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 information.

OPTIONS

       Normal  invocation of slabtop does not require any options.  The behavior, however, can be
       fine-tuned by specifying 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.  This cannot be combined with the
              -o option.

       -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 letters, both cases are accepted.

       Each of the valid sort characters are also accepted, to change the sort routine.  See  the
       section SORT CRITERIA.

       <SPACEBAR>
              Refresh the screen.

       Q      Quit the program.

FILES

       /proc/slabinfo
              slab information

SEE ALSO

       free(1), ps(1), top(1), vmstat(8)

NOTES

       Currently,  slabtop  requires  a 2.4 or later kernel (specifically, a version 1.1 or later
       /proc/slabinfo).  Kernel 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  physical  memory.   The 'Slab' field in the /proc/meminfo file is tracking
       information about used slab physical memory.

       The CACHE SIZE column is not accurate, it's the upper limit of  memory  used  by  specific
       slab.  When  system using slub (most common case) is under high memory pressure, there are
       slab order fallbacks, which means "pages per slab" is not constant and may decrease.

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 ⟨procps@freelists.org⟩