PSI (Process Stall Information) Visualizer

This tool visualizes PSI (Process Stall Information) data collected by the Linux kernel. PSI is a feature introduced in Linux 4.20 that provides information about various kinds of stalls that can happen in the kernel. For more information about PSI, see the kernel documentation.

The tool creates an interactive plot that shows the memory pressure statistics over time.

It can be used to understand the dynamics of memory pressure in the system and to identify the processes that are causing the pressure.

Grabbing PSI data

To collect PSI data that can be fed to the visualizer, you need to run the psi-collector tool. The tool is available in the psi-collector directory. Documentation on how to use the tool is available in the tool's README.

Preparing the environment

To build the PSI visualizer, you need to have the following dependencies installed:

• Python 3
• pip

To install the dependencies, run:

make prepare-env

It will create a virtual environment in the venv directory and install the required dependencies.

Then you have to activate the virtual environment:

source venv/bin/activate

Running the PSI visualizer

To run the PSI visualizer, run:

python3 visualize.py <path-to-psi-file>