If you are using jdk 1.5 or greater, it is possible to get OS level system information like number of processors and memory etc using the OperatingSystemMXBean interface.

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;
import com.sun.management.OperatingSystemMXBean;
  ....
  ....
OperatingSystemMXBean mxbean = (OperatingSystemMXBean)  ManagementFactory.getOperatingSystemMXBean();
System.out.println("Physical memory "+mxbean.getTotalPhysicalMemorySize()/(1024*1024));
System.out.println("swapsize  "+ mxbean.getTotalSwapSpaceSize()/(1024*1024));
System.out.println("no of processors "+mxbean.getAvailableProcessors());
....
....

See the api documentation for more.
A caveat here: getTotalPhysicalMemory() for RAM size did not return the correct value in some cases.

Tags: Java