GR_OSVIEW(1)GR_OSVIEW(1)NAMEgr_osview - graphical system monitor
SYNOPSISgr_osview [-hVLeapzEF] [-Dfile] [-sfile] [-N[user@]node] [-nnamelist]
DESCRIPTION
This command provides a graphical display of usage of certain types of
system resources. This display provides a real-time window into the
overall operation of the system. The main display element is a
rectangular area which is filled by uniquely colored bands, each band
signifying a sampled variable measuring system performance. This
rectangular area is called a bar throughout the rest of this description.
Each bar in a window has a header which consists of the bar title plus
the names of each variable displayed, in colors to match those used for
each band in the bar. The colors used, as well as size, layout,
background and foreground colors may be modified.
gr_osview is implemented using a client-server model. The server side
acts as a simple display engine, while the client acts as a data
generator. By default, client and server are invoked as a tightly
coupled process for optimal performance. However, the client (data-
collection) side can be automatically run on a remote machine while the
server runs locally, allowing remote monitoring of system performance.
Server and client operation can be used independently through the use of
gr_osview "export" files, allowing recording and playback of performance
monitoring sessions.
This man page describes Version 2.2 of gr_osview. Setup files from
previous versions of gr_osview are accepted, however remote operation is
only possible with a gr_osview of the same version.
gr_osview is driven by a setup file. The setup file may be explicitly
named on the command line, found through an environment variable, or in
the caller's home directory. A complete description of the format and
additional capabilities of the setup file is given below.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-h Print a summary of the available options.
-D file This option specifies where the setup file will come from. If
the file "-" is named, then the setup will be read from
standard input. If this option is not specified, the
environment variable GROSVIEW is checked for a setup file name.
If this variable is not set, then a file named ".grosview" is
scanned for in the invoker's home directory. If all this
fails, a default setup of a single CPU usage bar is used.
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GR_OSVIEW(1)GR_OSVIEW(1)gr_osview will automatically recognize a gr_osview "export"
file if found instead of a setup file. This causes gr_osview
to automatically act as a display server, playing back the data
in the file.
-s file This option specifies the creation of an "export" file. This
file is an ASCII text file containing the information needed to
initialize the display server properly, followed by an
arbitrary number of data samples.
-N [user@]host
Contact the remote host, using the given user ID if specified,
and monitor that host's performance on the local machine. The
window border is forced in this case, and the argument is used
as the window title. If user is not specified, the user ID
"guest" is used.
gr_osview will automatically attempt to re-connect to the
remote system if the connection is lost for some reason. If
system errors or other problems which would preclude successful
reconnection are present, then gr_osview will simply exit.
-F This option suppresses text output. This can be useful in
several situations, for instance when creating a very small
gr_osview display where the text would be illegible anyway. As
a side effect, max value and average counters, and the scale
for absolute bars are suppressed.
-E This option directs gr_osview to act simply as a data
generator, and an "export" file will be written to standard
output, with continuous writing of sampled data until the
program is killed. The -D option is handled as expected,
except that if an "export" file is passed, gr_osview uses only
the initialization information and generates new data samples
from the running system.
-V Print the current version and copyright information for the
program.
-a This option invokes a subset of the displayable bars that
includes: cpu usage, memory usage, cpu wait time, system
activity and graphics activity.
-p This option prints the window position and size after the
window has been laid out on standard input. This is useful for
programming setup scripts.
-z This option enables "freeze" toggling. Sending SIGUSR1 (see
signal(2)) to gr_osview will freeze and unfreeze the display.
If currently generating a gr_osview "export" file, it will also
stop any output to the file. This is useful when doing screen
dumps or snapshoting particular events.
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GR_OSVIEW(1)GR_OSVIEW(1)-e This option is only effective when gr_osview is reading an
"export" file. It instructs gr_osview to exit when the data in
the file is exhausted. By default, the display window is left
up, frozen at the last data sample.
-L This option causes gr_osview to lock down those pages which it
actually uses while running and prevent the process from
swapping. This enables a minimum number of pages to be locked
while keeping gr_osview performing as a real-time display under
heavy system load.
-n This option causes gr_osview to use a kernel namelist other
than the default, /unix. This option is currently not supported
with -N.
