path: root/lib/os_mon/doc/src/memsup.xml

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  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>1996</year><year>2009</year>
      <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice>
      The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
      Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
      compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
      Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
      retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
    
      Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
      basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
      the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
      under the License.
    
    </legalnotice>

    <title>memsup</title>
    <prepared></prepared>
    <docno></docno>
    <date></date>
    <rev></rev>
  </header>
  <module>memsup</module>
  <modulesummary>A Memory Supervisor Process</modulesummary>
  <description>
    <p><c>memsup</c> is a process which supervises the memory usage for
      the system and for individual processes. It is part of the OS_Mon
      application, see <seealso marker="os_mon_app">os_mon(6)</seealso>.
      Available for Unix, Windows and VxWorks.</p>
    <p>Periodically performs a memory check:</p>
    <list type="bulleted">
      <item>
        <p>If more than a certain amount of available system memory is
          allocated, as reported by the underlying operating system,
          the alarm <c>{system_memory_high_watermark, []}</c> is set.</p>
      </item>
      <item>
        <p>If any Erlang process <c>Pid</c> in the system has allocated
          more than a certain amount of total system memory, the alarm
          <c>{process_memory_high_watermark, Pid}</c> is set.</p>
      </item>
    </list>
    <p>Alarms are reported to the SASL alarm handler, see
      <seealso marker="sasl:alarm_handler">alarm_handler(3)</seealso>.
      To set an alarm, <c>alarm_handler:set_alarm(Alarm)</c> is called
      where <c>Alarm</c> is either of the alarms specified above.</p>
    <p>The alarms are cleared automatically when the alarm cause is no
      longer valid.</p>
    <p>The function 
      <seealso marker="#get_memory_data/0">get_memory_data()</seealso>
      can be used to retrieve the result of the latest periodic memory
      check.</p>
    <p>There is also a interface to system dependent memory data,
      <seealso marker="#get_system_memory_data/0">get_system_memory_data()</seealso>.
      The result is highly dependent on the underlying operating
      system and the interface is targeted primarily for systems
      without virtual memory (e.g. VxWorks). The output on other
      systems is however still valid, although sparse.</p>
    <p>A call to <c>get_system_memory_data/0</c> is more costly
      than a call to <c>get_memory_data/0</c> as data is collected
      synchronously when this function is called.</p>
    <p>The total system memory reported under UNIX is the number of
      physical pages of memory times the page size, and the available
      memory is the number of available physical pages times the page
      size. This is a reasonable measure as swapping should be avoided
      anyway, but the task of defining total memory and available
      memory is difficult because of virtual memory and swapping.</p>
  </description>

  <section>
    <marker id="config"></marker>
    <title>Configuration</title>
    <p>The following configuration parameters can be used to change
      the default values for time intervals and thresholds:</p>
    <taglist>
      <tag><c>memory_check_interval = int()>0</c></tag>
      <item>
        <p>The time interval, in minutes, for the periodic memory check.
          The default is one minute.</p>
      </item>
      <tag><c>system_memory_high_watermark = float()</c></tag>
      <item>
        <p>The threshold, as percentage of system memory, for how much
          system memory can be allocated before the corresponding alarm
          is set. The default is 0.80 (80%).</p>
      </item>
      <tag><c>process_memory_high_watermark = float()</c></tag>
      <item>
        <p>The threshold, as percentage of system memory, for how much
          system memory can be allocated by one Erlang process before
          the corresponding alarm is set. The default is 0.05 (5%).</p>
      </item>
      <tag><c>memsup_helper_timeout = int()>0</c></tag>
      <item>
        <p>A timeout, in seconds, for how long the <c>memsup</c>
          process should wait for a result from a memory check. If
          the timeout expires, a warning message <c>"OS_MON (memsup) timeout"</c> is issued via <c>error_logger</c> and any
          pending, synchronous client calls will return a dummy value.
          Normally, this situation should not occur. There have been
          cases on Linux, however, where the pseudo file from which
          system data is read is temporarily unavailable when the system
          is heavily loaded.</p>
        <p>The default is 30 seconds. </p>
      </item>
      <tag><c>memsup_system_only = bool()</c></tag>
      <item>
        <p>Specifies whether the <c>memsup</c> process should only
          check system memory usage (<c>true</c>) or not. The default is
          <c>false</c>, meaning that information regarding both system
          memory usage and Erlang process memory usage is collected.</p>
        <p>It is recommended to set this parameter to <c>false</c> on
          systems with many concurrent processes, as each process memory
          check makes a traversal of the entire list of processes.</p>
      </item>
    </taglist>
    <p>See <seealso marker="kernel:config">config(4)</seealso> for
      information about how to change the value of configuration
      parameters.</p>
  </section>
  <funcs>
    <func>
      <name>get_memory_data() -> {Total,Allocated,Worst}</name>
      <fsummary>Get data for the memory in the system</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>Total = Allocated = int()</v>
        <v>Worst = {Pid, PidAllocated} | undefined</v>
        <v>&nbsp;Pid = pid()</v>
        <v>&nbsp;PidAllocated = int()</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the result of the latest memory check, where
          <c>Total</c> is the total memory size and <c>Allocated</c>
          the allocated memory size, in bytes.</p>
        <p><c>Worst</c> is the pid and number of allocated bytes of
          the largest Erlang process on the node. If <c>memsup</c>
          should not collect process data, that is if the configuration
          parameter <c>memsup_system_only</c> was set to <c>true</c>,
          <c>Worst</c> is <c>undefined</c>.</p>
        <p>The function is normally asynchronous in the sense that it
          does not invoke a memory check, but returns the latest
          available value. The one exception if is the function is
          called before a first memory check is finished, in which case
          it does not return a value until the memory check is finished.</p>
        <p>Returns <c>{0,0,{pid(),0}}</c> or <c>{0,0,undefined}</c> if
          <c>memsup</c> is not available, or if all memory checks so far
          have timed out.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_system_memory_data() -> MemDataList</name>
      <fsummary>Get system dependent memory data</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>MemDataList = [{Tag, Size}]</v>
        <v>&nbsp;Tag = atom()</v>
        <v>&nbsp;Size = int()</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Invokes a memory check and returns the resulting, system
          dependent, data as a list of tagged tuples, where <c>Tag</c>
          can be one of the following:</p>
        <taglist>
          <tag><c>total_memory</c></tag>
          <item>The total amount of memory available to the Erlang emulator,
           allocated and free. May or may not be equal to the amount
           of memory configured in the system.</item>
          <tag><c>free_memory</c></tag>
          <item>The amount of free memory available to the Erlang emulator
           for allocation.</item>
          <tag><c>system_total_memory</c></tag>
          <item>The amount of memory available to the whole operating
           system. This may well be equal to <c>total_memory</c> but
           not necessarily.</item>
          <tag><c>largest_free</c></tag>
          <item>The size of the largest contiguous free memory block
           available to the Erlang emulator.</item>
          <tag><c>number_of_free</c></tag>
          <item>The number of free blocks available to the Erlang runtime
           system. This gives a fair indication of how fragmented
           the memory is.</item>
          <tag><c>buffered_memory</c></tag>
          <item>
                The amount of memory the system uses for temporary storing raw disk blocks.
          </item>
          <tag><c>cached_memory</c></tag>
          <item>
                The amount of memory the system uses for cached files read from disk.
          </item>
          <tag><c>total_swap</c></tag>
          <item>
                The amount of total amount of memory the system has available
                for disk swap.
          </item>
          <tag><c>free_swap</c></tag>
          <item>
                The amount of memory the system has available for disk swap.
          </item>

