Python standard library to get total memory size

Question

I'm wondering if there is a module in python standard library I can use to get the total physical memory size. I know I can use psutil, but it would be great if my python script can run without installing external module. Thanks!

Edited: Sorry guys, I forgot to mention that I'm using a mac OSX. Thanks for all the windows solutions tho!

On Linux, you can parse `/proc/meminfo` using regular file operations. — Colonel Thirty Two, Jul 21 '15 at 18:13

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

If you're on Windows, you can use GlobalMemoryStatusEx, which requires only ctypes and no additional modules.

from ctypes import Structure, c_int32, c_uint64, sizeof, byref, windll
class MemoryStatusEx(Structure):
    _fields_ = [
        ('length', c_int32),
        ('memoryLoad', c_int32),
        ('totalPhys', c_uint64),
        ('availPhys', c_uint64),
        ('totalPageFile', c_uint64),
        ('availPageFile', c_uint64),
        ('totalVirtual', c_uint64),
        ('availVirtual', c_uint64),
        ('availExtendedVirtual', c_uint64)]
    def __init__(self):
        self.length = sizeof(self)

Used like this:

>>> m = MemoryStatusEx()
>>> assert windll.kernel32.GlobalMemoryStatusEx(byref(m))
>>> print('You have %0.2f GiB of RAM installed' % (m.totalPhys / (1024.)**3))

See here, here, and here for information for MAC OS X/other UNIX systems.

Maybe take a look at [this](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4286/is-there-a-mac-os-x-terminal-version-of-the-free-command-in-linux-systems)? — Alyssa Haroldsen, Jul 21 '15 at 18:51

Andy · Answer 2 · 2015-07-21T18:20:09.720

I've utilized this function in a Windows environment previously.

import os
process = os.popen('wmic memorychip get capacity')
result = process.read()
process.close()
totalMem = 0
for m in result.split("  \r\n")[1:-1]:
    totalMem += int(m)

print totalMem / (1024**3)

This utilizes wmic and the following command wmic memorychip get capacity, which you can run from your command line to see output in bytes.

This command reads the capacity of each memory module in the machine (in bytes) and then converts the total to gigabytes.

Example:

> wmic memorychip get capacity
Capacity
4294967296
4294967296

This shows I have two 4 GB chips.

> python get_totalmemory.py
8

Adding those two module capacities and doing a quick conversion shows I have 8 GB of RAM on this machine.

That seems a bit excessive for something that's exposed by the kernel API... — Alyssa Haroldsen, Jul 21 '15 at 18:57
This works for me, although I had to change the `split` pattern to `" \n\n"` — Panki, Sep 25 '19 at 09:08

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 05 '19 at 11:36

0

Based on this discussion there seems to nothing in Python's standard library that'll do that. Here's a few that might help:

Python System Information
Psutil (Up-to-date, good cross
platform support, I've used this before, not in Blender though)
SIGAR (looks fairly recent, supports a number of platforms)

edited Feb 05 '19 at 11:36

LSchueler

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answered Jul 21 '15 at 18:01

romants

3,660
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Ya I saw that discussion when I googled it. I didn't count on it because it was 5 yrs ago, so I decided to post it here again. Psutil definitely works, it's just I don't want the users to have to install external libs when using my script. – JACK ZHANG Jul 21 '15 at 18:43

Python standard library to get total memory size

3 Answers3