psleaks — Reports process attributes associated with resource leaks.
psleaks [
-p
TEXT
| --pids TEXT
] [ --pgrep TEXT
] [
-r
[true]|false
| --recurse [true]|false
] [ --format TEXT
] [
-s
TEXT
| --sort TEXT
] [ --reverse [true]|false
] [ --no-headers [true]|false
] [ --version [true]|false
] [
-h
[true]|false
| --help [true]|false
]
The psleaks command is typically used during software development when testing for resource leaks. This command reports information for one or more processes in a table format as shown below.
[root@probe ~]#psleaks --pids "28353 21249, 27367" --pgrep sshd;Name PID Thrd File Net %CPU %Mem RSS VSZ Elapsed ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------- ------------ sshd 1117 1 5 2 0.0 0.0 7692 99972 6-05:59:18 sshd 9492 1 8 1 0.0 0.0 9668 163632 18:02:01 sshd 9533 1 12 0 0.0 0.0 5052 163632 18:01:53 sshd 13465 1 8 1 0.0 0.0 9632 163632 17:20:19 sshd 13467 1 15 2 0.0 0.0 5044 163632 17:20:19 chrome 21249 16 52 0 0.0 0.7 123260 1303832 1-00:36:19 mate-terminal 27367 4 14 0 0.0 0.3 51760 749648 2-23:15:30 java 28353 38 40 0 0.5 1.1 184996 8238608 1-15:36:41 ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------- ------------ Counts/Sums 8 63 154 6 0.5 2.1 397104 11046588 7
The output table contains the following columns.
The first 16 characters of the process name from the
base name of the "command" column in
the ps output.
The unique integer process ID associated with the process.
The unique integer process ID of the parent process
that this process belongs to. NOTE: This column is omitted in the
standard "compact" format. This value comes from
the "ppid" column in the ps
output.
The user account associated with the process. NOTE:
This column is omitted in the standard "compact"
format. This value comes from the "user" column in
the ps output.
The number of threads associated with the process from
the "nlwp" column in the ps
output. If you see this count continue to increase over time, it may
indicate that the process has a "thread leak".
The number of open file descriptors associated with the
process. This comes from counting the number of entries under
the /proc/PID/fd directory. If you see this count
continue to increase over time, it may indicate that the process has a
"file descriptor" leak. It should be noted that network connections
also appear in this count. If you see -1 in this
column, it indicates that we didn't have the necessary permissions to
retrieve the information (try running as root
with sudo).
The number of TCP or UDP network connections that are
associated with the process. This comes from looking for
the PID value in the last column of the
"netstat -tunap" output. If you see this count
continue to increase over time, it may indicate that the process is
opening network connection, but failing to close them and has a
"network connection" leak. If you see -1 in this
column, it indicates that we didn't have the necessary permissions to
retrieve the information (try running as root
with sudo).
This column displays the CPU utilization of the
process and is computed by dividing the total amount of CPU time used
by the process by the time that the process has been running. This
value comes from the "%cpu" column in
the ps output. If you see this count continue to
increase over time, it may indicate that the process has a "CPU leak"
(the complexity of the problems it solves grows as it continues to
process information). It is possible for this value to exceed 100.0%
if the threads within a process are consuming more resources than a
single core can provide.
The ratio of the resident memory consumed by the process to the total physical memory available on the machine. This value comes from
the "%mem" column in the ps
output. If you see this count continue to increase over time, it may
indicate that the process has a "memory leak".
This column shows the resident non-swapped physical memory of the
process in kiloBytes. This value comes from the "rss"
column in the ps output. If you see this count
continue to increase over time, it may indicate that the process has a
"memory leak". However, for some processes, it is normal for this
value to fluctuate over time or to grow to a stable point, you may
need to take several samples after the process has run for a long time
before becoming too worried.
This column shows the virtual memory size of the
process in KiB. This value comes from the "vsz"
column in the ps output. If you see this count
continue to increase over time, it may indicate that the process has a
"memory leak". However, for some processes, it is normal for this
value to fluctuate over time or to grow to a stable point, you may
need to take several samples after the process has run for a long time
before becoming too worried. It is possible to see this value continue
to increase without seeing the RSS value continue
to increase. For example, if a process forgets to release memory
that it no longer references the memory will swap out of
the RSS space, but still
consume VSZ space.
This column contains how long the process has been
running. This value comes from the "etime" column
in the ps output. If you have noticed the process
leaking one or two resources, but you see that this duration is a very
large value (like 180 days) it may indicate that it is a low priority
leak to run down in your code.
There are several things to consider when using psleaks:
You can always get information for the processes that you own.
