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

procps-ng                                          2021-03-11                                         SLABTOP(1)