Overview

    Parameters

    The following parameters are available for this item:

    • active - memory currently in use or very recently used, and so it is in RAM

    • anon - memory not associated with a file (cannot be re-read from it)

    • available - available memory, calculated differently depending on the platform (see the table below)

    • cached - cache for various things

    • file - cache for contents of recently accessed files

    • free - memory that is readily available to any entity requesting memory

    • inactive - memory that is marked as not used

    • pavailable - ‘available’ memory as percentage of ‘total’ (calculated as /*100)

    • pused - ‘used’ memory as percentage of ‘total’ (calculated as /*100)

    • slab - total amount of memory used by the kernel to cache data structures for its own use

    • total - total physical memory available

    • used - used memory, calculated differently depending on the platform (see the table below)

    • wired - memory that is marked to always stay in RAM. It is never moved to disk.

    Some of these parameters are platform-specific and might not be available on your platform. See Items supported by platform for details.

    Platform-specific calculation of available and used:

    So inactive memory is both used and available simultaneously. Because of this, the vm.memory.size[used] item is designed for informational purposes only, while vm.memory.size[available] is designed to be used in triggers.

    See also