Make the "free" command a little more human friendly
Issue
- RFE for a human readable option for free command
- Any chance of adding a -h for a human readable display to the /usr/bin/free utility? Reasons are:
- a) not obvious at first what units are displayed in, e.g.
# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3924552 386908 3537644 0 68736 167080
-/+ buffers/cache: 151092 3773460
Swap: 6029304 0 6029304
* b) free doesn't say what the default units are:
# free -h
free: invalid option -- 'h'
usage: free [-b|-k|-m|-g] [-l] [-o] [-t] [-s delay] [-c count] [-V]
-b,-k,-m,-g show output in bytes, KB, MB, or GB
-l show detailed low and high memory statistics
-o use old format (no -/+buffers/cache line)
-t display total for RAM + swap
-s update every [delay] seconds
-c update [count] times
-V display version information and exit
- Only the man page says what the default unit is, i.e. "The -b switch displays the amount of memory in bytes; the -k switch (set by default) displays it in kilobytes; the -m switch displays it in megabytes."
- c) Makes it easier to read - I'm not interested in the exact figure, just a rough figure that's more manageable. So example output would be like this (sorry if columns are all over the place):
# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3.9GB 3.8GB 3.5GB 0 67MB 167MB
-/+ buffers/cache: 147MB 3.6GB
Swap: 5.8GB 0 5.8GB
- No changes to the columns/format or the default unit option (keep it as KB for compatibility). Would be nice if available in RHEL 5+.
- Also update the "options" page as shown in b) so show the default KB is indicated.
- The customer requests that we consider adding some human friendly detail to /usr/bin/free. Specifically a -h option to match other gnu utilities and a note in the help text to indicate that the default unit of measurement is in bytes.
- Customer is looking for a a more human friendly output that is easier to read at a glance.
- addition of a -h option to produce results in the highest order of magnitude possible (like other utilities)
- addition of a note in the help text, to make clear that calling the command without options reports in bytes.
- Arguably this detail is available in the man page, but the customer asks we consider it anyway.
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
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