You can get partial information for processes that you don't own. The File and Net count columns will show -1 if you request information for processes that you don't own. You can run as the root user via sudo if you need this information.
It is legal to include both the "--pids PIDLIST" and "--pgrep PATTERN" command line options to display a table of all of the resulting PIDs.
It is legal to omit both the "--pids PIDLIST" and "--pgrep PATTERN" command line options to display just the table header.
The "--pids PIDLIST" option can be used
in a variety of ways. You don't need to explicitly list integer
values. You can use other commands to generate the pid list for
you. For example, the following reports on the init process (1)
and all of the processes owned by the "jdoe"
user:
[root@probe ~]#psleaks --pids "1 $(pgrep -u nstwui;)";Name PID Thrd File Net %CPU %Mem RSS VSZ Elapsed ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------- ------------ systemd 1 1 116 6 0.0 0.0 9160 221300 6-06:00:28 httpd 1187 22 12 0 0.0 0.2 34364 892900 6-06:00:23 httpd 1192 6 12 0 0.0 0.2 32664 696056 6-06:00:23 httpd 1216 6 13 0 0.0 0.3 53988 835056 6-06:00:23 httpd 1222 6 13 0 0.0 0.3 53864 835032 6-06:00:23 httpd 2785 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 32216 695984 6-05:58:43 httpd 3047 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 27892 695568 6-05:58:30 httpd 3048 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 31848 695836 6-05:58:30 httpd 3054 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 27960 695568 6-05:58:30 httpd 3060 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 28980 696072 6-05:58:30 httpd 12774 6 12 0 0.0 0.1 28568 695664 1-03:07:22 ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------- ------------ Counts/Sums 11 77 238 6 0.0 1.6 361504 7655036 5
Unless you specify the "--no-headers"
option, the ASCII tables will include column headings and footer
summary information. For the most part, the value below each column
will be the sum of the values in the column. However, there are some
things to be aware of.
The value below
the PID, PPID,
User and Elapsed columns will be
the count of unique values in the corresponding
column.
For columns where a summation or count does not
make sense (like Elapsed), you will see
"na" indicating that a summary value is not
applicable to this column.
Sums are provided for the
"%CPU" and "%Mem"
columns. However, this information may not be that useful or accurate
- especially in the case where there is a lot of variation in the
"Elapsed" time column.
You can use the "--recurse" option to
recursively search for all children, the children of the children and
so on for the list of processes specified. This is the easiest way to
track down all of the related processes for applications that spawn
multiple processes. The following example demonstrates using this
method to track down all of the processes started by the Google Chrome
browser.
[root@probe ~]#psleaks --pgrep chrome --recurse;Name PID Thrd File Net %CPU %Mem RSS VSZ Elapsed ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ----- ---- ------- -------- ------------ chrome 2492 48 343 24 2.9 1.8 304104 1662160 10:06:15 cat 2528 1 3 0 0.0 0.0 652 114776 10:06:15 cat 2529 1 3 0 0.0 0.0 800 114776 10:06:15 chrome 2532 1 16 0 0.0 0.3 53868 536932 10:06:15 nacl_helper 2533 1 7 0 0.0 0.0 8264 116876 10:06:15 chrome 2536 1 17 0 0.0 0.0 12296 536932 10:06:15 chrome 2599 8 135 0 1.0 1.9 315188 880440 10:06:14 chrome 2609 1 18 0 0.0 0.0 14532 560544 10:06:14 chrome 2634 18 60 0 0.6 2.3 386416 1598896 10:06:14 chrome 2674 15 36 0 0.0 0.4 75236 1242880 10:06:14 chrome 2714 15 36 0 0.0 0.4 71772 1221368 10:06:14 chrome 2731 15 44 0 0.5 0.7 121048 1300136 10:06:14 chrome 2786 22 73 0 3.3 1.4 238812 1549012 10:06:14 chrome 2865 16 48 0 0.0 0.5 94412 1275308 10:06:11 chrome 5215 18 59 0 0.4 1.1 188204 1411840 09:31:25 chrome 5566 20 51 0 0.4 0.8 143480 1359644 09:25:47 chrome 7226 16 52 0 0.3 0.7 123376 1348748 08:57:01 chrome 12393 16 51 0 0.1 0.8 137980 1347704 04:44:49 chrome 12647 16 48 0 0.3 0.7 118656 1294140 04:42:35 chrome 15353 16 47 0 0.0 0.6 104184 1297084 03:56:52 chrome 23966 16 40 0 0.3 0.7 114584 1306576 12:52 chrome 24033 16 47 0 0.4 0.7 118024 1306812 12:29 chrome 24208 37 70 0 8.4 1.2 208880 1528204 11:17 chrome 24249 17 56 0 0.5 0.8 144280 1347572 11:11 ---------------- ------- ---- ---- ---- ----- ---- ------- -------- ------------ Counts/Sums 24 351 1360 24 19.4 17.8 3099048 26259360 13
The above output shows that running Google Chrome consumes a
large number of resources. This output also demonstrates a case where
the the summary %CPU value looks pretty high at
19.4%. There is a bit of uncertainty in this value as process 24208
makes up 8.4% but has only been active for 11 minutes and 17 seconds
compared to many of the other processes that have been running
longer.
