Bug 364384

Summary:	Ksysguard should use "MemAvailable" to correctly report application memory usage
Product:	[Unmaintained] ksysguard	Reporter:	Terry Barnaby <terry>
Component:	ksysguard	Assignee:	KSysGuard Developers <ksysguard-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	albin.e.engstrom, bugseforuns, kde, kde, kishore96, lukebenes
Priority:	NOR
Version:	5.6.4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Fedora RPMs
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	Initial idea for a patch

Description Terry Barnaby 2016-06-16 15:13:58 UTC

The ksysguard application and the "System Load" widget both report incorrect values for application memory usage. They have not been updated to use the latest kernel's /proc/meminfo's MemAvailable parameter. This means the Application memory value can be significantly larger than it should be (seen 11G rather than 4G on a server running NFS/SMB) as it includes memory that is effectively being used for caching rather than actually needed and in use by applications. Other applications such as top are ok.
I will attach a patch that tries to fix this. This needs looking at to make sure it functions as desired and correctly.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Terry Barnaby 2016-06-16 15:17:44 UTC

Created attachment 99533 [details]
Initial idea for a patch

This patches ksysguard so that the application memory usage is calculated better. It may be wrong/have issues and other KDE code (System Load) may also need changing. It is supplied as an example of what I think needs to be done, but it will likely need more work.

Comment 2 lukebenes 2019-09-22 17:03:38 UTC

This is a valid problem.  Linux kernel >= 3.14 provides a "MemAvailable" field in /proc/meminfo[1] which gives the estimated amount of memory available for applications.

The patch needs some work. Take a look at how libgtop added support[2].


[1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/34e431b0ae398fc54ea69ff85ec700722c9da773
[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgtop/commit/0580b2fb2ca8fdde2031c8aba991bafac64d8dbd

Comment 3 lukebenes 2019-09-22 17:12:16 UTC

John,
Could you please take a look at this patch?

Comment 4 David Edmundson 2019-09-22 17:51:36 UTC

Could you put patches on phabricator? They tend to get lost otherwise.

Comment 5 Christoph Cullmann 2024-09-23 20:59:59 UTC

ksysguard is no longer maintained, in Plasma 6 there is the Plasma system monitor for this task.

If your issue still happens with the Plasma 6 replacement, please re-open and we can move this bug to the new product, thanks!