OVERVIEW
There are three potential formats for each bar, with various optional
features. Each bar has a header line, which gives the bar name and the
names of its parameters, plus some additional information depending on
the bar type. Below this is the actual bar. Parameters are such things
as the various elements of CPU usage: user time, system time, interrupt
overhead and idle time. The text of a parameter name in the header is
colored to match the associated part of the bar display.
The most common format is called moving bar format. In this format, the
information is displayed as a sectioned bar, each section being a
different color. As time passes, each section will be redrawn with its
length adjusted proportionally to the value of the parameter. To obtain
smooth motion, and damp peaks and valleys which would otherwise be
visually confusing, each section of the bar is averaged over a specific
number of intervals. For instance, if a parameter doubles in value, the
section will gradually double in length over a certain number of samples.
By setting the sample interval, the user can control the update rate of
the bar information. The default is 2/10 second, which provides smooth
visual motion. A bar border is supplied by default which includes a
heavy lower border marked in 1/10 increments for easier estimation. This
border can be suppressed completely, or the ruler can be suppressed.
There are two subformats for the moving bar: relative and absolute. In
relative mode, the displayed values must all add up to 100% and are
relative only to each other. In absolute mode, the bar displays an
indicator of events per second over the sample interval, and the header
includes the sample interval. The bar itself will auto-scale; this means
that the scale used will vary automatically (with some hysteresis) as the
number of events changes. The scale value being used is displayed above
the right-hand edge of the bar. The property of relative or absolute
display is a characteristic of the type of data being displayed, and is
not under control of the user.
The scale value can be locked, in which case autoscaling is disabled, and
the scale value is inverted in color to indicate locked operation. The
user may specify that the bar scale be locked and its value. If instead
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the user asks the scale to creep, the scale factor will only increase,
and never decrease.
The second format is called strip chart format. Any moving bar may also
be displayed as a strip chart. In this mode, instead of being displayed
horizontally, the bar is drawn vertically at the right hand edge of the
bar after moving the bar down by the size of a single sample. This forms
a strip-chart effect. The number of samples and the sample interval can
be changed. The header of an absolute bar displayed as a strip chart
will indicate the overall time shown by the strip instead of the sample
interval time. Finally, tick marks may be added to the strip to ease
estimation.
If the strip chart format is used for an absolute bar type, and the scale
is not locked, then autoscaling causes an additional action. When the
scale changes, a red line is drawn through the bar at the point at which
the scale changed, and the remainder of the bar is drawn in a gray color,
showing only the outline of the parameter values. This shows that the
scale changed, and the grayed out data is invalid.
In either of the above bar formats, and if the bar type is absolute, then
some additional display options are available. In max value mode, the
bar display area is compressed and a text field is added to the right of
the bar showing the maximum value ever achieved by the sum of the
parameters. By default, this number is displayed as red on black, in the
upper part of the bar area. If the user desires, then this maximum can
be automatically reset to a lower value if the current value remains
below it for some number of intervals. This gives the effect of a "peak"
meter, holding a maximum long enough for the user to note it.
If tracking mode is enabled, then a text field is added at the right of
the bar below the maximum value field showing the average of the sum of
the parameters over an interval. By default, this number is displayed as
blue on white.
Each of these modes displays a calculated events-per-second ratio. If
the sample interval is much smaller than one second, then the displays
will show the "burst" rate achieved at the sample interval. The system
may not be able to sustain this rate over longer periods of time. To get
an accurate measure at any interval, simply adjust the sample interval as
described below.
The number shown for each of these modes, as well as the value used for
scaling, are usually calculated for a subset of the parameters shown in
the bar. For example, if displaying memory usage, the counters and scale
will not include the free memory in the system.
The third main format is numeric format. This format is currently only
available for absolute value bar types. Instead of a graphic display,
the bar is replaced by a text display area in which the actual values of
the parameters are displayed. In contrast to the other displays, the
parameter values are given over the whole sample interval rather than
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scaled to units per second. This allows a long sample time for slow
changing parameters.
By default, the current values of the parameters are displayed in the
same color as the graphical display would use just below each parameter
name in the header. If max value mode is turned on, then a listing of
the maximum value seen for each parameter is given below the current
values, except that all text is displayed in the current maximum display
foreground color, which is red by default. If tracking mode is turned
on, then the average numeric values are summed and displayed to the right
in the foreground color, with an appropriate title.
The behavior of the max value and average modes is intuitively similar to
that for a moving bar, except each parameter is handled independently.
