
total calls total memory failed calls
malloc| 1 400 0
realloc| 40 44800 0 (nomove:40, dec:19, free:0)
calloc| 0 0 0
free| 1 440
Histogram for block sizes:
192-207 1 2% ================
...
2192-2207 1 2% ================
2240-2255 2 4% =================================
2832-2847 2 4% =================================
3440-3455 2 4% =================================
4032-4047 2 4% =================================
4640-4655 2 4% =================================
5232-5247 2 4% =================================
5840-5855 2 4% =================================
6432-6447 1 2% ================
$ memusagestat memusage.dat memusage.png
Program source
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define CYCLES 20
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int i, j;
size_t size;
int *p;
size = sizeof(*p) * 100;
printf("malloc: %zu\n", size);
p = malloc(size);
for (i = 0; i < CYCLES; i++) {
if (i < CYCLES / 2)
j = i;
else
j--;
size = sizeof(*p) * (j * 50 + 110);
printf("realloc: %zu\n", size);
p = realloc(p, size);
size = sizeof(*p) * ((j + 1) * 150 + 110);
printf("realloc: %zu\n", size);
p = realloc(p, size);
}
free(p);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
SEE ALSO
*memusagestat*(1), *mtrace*(1), *ld.so*(8)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.13 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Information about memusage.1 is found in manpage for: ld.so (8)). ld.so (8)