How to get memory usage at runtime using C++?

Question

I need to get the mem usage VIRT and RES at run time of my program and display them.

What i tried so far:

getrusage (http://linux.die.net/man/2/getrusage)

int who = RUSAGE_SELF; 
struct rusage usage; 
int ret; 

ret=getrusage(who,&usage);

cout<<usage.ru_maxrss;

but i always get 0.

Answer 1

Old:

maxrss states the maximum available memory for the process. 0 means that no limit is put upon the process. What you probably want is unshared data usage ru_idrss.

New: It seems that the above does not actually work, as the kernel does not fill most of the values. What does work is to get the information from proc. Instead of parsing it oneself though, it is easier to use libproc (part of procps) as follows:

// getrusage.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <proc/readproc.h>

int main() {
  struct proc_t usage;
  look_up_our_self(&usage);
  printf("usage: %lu\n", usage.vsize);
}

Compile with "gcc -o getrusage getrusage.c -lproc"

Answer 2

The existing answers are better for how to get the correct value, but I can at least explain why getrusage isn't working for you.

man 2 getrusage:

The above struct [rusage] was taken from BSD 4.3 Reno. Not all fields are meaningful under Linux. Right now (Linux 2.4, 2.6) only the fields ru_utime, ru_stime, ru_minflt, ru_majflt, and ru_nswap are maintained.

Answer 3

in additional to your way
you could call system ps command and get memory usage from it output.
or read info from /proc/pid ( see PIOCPSINFO struct )

Answer 4

On linux, if you can afford the run time cost (for debugging), you can use valgrind with the massif tool:

http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/ms-manual.html

It is heavy weight, but very useful.

Answer 5

I was looking for a Linux app to measure maximum memory used. valgrind is an excellent tool, but was giving me more information than I wanted. tstime seemed to be the best tool I could find. It measures "highwater" memory usage (RSS and virtual). See this answer.

Answer 6

Based on Don W's solution, with fewer variables.

void process_mem_usage(double& vm_usage, double& resident_set)
{
    vm_usage     = 0.0;
    resident_set = 0.0;

    // the two fields we want
    unsigned long vsize;
    long rss;
    {
        std::string ignore;
        std::ifstream ifs("/proc/self/stat", std::ios_base::in);
        ifs >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore
                >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore >> ignore
                >> ignore >> ignore >> vsize >> rss;
    }

    long page_size_kb = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE) / 1024; // in case x86-64 is configured to use 2MB pages
    vm_usage = vsize / 1024.0;
    resident_set = rss * page_size_kb;
}