SETUP FILE
The setup file provides a simple mechanism for initializing a large
number of possible parameters for the gr_osview display. The setup file
is an ASCII file. Comment lines are delimited by a # character in the
first column, and blank lines are ignored. In addition, trailing
comments may be added using a # character, after which all data on the
line is ignored. Lines containing information may be classed into two
types, monitor lines and option lines. Monitor lines describe the format
of an individual bar, while option lines describe global parameters. The
monitor bars in the gr_osview window are brought up in the same order
they are found in the setup file. A particular monitor bar may be
entered several times, possibly with many different options.
Each monitor line consists of a name followed by zero or more modifier
options. The following monitor bars are available:
cpu - monitor CPU usage
rmem - monitor real memory usage
rmemc - monitor real memory usage
wait - monitor time waiting for I/O
sysact - monitor important system activity
gfx - monitor important graphics activity
bdev - monitor block device throughput
fault - monitor page faults
tlb - monitor TLB activity
intr - monitor interrupts
pswap - monitor page swapping activity
nettcp - monitor TCP protocol activity
netudp - monitor UDP protocol activity
netip - monitor IP layer activity
netif - monitor network interface activity
disk - monitor disk usage
swp - monitor logical swap space
The cpu, netif and disk bars have special formats. The cpu bar may have
an optional argument which indicates a particular CPU to monitor (if more
than one is present in the system). In this case, the descriptor takes
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the form:
cpu(n) - monitor CPU number n
If the word sum is given instead, the bar monitors the sum of all CPU
activity in the system in a single bar.
The netif bar may have an optional argument which indicates a particular
interface to monitor, or it may indicate that only the sum of all network
interface activity is to be monitored. By default, a bar is generated
for each network interface on the system except for the local loopback
interface. If a name is given, the descriptor takes the form:
netif(name) - monitor interface name name
Typical interface names are et0, for the built-in ethernet interface on
the POWERSeries, lo0 for the local loopback interface, enp0 for the
standard Professional IRIS VMEbus ethernet card, and ec0 for the Personal
IRIS built-in ethernet interface. If the word sum is given instead, the
bar monitors the sum of all interface traffic for the system.
The disk bar requires an argument describing the volume to monitor. The
form of the descriptor is:
disk(path) - monitor the volume given by path
The path argument can name a filesystem in one of two ways. If it names
a block special device, then that device is assumed to contain an EFS,
XFS or UDF filesystem, and usage is monitored with the special file name
used as the bar header. Otherwise, the argument is assumed to name a
file residing on some mounted volume. The path name passed in is used as
the header. The bar scale is set at the number of megabytes of storage
on the volume.
The scale number for the real memory bars, rmem and rmemc, is the number
of memory pages in the system. On current SGI systems, each page can be
4096 or 16384 bytes in length depending on the return value of the
getpagesize(2) system call. In general, the larger page size is used on
systems where uname(1) returns "IRIX64". For the sysact, gfx, intr,
bdev, fault, pswap, netudp, netip, netif, tlb bars, the scale will show
the calculated number of events per second which would fill the bar. For
the disk bar, the scale value will show the total size of the disk in
bytes. For the swp bar, the scale value will show the total amount of
logical swap. The cpu and wait bars cannot be displayed as numeric bars.
If the bdev, netudp, netip or netif bars are displayed as numeric bars
then additional information is available.
The following options may be supported for each of the above bar types.
If the option is unsupported, it will be silently ignored by gr_osview.
strip - display as a strip chart
numeric - display numeric values
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max - add a maximum value numeric meter
max(n) - add a maximum value meter with reset interval n
tracksum - add an average value numeric meter
tracksum(n) - add an average value meter with interval n
noborder - suppress bar border
interval(n) - set sample interval in base units
samples(n) - set number of samples in strip chart
attack(f) - set attack speed of bar
colors(c,...) - set bar colors to use
maxcolor(b,f) - set maximum value display colors
limcolor(b,f) - set scale limit value display colors
sumcolor(b,f) - set tracking sum display colors
lockscale(x) - lock the scale value
creepscale - autoscaling will only increase the scale
ticks(i,n) - set strip chart tick marks
A strip chart is a pictorial representation of a number of samples from
the given bar, displayed vertically rather than horizontally. The header
displays the total time covered by the bar, which is the interval times
the number of samples. A numeric chart simply shows the monitored values
as absolute numeric values rather then as pictorial values.
