Information
Announcement Support for this product will end on November 3, 2025. We recommend that you use PATROL for Linux, PATROL for AIX, or PATROL for Solaris to monitor operating systems.

Real memory consumed by buffers and cache (MEMUsedBufCache)


This parameter reports the real memory used by file-system buffers and cache. All the modern UNIX systems (AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris) allocate free memory dynamically for use by file-system buffers and page cache rather than wasting the physical memory. Whenever applications need more memory, the memory used by buffers and cache is allocated for use by applications. Hence, the memory consumed by buffers and cache is treated as free memory rather than used memory, on these systems.

In the DCM mode, DCM consumes the Buffer Cache Size metric from the Perform Data Collector attribute. The following table lists how the parameter value is calculated in the PSL mode:

Operating system

Calculation

Linux

MEMUsedBufCache = buffer + cache

Here, buffer is the Buffers value from /proc/meminfo and cache is the Cached value from /proc/meminfo.

AIX

MEMUsedBufCache = file_pages * (page_size / 1024)

The values of the variables used in the formula are fetched by running the following commands:

  • page_size - /usr/bin/getconf PAGE_SIZE
  • file_pages - vmstat -v | grep "file pages"


The value for this parameter is reported correctly only when the kernel module, bunyip, is loaded on the system. If this module is not loaded, the value for this parameter is reported as zero. This parameter is not available on HP-UX and Solaris, in the PSL collection mode.

Default parameter attributes

Attribute

Default value

Application class

MEMORY

Command type

not applicable

Platform

All

Icon style

graph

Unit

KB

Border range

undefined

Alarm1 range

undefined

Alarm2 range

undefined

Scheduling (poll time)

inherits poll time of collector

Active at installation

yes

Parameter type

consumer

Value set by

BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management properties

Property

Default value

Monitor type

Memory

Key Performance Indicator

No

Monitor for abnormalities

No

Graph by default

No

Availability

No

Response time

No

Normal distribution

Yes

Statistical

Yes

 

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BMC PATROL for UNIX and Linux 9.13