        </taglist>
        <p>All memory sizes are presented as number of <em>bytes</em>.</p>
        <p>The <c>largest_free</c> and <c>number_of_free</c> tags are
          currently only returned on a VxWorks system.</p>
        <p>Returns the empty list [] if <c>memsup</c> is not available,
          or if the memory check times out.</p>
	<note><p>
	On linux the memory available to the emulator is <c>cached_memory</c> and <c>buffered_memory</c> in addition to 
	<c>free_memory</c>.</p>
	</note>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_os_wordsize() -> Wordsize</name>
      <fsummary>Get the wordsize of running os.</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>Wordsize = 32 | 64 | unsupported_os</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the wordsize of the current running operating system. </p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_check_interval() -> MS</name>
      <fsummary>Get time interval, in milliseconds, for the periodic memory check</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>MS = int()</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the time interval, in milliseconds, for the periodic
          memory check.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>set_check_interval(Minutes) -> ok</name>
      <fsummary>Set time interval, in minutes, for the periodic memory check</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>Minutes = int()>0</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Changes the time interval, given in minutes, for the periodic
          memory check.</p>
        <p>The change will take effect after the next memory check and is
          non-persistent. That is, in case of a process restart, this
          value is forgotten and the default value will be used. See
          <seealso marker="#config">Configuration</seealso> above.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_procmem_high_watermark() -> int()</name>
      <fsummary>Get threshold, in percent, for process memory allocation</fsummary>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the threshold, in percent, for process memory
          allocation.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>set_procmem_high_watermark(Float) -> ok</name>
      <fsummary>Set threshold, as percentage represented by a float, for process memory allocation</fsummary>
      <desc>
        <p>Changes the threshold, given as a float, for process memory
          allocation.</p>
        <p>The change will take effect during the next periodic memory
          check and is non-persistent. That is, in case of a process
          restart, this value is forgotten and the default value will be
          used. See <seealso marker="#config">Configuration</seealso>
          above.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_sysmem_high_watermark() -> int()</name>
      <fsummary>Get threshold, in percent, for system memory allocation</fsummary>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the threshold, in percent, for system memory
          allocation.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>set_sysmem_high_watermark(Float) -> ok</name>
      <fsummary>Set threshold, given as a float, for system memory allocation</fsummary>
      <desc>
        <p>Changes the threshold, given as a float, for system memory
          allocation.</p>
        <p>The change will take effect during the next periodic memory
          check and is non-persistent. That is, in case of a process
          restart, this value is forgotten and the default value will be
          used. See <seealso marker="#config">Configuration</seealso>
          above.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>get_helper_timeout() -> Seconds</name>
      <fsummary>Get the timeout value, in seconds, for memory checks</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>Seconds = int()</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Returns the timeout value, in seconds, for memory checks.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
    <func>
      <name>set_helper_timeout(Seconds) -> ok</name>
      <fsummary>Set the timeout value, in seconds, for memory checks</fsummary>
      <type>
        <v>Seconds = int() (>= 1)</v>
      </type>
      <desc>
        <p>Changes the timeout value, given in seconds, for memory
          checks.</p>
        <p>The change will take effect for the next memory check and is
          non-persistent. That is, in the case of a process restart, this
          value is forgotten and the default value will be used. See
          <seealso marker="#config">Configuration</seealso> above.</p>
      </desc>
    </func>
  </funcs>

  <section>
    <title>See Also</title>
    <p><seealso marker="sasl:alarm_handler">alarm_handler(3)</seealso>,
      <seealso marker="os_mon_app">os_mon(3)</seealso></p>
  </section>
</erlref>