PAGEMON(8)

📦
version 0.02.06 · 5 versions
, in nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu stonking

💖 PAGEMON(8) — System Manager's Manual 💖

okay bestie, grab a snack because we're about to get SO cozy with your process's memory pages. this is pagemon, a tool from the System Manager's Manual, and she's here to let you interactively watch the memory pages of a process like you're scrolling your fyp. no cap. 👑

✨ NAME ✨

pagemon — a tool to monitor memory pages. that's the whole vibe. that's the job. 🌸

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

pagemon [options]

that's it. that's the whole summoning ritual. options are optional, but they're also cute, so. 💅

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so pagemon is a program that lets you interactively monitor the memory pages of a process. like. you point it at a process and it shows you the pages and you can poke around them in a lil terminal UI. it's giving observability. it's giving main character energy for sysadmins. 🔥

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

okay so the pagemon options are as follow, bestie, listen up:

  • -a — turns on automatic zoom mode. this makes the zoom level shift so the entire page map fits in the window, up to a max zoom level of 999. she autoscales. she's adaptive. we love her. ✨
  • -d delay — the delay in microseconds between data refreshes. the default is 15,000 microseconds, which is literally 3/200th of a second. blink and you'll miss a refresh. 😭
  • -h — show help. our lil emergency exit when you forget everything. 🫶
  • -p — specify the process id (PID) or name of the process you wanna monitor. heads up: if you give a name, then pagemon will monitor the first process that matches the name. so if you got twelve thunderbirds open, you get the first one bestie, not the one you meant. 🙈
  • -r — read pages into memory. this forces all pages in the process to be read into physical memory. combustion. no escape. 🔥
  • -t ticks — specify how many ticks go between dirty page checks. default is 60 ticks. the larger the value, the longer</> the time between dirty page checks. slow and chill vs. frequent and nosy, your call. ⭐
  • -v — enable the VM information view. this is equivalent to pressing the v or V key while pagemon is running. same vibe, just from the command line. 🌈
  • -z zoom — specify the default zoom level on page view. the default is 1, and that means a 1-to-1 view of pages. higher values increase the zoom level so more pages are represented in the map view. zoomies. 🦋

👑 KEYS 👑

here's your whole keyboard cheat sheet, bestie. memorize or don't, it's fine, ? and h exist:

  • Home — move cursor to start of page map or start of page
  • End — move cursor to end of page map or end of page
  • Cursor Up — move cursor up
  • Cursor Down — move cursor down
  • Cursor Left — move cursor left
  • Cursor Right — move cursor right
  • Page Up — move cursor 1/2 page up
  • Page Down — move cursor 1/2 page down
  • Esc, q, Q — quit (say bye 💖)
  • Enter — toggle page map / memory map view
  • Tab — toggle detailed view of page
  • a, A — toggle automatic zoom mode
  • v, V — toggle Virtual Memory statistics of process
  • p, P — toggle page statistics
  • ?, h — toggle help
  • c, C — close all the pop up windows (clear the clutter, we're decluttering) ✨
  • r, R — force all pages in process to be read into memory
  • t — increase ticks between Dirty Page updates
  • T — decrease ticks between Dirty Page updates
  • +, z — zoom in (only in page map view)
  • -, Z — zoom out (only in page map view)
  • [ — zoom scale to 1, turn off automatic zoom mode
  • ] — zoom scale to 999, turn off automatic zoom mode
also yes, lowercase and uppercase do different things sometimes (looking at you t vs T). the shift key is carrying this entire program, fr fr. 💀

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

monitor the thunderbird process:

sudo pagemon -p thunderbird

monitor process 1 (init), zoom scale of 4:

sudo pagemon -p 1 -z 4

see? easy. iconic. you're basically a kernel dev now. 🎀

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

pagemon was written by Colin King <colin.i.king@gmail.com> with contributions from Dr. David Alan Gilbert. teamwork makes the dream work, bestie. 🫶

this manual page was written by Colin King <colin.king@canonical.com>, for the Ubuntu project (but may be used by others). sharing is caring. 💜

Copyright © 2016-2021 Canonical Ltd. Copyright © 2021-2025 Colin Ian King

this is free software; see the source for copying conditions. there is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. so like, if it breaks, it's not their fault, and that's on periodt. 💀✨

and that's the whole page, babe — this was PAGEMON(8) from the System Manager's Manual, dated March 2, 2026. go monitor something. slay. 👑🦋💖

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