How to get size of data that haven't been written to disk yet?

Question

In some programs percentage of copying large files get to 100% very fast and then I'm waiting much more before it goes next step.

It's caused by buffer. How to I see amount of data that are going to be written?

bahamat · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-25 20:46:24Z

up vote 5 down vote accepted

The term for that is "dirty" data (data that has been changed, but not yet flushed to permanent storage).

On Linux you can find this from /proc/meminfo under Dirty:

$ cat /proc/meminfo | grep Dirty
Dirty:               0 kB

answered Jul 25 '12 at 20:46

bahamat
9,675932

Thor · Answer 2 · 2012-07-26 17:40:22Z

up vote 1 down vote

For interactive CLI view on Linux I would recommend dstat.

answered Jul 26 '12 at 17:40

Thor
4,671827

2 Answers