CSS System Monitor

A simple system monitor for tracking memory usage.

The displayed "max", "total" and "free" memory is obtained from the Java Runtime API, and its meaning is not immediately obvious: In simple terms of "available" and "used" memory one can consider "max - total + free" the available memory, but the behavior of the JVM's garbage collection is very unpredictable: It will sometimes hold on to memory that was freed after closing some part of the application, while at other times such memory shows up as free right away.

Manual Garbage Collection

Pressing the "GC" button will trigger a garbage collection. This could be useful for tests, but in general the garbage collection mechanism is best left to the JVM, i.e. there is no need for end users to periodically trigger a GC.

Setup

All the settings are adjusted via the System Monitor preference page.