Troubleshooting CentOS

Managing memory with vmstat

A different aspect of memory management can be achieved by using the vmstat command. Considered to be a summary reporting feature associated with memory, processes, and paging, vmstat can be seen in action by typing:

# vmstat -a

Having used the -a option to call on all active and inactive memory, the most endearing columns shown under vmstat's output are best described as follows:

• si: This column shows the value swapped in from disk
• so: This column shows the value swapped out to disk
• bi: This column shows the value sent to block devices
• bo: This column shows the value received from block devices
• us: This column shows the user time
• sy: This column shows the system time
• id: This column shows the idle time

The display does look ...