The max enables max value mode, while the tracksum option enables average
value tracking mode. If the second form of max, is used, the argument
indicates a number of intervals after which the max value will be reset
to the current value, if the current value remains below the displayed
max value. In the second form of tracksum, the argument specifies the
number of intervals over which to average the value. This allows, for
instance, a moving bar to react very quickly for good visual effect while
the average value is computed over a longer interval for more accuracy.
These values are displayed at the end of a bar, the max value above the
tracksum value.
If the noborder option is given, then the bar border is suppressed.
The interval option specifies the update interval of the bar, in base
interval units. The base interval is set as a global option; see below.
The argument to this option indicates the number of base interval units
in the interval for this bar. For instance, if the base interval is .2
seconds, then an argument of "5" would indicate a 1 second interval.
The attack option specifies the percentage of the new value to be used in
the rolling average calculation. This averaging is what makes each bar
appear to move smoothly; changing the attack value can change the speed
and appearance of a bar substantially. The value can range from 0.0 to
1.0; of course 0.0 indicates no movement of the bar ever, while 1.0 means
instant change to the next value.
The colors option modifies the colors used for the bar. Starting from
the first parameter in a bar, the colors are modified until either all
parameters are modified or no additional colors are specified. The
values specified in the argument are either a color-map index (in the
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range 0 to 4095, inclusive), or a comma-separated triple of floating-
point values between 0.0 and 1.0 that represent the the RGB values of the
desired color. maxcolor, limcolor and sumcolor options set the
background and foreground colors, respectively, of that type of display
for this bar.
The lockscale option locks the scale value for the bar to the given
value, disabling autoscaling. A locked scale is indicated by the scale
value being inverted (reverse video) in the display. If the numeric
argument to lockscale is suffixed by a 'k' or 'K', then the argument is
multiplied by 1024, a 'm' or 'M' suffix multiplies the argument by 1 meg
(1024 times 1024), or a 'g' or 'G' suffix multiplies the argument by 1
gig (1024 times 1024 times 1024). The creepscale option allows
autoscaling, but the scale can only increase.
The ticks option enables tick marks for the given strip. Tick marks are
painted at the top of the bar, and follow the strip as it moves. The
first form, ticks(n), paints a tick mark every n samples. The second
form, ticks(n,m), paints a double-length tick mark every (n*m) samples,
or every m normal tick marks.
Global options are introduced by a line with the special descriptor opt
beginning the line. The following global options are accepted:
noborder - suppress borders on all bars
arbsize - allow arbitrary window sizing
width(w) - set number of bars horizontally
interval(t) - set base sample interval
colors(c,...) - modify default color behavior
maxcolor(b,f) - set colors for maximum value displays
limcolor(b,f) - set colors for limit value displays
sumcolor(b,f) - set colors for sum value displays
backcolor(c) - set background color
frontcolor(c) - set foreground color
font(f) - set font to use
origin(x,y) - set window origin
winsize(x,y) - set window size
nodecorate - request an unframed window
The noborder option suppresses borders on all bars, making each bar
display seem to "hang in space". The arbsize option allows arbitrary
sizing of the window; gr_osview may not always be able to properly scale
text or draw to match the window size if it is too small. The
acceptability of a too-small display is left to the user. The width
option sets the number of bars horizontally to use. This value is one by
default, meaning that a long, vertical display is used. The interval
option sets the base sample interval. The argument is given in tenths of
seconds. The default base interval is two tenths of a second.
The colors option sets the global color table, from which each bar
selects its default colors, in the same manner as for an individual bar.
The limcolor, maxcolor and sumcolor options set the background and
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foreground colors, respectively, of the limit value, maximum value and
tracking sum value displays. The backcolor and frontcolor options set
the general background or foreground colors respectively.
The font option sets the font to be used for text. This is a font name
as known to the IRIS GL Font Manager (libfm). Default is
"TimesBoldItalic". The origin option specifies the initial origin of the
window in screen coordinates. The winsize option sets the initial window
size in screen coordinates.
Setting the nodecorate option specifies a gr_osview window with no
borders. The default is to request a border around the window.
INTERPRETING THE DISPLAY
cpu The cpu bar statistically monitors the distribution of CPU cycles
between user programs, the operating system, interrupt overhead,
graphics and idle time. Computation-intensive loads will show
large user times, while I/O or kernel service intensive loads
will show up as increased system and interrupt time. If
intensive graphics activity is under way, then the time spent
waiting for the graphics hardware to context switch and the time
spent waiting for the graphics FIFO to empty will consume a
significant portion of the processor. gr_osview perturbs this
slightly, since it causes graphics context switches to occur.
