SLABTOP(1) User Commands 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 infor‐
mation.
OPTIONS
Normal invocation of slabtop does not require any options. The behavior, however, can be fine-tuned by speci‐
fying one or more of the following flags:
-d, --delay=N
Refresh the display every n in seconds. By default, slabtop refreshes the display every three seconds.
To exit the program, hit q.
-s, --sort=S
Sort by S, where S is one of the sort criteria.
-o, --once
Display the output once and then exit.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --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.
character description header
a number of active objects ACTIVE
b objects per slab OBJ/SLAB
c cache size CACHE SIZE
l number of slabs SLABS
v number of active slabs N/A
n name NAME
o number of objects OBJS
p pages per slab N/A
s object size OBJ SIZE
u cache utilization USE
COMMANDS
slabtop accepts keyboard commands from the user during use. The following are supported. In the case of let‐
ters, both cases are accepted.
Each of the valid sort characters are also accepted, to change the sort routine. See the section SORT CRITE‐
RIA.
NOTES
Currently, slabtop requires a 2.4 or later kernel (specifically, a version 1.1 or later /proc/slabinfo). Ker‐
nel 2.2 should be supported in the future.
The slabtop statistic header is tracking how many bytes of slabs are being used and is not a measure of physi‐
cal memory. The 'Slab' field in the /proc/meminfo file is tracking information about used slab physical mem‐
ory.
AUTHORS
Written by Chris Rivera and Robert Love.
slabtop was inspired by Martin Bligh's perl script, vmtop.
REPORTING BUGS
Please send bug reports to ⟨[email protected]⟩
procps-ng June 2011 SLABTOP(1)
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