SLAB is a cache mechanism used by the Kernel to avoid fragmentation.
Each internal structure (process, file descriptor, inode...) is stored within a SLAB.
There is currently no configuration needed.
As /proc/slabinfo
is only readable by root, this plugin is setuid root.
This slabinfo details allows to have clues on actions done on your system.
In the following screenshot, you can clearly see a find
done on a ext4 filesystem (the number of ext4_inode_cache
& dentry
are rising fast), and a few seconds later, an admin issued a echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_cached
as their count dropped.