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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H2>Gmemusage: A Distinctive Memory Monitor</H2>
<h4>By <a href="mailto: layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
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<center><h3>Introduction</h3></center>
<p>Linux may not have many office-suites available, but it sure does have a
wide variety of system, process, and memory monitors! I use ProcMeter quite a
bit, mainly for the incoming and outgoing TCPIP packet display, but recently I
happened upon an unusual memory monitor which displays the relative
proportions of memory in use by running processes. Gmemusage is a small X
application written by Raju Mathur. He has been attempting to emulate a
monitor (also called gmemusage) which is used on Silicon Graphics
workstations.
<center><h3>Features</h3></center>
<p>Here is a screenshot, which will save me several paragraphs of description:
<br>
<p><center><img alt="Gmemusage window" src="./gx/ayers/gmem.gif"></center>
<p>As with many other such monitors, the information shown is essentially the
same as what is shown in the memory fields produced by <code>ps
-aux</code>, which derives its information from pseudo-files in the /proc
directory. These files, such as <i>meminfo</i> and <i>loadavg</i>, are
generated dynamically by the kernel. You can read them directly, by running a
command such as <kbd>cat /proc/meminfo</kbd>.
<p>Although a plethora of information is presented by the output of
<kbd>ps -aux</kbd> or <kbd>top</kbd>, more detail is shown than is
needed for a quick overview and comparison, and tabular data doesn't easily
lend itself to comparative analysis. You won't see precise differences
between memory usage while contemplating a gmemusage display, but the
proportions are shown in a graphical and easily interpreted format. In most
cases the relative proportions are more useful than the decimally exact detail
shown by <kbd>ps</kbd> or <kbd>top</kbd>.
<p>Raju Mathur has plans to enhance gmemusage. One possibility (mentioned in
his TODO file) is to add a pop-up window which would give
additional information about a process when its name in the main display is
selected with the mouse.
<p>I like this small utility, partly because it diverges from the usual
dynamic bar-chart display found in many memory monitors, and also because it
is small and specialized. You don't have to spend time configuring it either;
it works well "out of the box". If you would like to try it, the source
archive is available at the gmemusage home WWW
<a href="http://reality.sgi.com/raju/software">site.</a>
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Last modified: Sat 31 Jan 1998
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 25 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 1998</H5></center>
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