The data is collected by sampling the program counter at the
kernel clock frequency, which is 100HZ on the 4D series. This
sampling is done automatically by the operating system; gr_osview
simply collects the data and displays it.
wait The wait bar monitors the percentage of time that the system is
idle due to waiting for outstanding I/O requests. If an I/O
request was issued on a processor, then time that that processor
spends idle will be viewed as wait time. This bar is constructed
by summing all the idle time for all processors in the system and
displaying the percentage of that time that an I/O request was
pending. Since in a multiprocessor system, there is no way to
differentiate which processors have I/O pending, if there is any
outstanding I/O request, and a processor goes idle, that
processor (along with all other idle processors) will accumulate
wait for I/O time rather than idle time.
The different forms of waiting are: IO refers to time spent
waiting for traffic related to file system accesses (including
local, remote, and mapped files, and normal file read and write).
Swap refers to time spent waiting for paging and swapping
operations to and from any swap devices. Pio refers to time
spent waiting for physical IO to complete; for example, direct
DMA to user space.
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The information is collected in the same way as cpu time.
The meaning of the wait bar changed in the IRIX 6.5.13 release.
For details, see the -U section of sar(1) man page.
rmem This bar measures real memory usage. kernel memory is memory
allocated to the operating system and drivers. fs ctl is memory
used to store filesystem meta-data, that is, information such as
inodes, bitmaps, directories and the like that are used to manage
file data. fsdirty memory is occupied by modified file system
pages which have not yet been written to backing store. fsclean
memory is occupied by unmodified file system pages which are
currently attached to file system buffer headers. free is memory
not currently in use. user is memory currently allocated to
running processes.
Note that some of the pages marked fsclean or fsdirty may also be
allocated to running processes, but will not be accounted as user
memory.
Note also that some of the free memory may represent file system
data.
Memory data is collected as absolute numbers rather than with
statistical means, such as for cpu usage. Most bars listed here
use this kind of accurate data, unless stated otherwise.
rmemc This bar is the same as the rmem bar, except that two fields are
used to describe memory not currently in use: freec is unused
memory which contains valid backing-store data and which may be
reclaimed by a process or by the file system buffer cache; freeu
is unused memory which contains no usable data.
sysact The system activity bar measures a few of the important system
activities, namely total system calls, process context switches,
fork, exec and iget operations. Fork operations are initiated by
a process when it wishes to create a new process. Exec
operations are initiated by a process to overlay itself with a
new process; this is how a new program image is loaded and run.
Finally, an iget operation occurs whenever the state of a file is
changed, for instance when it is opened. This is a crude measure
of file system activity. It is important to note that gr_osview
adds to the totals shown in this bar, since it to must perform at
least some system calls, and causes some process context
switches.
gfx This bar monitors graphics activity on the system. On most
systems, the graphics hardware can interrupt the CPU when certain
conditions occur; the first bar element measures the amount of
such activity, named intr. Every time the processor switches to
a new process which is using a GL window on the graphics screen,
a graphics context switch occurs, labeled swch. The X server and
GL graphics programs will sometimes interact with privileged code
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in the kernel to obtain some service; this is labeled ioctl after
the system call used to perform the service. When a GL graphics
program wishes to be synchronized with buffer swapping done
during double buffering, it must wait for the next vertical
retrace. The number of times this happens is labeled swap.
Finally, the graphics pipeline is preceded by a FIFO buffer to
smooth data movement into the pipeline. When the FIFO fills up,
which it can with a fast processor, it interrupts the host, which
waits until the FIFO has emptied somewhat before allowing the
graphics process to continue drawing. The fiwt element describes
the number of times this has happened. The finowt element
describes the number of times the interrupt routine found that
the FIFO was below the low-water mark by the time it had saved
state and entered the interrupt handler.
bdev This bar (titled "BufAct") monitors the input/output activity to
block devices. Block devices are usually those which hold
filesystems, thus this bar measures filesystem throughput. The
values are given in blocks per second, each block being 512 bytes
in length. If displayed as a numeric bar, then the logical read
and write rates as well as the actual read and write rates, are
displayed, as well as the hit ratio of logical to actual reads
and writes and the rate at which delayed writes are cancelled
(due, for example, to truncation requests).
fault This bar monitors page fault activity. These are events that
occur in managing the virtual address space of a process. The
types of events are:
cpw These are copy-on-write events. This occurs when two or more
processes are sharing a page, and one of them attempts to
modify the page. To preserve the semantics of the UNIX fork()
primitive, a copy of the shared page is made for the process,
and it is then allowed to modify that page at will.
mod Modified faults occur the first time a process modifies a
page, which tells the operating system that the page is dirty.
