<p>It is reporting the memory statistics of the <em>locked</em> memory pool, not all memory used in general.</p>
<p>The locked pool is used to store private keys and other security-sensitive material. Bitcoin Core requests from the OS that the memory used by this locked pool is not swapped out, to prevent it from ending up on a swapfile/swap partition on disk.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-26T20:39:15.250Z
thanks for this info. I see that running `cat /proc/$PID/status  | grep VmLck` returns `VmLck:        64 kB`, which is in-line with the `65536` I saw earlier.
Logan M.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-25T19:20:22.013Z
2021-01-25T19:20:22.013Z
Pieter Wuille
<p>What does the output of the RPC call <code>getmemoryinfo</code> actually mean? For example, this is from my node running in Docker. Does that mean the <code>bitcoind</code> process inside the container is only using <code>64272</code> bytes of memory? That's only 64k, that can't be correct, right?</p>
<pre><code>{
  &quot;result&quot;: {
    &quot;locked&quot;: {
      &quot;used&quot;: 64272,
      &quot;free&quot;: 1264,
      &quot;total&quot;: 65536,
      &quot;locked&quot;: 65536,
      &quot;chunks_used&quot;: 2002,
      &quot;chunks_free&quot;: 2
    }
  },
  &quot;error&quot;: null,
  &quot;id&quot;: &quot;curltest&quot;
}
</code></pre>
<p>These are the processes inside the container.</p>
<pre><code>/ $ ps -a
PID   USER     TIME  COMMAND
    1 bitcoind 12:52 bitcoind -zmqpubrawblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28332 -zmqpubrawtx=tcp://0.0.0.0:28333
   43 bitcoind  0:00 /bin/sh
   51 bitcoind  0:00 ps -a
</code></pre>

<bitcoin-core><bitcoind><json-rpc><memory>
What does the RPC call "getmemoryinfo" show?
Logan M.
# What does the RPC call "getmemoryinfo" show?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-01-25)

What does the output of the RPC call getmemoryinfo actually mean? For example, this is from my node running in Docker. Does that mean the bitcoind process inside the container is only using 64272 bytes of memory? That's only 64k, that can't be correct, right?
{
  "result": {
    "locked": {
      "used": 64272,
      "free": 1264,
      "total": 65536,
      "locked": 65536,
      "chunks_used": 2002,
      "chunks_free": 2
    }
  },
  "error": null,
  "id": "curltest"
}

These are the processes inside the container.
/ $ ps -a
PID   USER     TIME  COMMAND
    1 bitcoind 12:52 bitcoind -zmqpubrawblock=tcp://0.0.0.0:28332 -zmqpubrawtx=tcp://0.0.0.0:28333
   43 bitcoind  0:00 /bin/sh
   51 bitcoind  0:00 ps -a

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, bitcoind, json-rpc, memory


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-01-25. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

It is reporting the memory statistics of the *locked* memory pool, not all memory used in general.

The locked pool is used to store private keys and other security-sensitive material. Bitcoin Core requests from the OS that the memory used by this locked pool is not swapped out, to prevent it from ending up on a swapfile/swap partition on disk.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: thanks for this info. I see that running `cat /proc/$PID/status  | grep VmLck` returns `VmLck:        64 kB`, which is in-line with the `65536` I saw earlier.  

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