This example demonstrates using the
"--recurse" option to track down all Apache Web Server
processes using the "wide" format.
[root@probe ~]#psleaks --pgrep httpd --recurse --format wide;Name PID PPID User Thrd File Net %CPU %Mem RSS VSZ Elapsed ---------------- ------- ------- ------------ ---- ---- ---- ------ ---- --------- ---------- ------------ httpd 378086 1 root 1 12 2 0.0 0.4 17504 44244 08:09:02 httpd 378090 378086 nstwui 1 12 0 0.0 0.2 8916 54300 08:09:02 httpd 378091 378086 nstwui 65 17 0 0.0 1.1 46596 2307868 08:09:02 httpd 378092 378086 nstwui 81 17 0 0.0 0.6 28004 2557232 08:09:02 httpd 378093 378086 nstwui 65 23 4 0.0 1.0 41332 2373148 08:09:02 httpd 378305 378086 nstwui 65 18 1 0.0 1.1 47132 2373404 08:09:01 ---------------- ------- ------- ------------ ---- ---- ---- ------ ---- --------- ---------- ------------ Counts/Sums 6 2 2 278 99 7 0.0 4.4 189484 9710196 2
Since getting a "recursive" list of process IDs can be useful
for other tasks (pgrep does not seem to support
this). You can use the "pids" format if you want to
reduce the output to just the process IDs found.
[root@probe ~]#psleaks --pgrep chrome --recurse --format pids;2492 2532 2536 2599 2609 2634 2674 2714 2731 2786 2865 26048 27226 27250 28139 28169 28217 28683 2528 2529 2533
The following command line options are available:
-p TEXT] | [--pids TEXT]
Use this option to specify a list of 1 or more process
IDs (PIDs). For example, "2122 2414" and
"3333,3124,3990" are both valid PID lists. Each
process ID must be an integer value of an active process that can be
found using the ps command. You can use commas and
or spaces to separate each PID in the list.
--pgrep TEXT]
Use this option to specify a pattern for the pgrep command. The resulting PIDs of the pgrep output will be included in the table. This option can be used in combination with or instead of the "--pids PIDLIST" option.
-r [true]|false] | [--recurse [true]|false]
Use this option to recursively search for and include all
descendents of the processes specified by the "--pids
PIDLIST" and "--pgrep PATTERN". For
example, specifying "--pgrep chrome
--recurse" could be used to report on all processes
started by the Google Chrome browser.
--format TEXT]
Use this option to specify a the output format. There are
currently four output formats available. The
"compact" format (the default) produces a table
that will fit in a 80 column terminal session. The
"wide" format adds more information and makes
several of the columns wider. The "json" format
dumps the output in a non-human readable JSON format that may be
easier to use in some situations when you want to write another
program to make use of the resulting table. The
"pids" format just list the process IDs (similar to
the pgrep). The "pids" format is
typically not used unless you are also using the
"--recurse" option (recursion is about the only
thing that psleaks can do that
pgrep can not do).
-s TEXT] | [--sort TEXT]
Use this option to indicate the column that data should
be sorted on. Legal column choices include: "none",
"name", "pid", "ppid",
"threads", "files",
"network", "cpuPct",
"memPct", "rss",
"vsz", "elapsed",
"user". If this option is omitted sorting will be
done using the column "pid" (this is the
default). You can specify "none" if you don't need
the output sorted (to save a few CPU cycles). Sorting by
"pid" will be done with an ascending sort (lower
PID values towards the top of the table). Sorting by any other column
will result in a descending sort (higher values like memory usage will
float to the top of the table).
--reverse [true]|false]
Use this option to reverse the normal sort order of the column. For example, if you are sorting by "pid" then the largest PID would appear at the top of the table. If you were sorting by "rss" the the smallest memory usage would appear at the top of the table.
--no-headers [true]|false]
Use this option to disable any headers and footers in the ASCII output. This can be useful when post-processing the ASCII output.
--version [true]|false]
Use this option to see the version of the psleaks software that is being run.
-h [true]|false] | [--help [true]|false]
Use this option to display a short synopsis showing the command line options recognized by the psleaks command.