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check-memory

Go-based tooling used to monitor memory usage.

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Project home

See our GitHub repo for the latest code, to file an issue or submit improvements for review and potential inclusion into the project.

Overview

This repo is intended to provide various tools used to monitor memory usage.

Tool Name Overall Status Description
check_memory Alpha Nagios plugin used to monitor memory usage.

check_memory

Performance Data

Initial support has been added for emitting Performance Data / Metrics, but refinement suggestions are welcome.

Consult the table below for the metrics implemented thus far.

Please add to an existing Discussion thread (if applicable) or open a new one with any feedback that you may have. Thanks in advance!

Emitted Performance Data / Metric Meaning
time Runtime for plugin
memory_available Total memory available in KB
memory_total Total memory in KB
memory_usage Percentage of memory used

Features

check_memory plugin

Nagios plugin (check_memory) used to monitor for problematic process states on Linux distros.

Note

The intent is to support multiple operating systems, but as of this writing Linux is the only supported OS.

  • Optional branding "signature"

    • used to indicate what Nagios plugin (and what version) is responsible for the service check result

  • Optional, leveled logging using rs/zerolog package

    • logfmt format output (to stderr)
    • choice of disabled, panic, fatal, error, warn, info (the default), debug or trace

Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md file for the changes associated with each release of this application. Changes that have been merged to master, but not yet an official release may also be noted in the file under the Unreleased section. A helpful link to the Git commit history since the last official release is also provided for further review.

Requirements

The following is a loose guideline. Other combinations of Go and operating systems for building and running tools from this repo may work, but have not been tested.

Building source code

  • Go
    • see this project's go.mod file for the target version this project was developed against
    • this project tests against officially supported Go releases
      • the most recent stable release (aka, "stable")
      • the prior, but still supported release (aka, "oldstable")
  • GCC
    • if building with custom options (as the provided Makefile does)
  • make
    • if using the provided Makefile

Running

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Ubuntu 22.04

Installation

From source

  1. Download Go
  2. Install Go
  3. Clone the repo
    1. cd /tmp
    2. git clone https://github.com/atc0005/check-memory
    3. cd check-memory
  4. Install dependencies (optional)
    • for Ubuntu Linux
      • sudo apt-get install make gcc
    • for CentOS Linux
      1. sudo yum install make gcc
  5. Build
    • manually, explicitly specifying target OS and architecture
      • GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -mod=vendor ./cmd/check_memory/
        • most likely this is what you want (if building manually)
        • substitute amd64 with the appropriate architecture if using different hardware (e.g., arm64 or 386)
    • using Makefile linux recipe
      • make linux
        • generates x86 and x64 binaries
    • using Makefile release-build recipe
      • make release-build
        • generates the same release assets as provided by this project's releases
  6. Locate generated binaries
    • if using Makefile
      • look in /tmp/check-memory/release_assets/check_memory/
    • if using go build
      • look in /tmp/check-memory/
  7. Copy the applicable binaries to whatever systems needs to run them so that they can be deployed

NOTE: Depending on which Makefile recipe you use the generated binary may be compressed and have an xz extension. If so, you should decompress the binary first before deploying it (e.g., xz -d check_memory-linux-amd64.xz).

Using release binaries

  1. Download the latest release binaries
  2. Decompress binaries
    • e.g., xz -d check_memory-linux-amd64.xz
  3. Copy the applicable binaries to whatever systems needs to run them so that they can be deployed

NOTE:

DEB and RPM packages are provided as an alternative to manually deploying binaries.

Deployment

  1. Place check_memory in a location where it can be executed by the monitoring agent
    • Usually the same place as other Nagios plugins
    • For example, on a default Red Hat Enterprise Linux system using check_nrpe the check_memory plugin would be deployed to /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_memory or /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_memory

NOTE:

DEB and RPM packages are provided as an alternative to manually deploying binaries.

Configuration

Command-line arguments

  • Use the -h or --help flag to display current usage information.
  • Flags marked as required must be set via CLI flag.
  • Flags not marked as required are for settings where a useful default is already defined, but may be overridden if desired.

check_memory

Flag Required Default Repeat Possible Description
branding No false No branding Toggles emission of branding details with plugin status details. This output is disabled by default.
h, help No false No h, help Show Help text along with the list of supported flags.
version No false No version Whether to display application version and then immediately exit application.
ll, log-level No info No disabled, panic, fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace Log message priority filter. Log messages with a lower level are ignored.
c, critical No 3 No positive whole number between 0-100, exclusive Specifies the available memory percentage (as a whole number) when a CRITICAL threshold is reached.
w, warning No 6 No positive whole number between 0-100, exclusive Specifies the available memory percentage (as a whole number) when a WARNING threshold is reached.

Examples

OK result

This output is emitted by the plugin when memory availability is greater than specified thresholds.

$ ./check_memory -w 6 -c 3
OK: 1052 MB (53%) available memory | 'memory_available'=1077532;;;; 'memory_total'=2014912;;;; 'memory_usage'=47%;94;97;; 'time'=1ms;;;;

$ ./check_memory
OK: 1049 MB (53%) available memory | 'memory_available'=1075004;;;; 'memory_total'=2014912;;;; 'memory_usage'=47%;94;97;; 'time'=1ms;;;;

Regarding the output:

  • Similar output is emitted by specifying explicit arguments (which match default threshold values) and running the plugin without arguments (relying solely on default values).
  • The values and the | symbol are performance data metrics emitted by the plugin. Depending on your monitoring system, these metrics may be collected and exposed as graphs/charts.
  • This output was captured on an Ubuntu 22.04 WSL instance. The output is comparable to other Linux distros.

WARNING result

This output is emitted by the plugin when available memory drops below the specified WARNING threshold. Here we use fake problem thresholds to trigger a WARNING state.

$ ./check_memory -w 54 -c 53
WARNING: 1048 MB (53%) available memory

**ERRORS**

* available memory below specified threshold
 | 'memory_available'=1073188;;;; 'memory_total'=2014912;;;; 'memory_usage'=47%;46;47;; 'time'=3ms;;;;

CRITICAL result

This output is emitted by the plugin when available memory drops below the specified CRITICAL threshold. Here we use fake problem thresholds to trigger a CRITICAL state.

$ ./check_memory -w 60 -c 54
CRITICAL: 1048 MB (53%) available memory

**ERRORS**

* available memory below specified threshold
 | 'memory_available'=1074036;;;; 'memory_total'=2014912;;;; 'memory_usage'=47%;40;46;; 'time'=2ms;;;;

License

See the LICENSE file for details.

References

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Go-based tooling to monitor memory

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Releases 4

v0.1.1 Latest
Apr 30, 2026
+ 3 releases

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