To view /proc/user_beancounters on your VPS, login to your VPS via SSH.
In the SSH Terminal you will type:
cat /proc/user_beancounters
Then hit Enter.
After you hit Enter, you should see something that looks similar to the following:
That is your /proc/user_beancounters file.
If you look at the top line where you see uid to the left of it, that line is the field that displays the numeric identifier of the Virtual Environment.
The field held shows the current counter for the Virtual Environment (resource "usage").
The field maxheld shows the counter's maximum for the lifetime of the Virtual Environment. The lifetime of the Virtual Environment is usually just the time between the start and stop of your VPS.
The barrier and limit fields are resource control settings. For some parameters only one of them may be used, for others, both. These fields may display resource limits or guarantees, and the exact meaning of them is parameter-specific.
The field failcnt shows the number of refused "resource allocations" for the lifetime of the Virtual Environment. Failcnt counter is increased only for accounting parameters.The field failcnt is the field you will be looking at for errors.
If you look at the example above, you will see that the parameter kmemsize has a failcnt of 129. That is because in this example, the VPS did not have enough memory available to install an application. Therefore, the failcnt counter recorded the 129 memory failures, next to the parameter kmemsize in it's /proc/user_beancounters file. We know the problem was memory since the failcnt next to kmemsize increased after trying to install the application.
In this article, we will concentrate on the following parameters:
* kmemsize
This is the parameter that shows the size of unswappable memory, allocated by the operating system kernel. If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* lockedpages
This is process pages not allowed to be swapped out. The size of these pages is also accounted into kmemsize. Note that typical server applications like Web, FTP, and mail servers do not use memory locking features. If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* privvmpages
This is the memory allocation limit. This parameter allows controlling the amount of memory allocated by applications. If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* shmpages
This is the total size of the shared memory (IPC, shared anonymous mappings and tmpfs objects). These pages are also accounted into privvmpages. Its configuration affects functionality and resource shortage reaction of the applications in the given Virtual Environments only. Again, If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* physpages
This is the total number of RAM pages used by processes in this virtual environment. Unlike other accounting methods, the sum of physpages usage for all Virtual Environments yields to the total number of pages used in the system by all Virtual Environments. This is currently an accounting-only parameter. It does not set any limits or barriers. If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* vmguarpages
This parameter controls how much memory is available to the Virtual Environment. The vmguarpages parameter does not have its own accounting. The current amount of allocated memory is accounted into another parameter (privvmpages). If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* oomguarpages
This is the guaranteed amount of memory in case the memory is "over-booked" (out-of-memory kill guarantee). The failcnt counter of oomguarpages parameter increases when a process in this Virtual Environment is killed because of an out-of-memory situation, but not when the barrier is reached. Again, If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, most likely there is not a sufficient amount of memory available to run the application.
* numfile
This is the number of "files" in use, including real files, sockets and pipes. The configuration of this parameter affects functionality and resource shortage reaction of applications in the given Virtual Environment only. If the failcnt value increases on this parameter, you are trying to have too many files open at once.
