HI
I'm a rookie in C programming and I'm working in Monta Vista Linux. I have to write a program that displays free memory. I have memtester(allready written by someone else) and now I have to type how much amount of memory tester will test and I want that memtester finds out himself how much of free memory is available in the system to test and tests it.

I tried by opening /proc/meminfo and locate the number of free memory, but when I would open a program to determine free memory free memory number would change probably and data wouldn't be real.
Please I need any suggestion of you experts how to determine amount of free memory that will be tested with program.
Have a nice Day

Matt

My first suggestion is: get a copy of the source for the free utility - it is part of coreutils for Linux.

Second - this is probably a difficult exercise for a beginner. Consider using
a call to free -m inside a system() call in C.

HI
If I compare numbers on what free -m displays or what is the number on meminfo, they are different
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 492 23 469 0 1 14
-/+ buffers/cache: 7 485
Swap: 0 0 0



meminfo:
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 516644864 25026560 491618304 0 1560576 15425536
Swap: 0 0 0
MemTotal: 504536 kB
MemFree: 480096 kB
MemShared: 0 kB
Buffers: 1524 kB
Cached: 15064 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 5556 kB
Inactive: 12048 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 504536 kB
LowFree: 480096 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Committed_AS: 1156 kB
VmallocTotal: 491512 kB
VmallocUsed: 596 kB
VmallocChunk: 490916 kB

What if I would somehow get the number of free memory and store it somewhere. Then memtester reads the number from stored place and checks that much amount of memory that number(should be in MB) is writen in stored place. Please help
Have a nice Day

Matt

HI
Is maybe some function available something like getfreemem() or something that would display or..........
I don't know - I just have to have number of MB that is available on system and that is reachable from other program like a parameter to the second program that orders to memtester to check exactly that amount of memory.
Have a nice Day

Matt

example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

double get_meminfo(void)
{
	double retval=0;
	char tmp[256]={0x0};
	/* note= add a path to meminfo like /usr/bin/meminfo 
	   to match where meminfo lives on your system */
	FILE *shellcommand=popen("meminfo","r");
	while(fgets(tmp,sizeof(tmp),shellcommand)!=NULL)
	{
		if(memcmp(tmp,"Mem:",4)==0)
		{
			int	wordcount=0;
			char *delimiter=" ";
			char *p=strtok(tmp,delimiter);
			while(*p)
			{
				wordcount++;
				if(wordcount==3) retval=atof(p);
			}
		}
	}
	pclose(shellcommand);
	return retval;
}

int	main(int argc, char	*argv[])
{
	double freemem=get_meminfo();
	
	printf("free memory=%f\n", freemem);
	return 0;
}

I've noticed that meminfo does not display real values - function free -m does. If I insert to memtester the same value that I got from free -m memtester works normally, but when I put only 1MB higher number memtester terminates - not enough memory(so that means the function in shell free -m displays real free memory data). Question now is how to enter the shell function from C to save and display data from free -m?
Have a nice Day

Matt

HI
I've tried your program but I have got premission denied:

sh: /proc/meminfo: Permission denied
free memory=0.000000

When you wrote the path "meminfo", I entered whole path "/proc/meminfo"
But that is not the question now as meminfo does not display real data.

Have a nice Day

Matt