proc_pid_clear_refs(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

proc_pid_clear_refs(5)     File Formats Manual    proc_pid_clear_refs(5)

NAME         top

       /proc/pid/clear_refs - reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG
       bits

DESCRIPTION         top

       /proc/pid/clear_refs (since Linux 2.6.22)

              This is a write-only file, writable only by owner of the
              process.

              The following values may be written to the file:

              1 (since Linux 2.6.22)
                     Reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits for
                     all the pages associated with the process.  (Before
                     Linux 2.6.32, writing any nonzero value to this
                     file had this effect.)

              2 (since Linux 2.6.32)
                     Reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits for
                     all anonymous pages associated with the process.

              3 (since Linux 2.6.32)
                     Reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits for
                     all file-mapped pages associated with the process.

              Clearing the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits
              provides a method to measure approximately how much memory
              a process is using.  One first inspects the values in the
              "Referenced" fields for the VMAs shown in /proc/pid/smaps
              to get an idea of the memory footprint of the process.
              One then clears the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits
              and, after some measured time interval, once again
              inspects the values in the "Referenced" fields to get an
              idea of the change in memory footprint of the process
              during the measured interval.  If one is interested only
              in inspecting the selected mapping types, then the value 2
              or 3 can be used instead of 1.

              Further values can be written to affect different
              properties:

              4 (since Linux 3.11)
                     Clear the soft-dirty bit for all the pages
                     associated with the process.  This is used (in
                     conjunction with /proc/pid/pagemap) by the check-
                     point restore system to discover which pages of a
                     process have been dirtied since the file
                     /proc/pid/clear_refs was written to.

              5 (since Linux 4.0)
                     Reset the peak resident set size ("high water
                     mark") to the process's current resident set size
                     value.

              Writing any value to /proc/pid/clear_refs other than those
              listed above has no effect.

              The /proc/pid/clear_refs file is present only if the
              CONFIG_PROC_PAGE_MONITOR kernel configuration option is
              enabled.

SEE ALSO         top

       proc(5)

COLOPHON         top

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02         proc_pid_clear_refs(5)