title: Can /proc/meminfo indicate some hints on memory leak?
body: <p>Is it a good idea to periodically <code>cat /proc/meminfo</code> for a hint if there exists a memory leak in the system.</p>
  
  <p>If so, which metric should I focus on, given that the suspect memory leak is in a kernel module:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; cat /proc/meminfo
  
  MemTotal:     16344972 kB
  MemFree:      13634064 kB
  MemAvailable: 14836172 kB
  Buffers:          3656 kB
  Cached:        1195708 kB
  SwapCached:          0 kB
  Active:         891636 kB
  Inactive:      1077224 kB
  HighTotal:    15597528 kB
  HighFree:     13629632 kB
  LowTotal:       747444 kB
  LowFree:          4432 kB
  SwapTotal:           0 kB
  SwapFree:            0 kB
  Dirty:             968 kB
  Writeback:           0 kB
  AnonPages:      861800 kB
  Mapped:         280372 kB
  Shmem:             644 kB
  Slab:           284364 kB
  SReclaimable:   159856 kB
  SUnreclaim:     124508 kB
  PageTables:      24448 kB
  NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
  Bounce:              0 kB
  WritebackTmp:        0 kB
  CommitLimit:   7669796 kB
  Committed_AS:   100056 kB
  VmallocTotal:   112216 kB
  VmallocUsed:       428 kB
  VmallocChunk:   111088 kB
  AnonHugePages:   49152 kB
  </code></pre>