April 1998
Intermediate to advanced
624 pages
16h 11m
English
book
Sun Performance and Tuning: Java™ and the Internet, Second Edition
by Adrian Cockcroft, Richard Pettit
Content preview from Sun Performance and Tuning: Java™ and the Internet, Second Edition
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
The Traditional Kernel Memory Interface
The kvm library is the legacy interface for accessing kernel data in SunOS. Although it was available in SunOS 4.x, it is still not a library widely used by other Unix operating systems. The name stands for “kernel virtual memory,” which provides the data on which the library operates. This data takes the form of variables that provide feedback regarding the state of the operating system. From this data, you can extrapolate information regarding the relative performance of the computer. Performance analysis applications such as vmstat originally used this interface.
The kvm library provides a robust interface to accessing data within the address space of an operating system. This access includes a running ...