Skip to content

memory plugin
Plugin name memory
Type read
Callbacks init, read
Status supported
Since 1.0
Copyright 2005–2008 Florian octo Forster, 2009 Manuel Sanmartin
License GPLv2
Configuration collectd.conf(5)

Description

The Memory plugin collects physical memory utilization.

The values are reported by their use by the operating system. Under Linux, the categories are:

  • Used
  • Buffered
  • Cached
  • Free

Free memory is memory you paid for, that's using power and that doesn't do anything useful. It is normal that the operating system puts that memory to use, for example by caching files it has accessed (reported as Cached under Linux).

Virtual memory statistics can be collected with the vmem plugin under Linux.

Example graph

Plugin-memory.png

Dependencies

  • Linux
    • /proc-file system
  • Solaris
    • libkstat(3KSTAT)
  • AIX
    • libperfstat(3)

See also

Configuration

Configuration options · from collectd.conf(5)

See this section in the full configuration reference

The memory plugin provides the following configuration options:

ValuesAbsolute true|false
Enables or disables reporting of physical memory usage in absolute numbers, i.e. bytes. Defaults to true.
ValuesPercentage false|true

Enables or disables reporting of physical memory usage in percentages, e.g. percent of physical memory used. Defaults to false.

This is useful for deploying collectd in a heterogeneous environment in which the sizes of physical memory vary.