MemInsight

MemInsight is a lightweight, configurable Linux tool for collecting detailed system and per-process memory and CPU statistics, tailored for embedded environments. It is designed to aid in the diagnosis and debugging of memory and performance issues.

Features

• System-wide and per-process memory statistics:
  Scans /proc for all processes and parses /proc/[pid]/stat and /proc/[pid]/smaps to collect:

  • Resident Set Size (RSS)
  • Proportional Set Size (PSS)
  • Shared clean memory
  • Private dirty memory
  • Swap PSS
  • Major page faults
  • CPU time (user + system)

• Configurable output:
  Supports configuration files to specify process whitelists, output file location, number of iterations, interval between samples, and log level.

• CSV output:
  Outputs results in CSV format for easy analysis.

• Test mode:
  Includes a test mode for validating parsing logic and linked list sorting.

• Kernel thread support:
  Optionally includes kernel threads in monitoring.

Usage

Building

To build the binary:

make

This produces the xMemInsight executable.

Running

Standalone (system-wide monitoring):

make run
# or
./xMemInsight

Test mode:

make test
# or
./xMemInsight --test

Help:

make help
# or
./xMemInsight --help

With configuration file:

./xMemInsight --config /path/to/config.conf

Configuration File Format

Supported extensions: .conf, .cfg, .txt

Example config file:

process_whitelist=myapp,systemd,1234,
output_file=/tmp/xmeminsight.csv,
iterations=10,
interval=60
log_level=INFO

• process_whitelist: Comma-separated list of process names or PIDs to monitor.
• output_file: Path to output CSV file.
• iterations: Number of times to sample statistics.
• interval: Seconds to wait between samples.
• log_level: Logging verbosity.

Output

• CSV file containing per-process statistics and system-wide memory info.
• Console output for progress and errors.

Code Structure

• memstatus.c: Main source file. Handles CLI parsing, process scanning, statistics collection, output writing, and configuration parsing.
• memstatus.h: Header file. Contains data structures, macros, global variables, and function prototypes.
• Makefile: Build and run targets.
• README.md: Documentation.

Main Functions

• main(): Entry point. Parses arguments, loads config, runs monitoring.
• systemWide(): Collects system-wide stats.
• parseConfig(): Loads configuration from file.
• getProcessInfos(): Parses /proc/[pid]/smaps for memory stats.
• fillProcessStatFields(): Parses /proc/[pid]/stat for process info.
• writeProcessInfo(): Outputs and frees process info linked list.
• addProcessInfo(): Inserts process info into sorted linked list.
• saveMeminfo(): Dumps /proc/meminfo to output.

Extending

• Add new fields to Process_Info struct for more statistics.
• Modify parseConfig() to support additional config options.
• Implement more advanced filtering or output formats as needed.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.

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