CocoaDev

Does anyone know of an easy way to get the value for the amount of installed memory. I could just parse a log from top, but it seems like there has to be a system call you can make to get this info.

The sysctl() function can give you that info (and a whole lot more too), but it’s usage can be a little tricky at first. I’d advise checking out it’s man page ( man 3 sysctl), the header (at /usr/include/sys/sysctl.h) and this page which has a code snippet using it to check the number of cpus (CheckNumberOfCPUs). – Bo

Thanks Bo!!

Here’s the code that worked for me:

#import <sys/sysctl.h>

static int MegabytesOfPhysicalMemory() {

int mib[] = {CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM};
size_t len = sizeof(int);
int physmem;
sysctl(mib, 2, &physmem, &len, NULL, 0);
return physmem / (1 << 20);

}

Looks good, except that I think that physmem should actually be an unsigned long long (i.e. 64 bits), especially now that those G5s are out. ;) – Bo

Are you sure that physmem is a 64 bit value?

this:

int mib[] = {CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM};
size_t len = 8;
char eightBytes[8];
sysctl(mib, 2, eightBytes, &len, NULL, 0);
unsigned long long int *longlongintPtr = (unsigned long long int *)eightBytes;
int *intPtr = (int *)eightBytes;
NSLog(@"%i %qu", *intPtr, *longlongintPtr);

outputs this:

2004-02-02 19:45:32.377 Test[1149] 805306368 3458764516094219155

BTW I’m running 768 MB of physical memory (i.e. 805306368 bytes)

Note that sysctl returns an error value that should be checked. Otherwise, the result number that you are looking at is as good as nonsense. In addition, a quick browse through the man page says { CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM } is an integer. This also reveals that sysctl does not like a 64 bit value for this property name.

unsigned long MegabytesOfPhysicalMemory() { int mib[] = {CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM}; unsigned long physmem; size_t len = sizeof(physmem); return (-1 != sysctl(mib, 2, &physmem, &len, NULL, 0)) ? physmem / (1 « 20) : 0; }

// will return 0

unsigned long long MegabytesOfPhysicalMemory64() { int mib[] = {CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM}; unsigned long long physmem; size_t len = sizeof(physmem); return (-1 != sysctl(mib, 2, &physmem, &len, NULL, 0)) ? physmem / (1 « 20) : 0; }

That’s interesting, but that did leave me wondering how you would accurately check the memory on a G5, since that accepts up to 8GB. It seems there’s a different key, HW_MEMSIZE, that returns the amount of ram as a 64-bit integer. You should probably use that instead to be forward-compatible with 64-bit processors. – Bo