pmap command
displays the mapped memory of a process, including libaries
Typical usage: memory leakage detection, process monitoring, troubleshootingIntroduction into pmap
The pmap tool retrieves the process mapping of a running process and displays this on screen with a defined level of formatting. When running the command without any specific options, it only requires the process ID (PID). To receive full output and see all details, most likely -XX provides the most level of detail.
Fields that pmap can show include:
- Address
- Perm
- Offset
- Device
- Inode
- Size
- KernelPageSize*
- MMUPageSize
- Rss
- Pss
- Pss_Dirty
- Shared_Clean
- Shared_Dirty
- Private_Clean
- Private_Dirty
- Referenced
- Anonymous
- LazyFree
- AnonHugePages
- ShmemPmdMapped
- FilePmdMapped
- Shared_Hugetlb
- Private_Hugetlb
- Swap
- SwapPss
- Locked
- THPeligible
- ProtectionKey
- VmFlags
- Mapping
Installation
When pmap is not installed by default, it can be added to the system using the relevant software package.
Package information for pmap
| Operating system | Package name | Installation |
|---|---|---|
| AlmaLinux | procps-ng | |
| Arch Linux | procps-ng | |
| Debian | procps | |
| Fedora | procps-ng | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | procps-ng | |
| Rocky Linux | procps-ng | |
| openSUSE | procps | |
| Ubuntu | procps | |
Your Linux distribution using a different package? Share your feedback.
Usage
Available options
| Long option | Short option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| --extended | -x | Increase number of columns to show, including memory sizes |
| --show-path | -p | Include full paths in output |
| -X | More extensive output than -x, which relies on data from /proc/PID/smaps | |
| -XX | Show all available columns with data that the Linux kernel can provide about this process |
Missing an option in this overview? Share your feedback.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the pmap command and its purpose?
The pmap command is a command-line tool to show the memory mappings of a process
Which package provides the pmap command?
The command pmap is provided by the procps or procps-ng package.
Related and similar commands
Linux has a lot of tools and commands available and sometimes you just need that little other tool. Here is a list of commands that are similar or related to pmap:
| Command | Category | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| basename | files | Strips directory and file name suffix from a given path |
| chrt | processes | Sets Linux scheduler policy and priority for a process or command |
| dmidecode | hardware | Shows hardware information |
| kill | processes | Sending signals to processes |
| nice | processes | Runs commands with specified priority |
| numactl | processes | Controls NUMA policy for processes and shared memory |
| peekfd | processes | Tracks a process and show file descriptor activity |
| pidof | processes | Returns process IDs for a process name |
| pidstat | monitoring | Monitoring CPU, memory, and disk activity |
| pidwait | processes | Wait for process to stop |
| prtstat | processes | Shows process details for selected process like state, CPU and memory usage |
| pscap | capabilities | Display available capabilities for running processes |
| pslog | logging | Shows which log files a process has opened |
| pstree | processes | Show active processes and children like a tree |
| pwdx | processes | Shows current working directory of a process |
| renice | processes | Changes the priority of running processes |
| slabtop | memory | Shows slab usage of kernel |
| smem | memory | Show memory usage including swap |
| strace | process inspection | Inspects running process |
| units | data conversion | Converts a unit into another one, like from Celcius to Fahrenheit |
| vmstat | memory | Shows virtual memory information, disk IO, CPU activity |
| watch | processes | Monitors changes in output of specified command |