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authorMike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>2021-07-01 04:50:00 +0300
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2021-07-01 06:47:28 +0300
commit8d719afcb34434ebfa7911338d8c777eca8452b0 (patch)
tree6e71c677883e6cb656acf02bddec12868834da4b /Documentation
parent781eb2cdd26f3748be57da9bed98bbe5b0dd99fb (diff)
downloadlinux-8d719afcb34434ebfa7911338d8c777eca8452b0.tar.xz
docs: proc.rst: meminfo: briefly describe gaps in memory accounting
Add a paragraph that explains that it may happen that the counters in /proc/meminfo do not add up to the overall memory usage. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210421061127.1182723-1-rppt@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> Reviewed-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com> Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst11
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
index 81bfe3c800cc..dd4e3e18c22b 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst
@@ -933,8 +933,15 @@ meminfo
~~~~~~~
Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This
-varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a
-16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields.
+varies by architecture and compile options. Some of the counters reported
+here overlap. The memory reported by the non overlapping counters may not
+add up to the overall memory usage and the difference for some workloads
+can be substantial. In many cases there are other means to find out
+additional memory using subsystem specific interfaces, for instance
+/proc/net/sockstat for TCP memory allocations.
+
+The following is from a 16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled.
+You may not have all of these fields.
::