A portable way of reading memory and load numbers is the sysinfo call
#include <sys/sysinfo.h>
int sysinfo(struct sysinfo *info);
Until Linux 2.3.16, sysinfo() used to return information in the
following structure:
struct sysinfo {
long uptime; /* Seconds since boot */
unsigned long loads[3]; /* 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages */
unsigned long totalram; /* Total usable main memory size */
unsigned long freeram; /* Available memory size */
unsigned long sharedram; /* Amount of shared memory */
unsigned long bufferram; /* Memory used by buffers */
unsigned long totalswap; /* Total swap space size */
unsigned long freeswap; /* swap space still available */
unsigned short procs; /* Number of current processes */
char _f[22]; /* Pads structure to 64 bytes */
};
and the sizes were given in bytes.
Since Linux 2.3.23 (i386), 2.3.48 (all architectures) the structure
is:
struct sysinfo {
long uptime; /* Seconds since boot */
unsigned long loads[3]; /* 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages */
unsigned long totalram; /* Total usable main memory size */
unsigned long freeram; /* Available memory size */
unsigned long sharedram; /* Amount of shared memory */
unsigned long bufferram; /* Memory used by buffers */
unsigned long totalswap; /* Total swap space size */
unsigned long freeswap; /* swap space still available */
unsigned short procs; /* Number of current processes */
unsigned long totalhigh; /* Total high memory size */
unsigned long freehigh; /* Available high memory size */
unsigned int mem_unit; /* Memory unit size in bytes */
char _f[20-2*sizeof(long)-sizeof(int)]; /* Padding to 64 bytes */
};
and the sizes are given as multiples of mem_unit bytes.