For unmodified pages, the kernel can go to the filesystem to
get a copy of the page, which saves the overhead of keeping a
copy on swap during paging. A copy of all modified pages must
be maintained in memory or on swap.
dmd Demand-fill faults occur the first time a process references a
page with which there is no associated backing-store, for
instance when first touching the BSS segment in a program.
Since BSS is guaranteed to be zero, it is not kept in the
object file, but is allocated to the process on demand by the
kernel.
cache During paging, the kernel keeps a pool of pages which have
been selected as candidates for stealing, and have backing
store containing a copy of the page. This allows the kernel
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to respond to memory allocation needs quickly, while allowing
a process to get back a page quickly if it touches it again.
This pool is called the page cache. Each cache event
indicates that a page fault occurred and the desired page was
found in the page cache.
file File events occur when a page fault happens and a copy of the
required page is fetched from the file system.
swap This event indicates that a page fault occurred, and the
desired page was fetched from the disk swap area.
double
This event indicates that a second-level fault has occurred.
On the 4D series, translation lookaside buffer (TLB) handling
is performed entirely by software. This is done by looking up
the missing page entry in a page table, and entering the
virtual to physical mapping into the TLB. First-level faults
are handled by extremely efficient low-level software. The
page tables themselves are virtually mapped, so when the first
level TLB handler attempts to load a page table entry, it may
fault because the page table isn't mapped. This is a second-
level fault, and must be repaired by high-level kernel
routines.
pgref This event indicates that a page fault occurred, but the page
was actually still attached to the user address space.
Reference faults are used by the operating system to keep
accurate usage information when paging is imminent.
pswap The page swapping activity monitor bar (titled "Pages Swapped")
measures access to the swap areas, for either swapin or swapout
activity. During heavy paging, both swapin and swapout activity
could be significant. On a system with only a single swap area
on the same disk as the system and user data, the swapping rate
will be effectively limited by the disk latency. Much higher
swapping rates are possible with several swap areas configured
across multiple disks and disk controllers. This may be
necessary to achieve reasonable throughput in the face of many
large jobs competing for main memory.
The pswap bar is different than the swp bar described elsewhere;
while pswap measures pages swapped in and out, the swp bar
measures the usage of logical swap space.
nettcp This bar measures data throughput for the TCP network protocol,
in kilobytes per second. TCP, standing for Transmission Control
Protocol, is a reliable connection oriented protocol used mainly
for stream oriented operation, such as remote login or file copy.
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netudp This bar measures data throughput for the UDP network protocol,
in datagrams. INdgram and OUTdgram measure the datagram
throughput, while Dropped measures the number of datagrams
dropped.
UDP, the User Datagram Protocol, is a datagram service used where
low latency transactions are useful. For instance, the Sun
Remote Procedure Call protocol uses UDP. The NFS filesystem is
based on SunRPC, and therefore UDP activity is a good indicator
of NFS activity.
netip This bar measures packet throughput for the IP network protocol.
INpack and OUTPack measure the number of packets, while Dropped
measures the number of packets dropped by the protocol. In
numeric mode, additional fields are:Forward, giving the number of
packets forwarded on to another host and Delivered, giving the
number of packets handed over to an upper-layer protocol.
IP, standing for Internet Protocol, is the basic packet
management layer of the network. It sits between the network
interface driver and higher level protocols, providing error
control and routing facilities.
netif This bar monitors packets transmitted or received through the
various network interfaces which may be present on a machine. If
displayed as a regular bar, the number of packets transferred in
or out over the interface is shown as INpack or OUTpack. If
displayed as a numeric bar, then three additional fields may be
displayed: INerr and OUTerr measure the number of packets
received in error or which had errors during transmission, while
coll measures the number of packet collisions which occurred,
which only happens on CSMA/CD interfaces.
Each machine supporting networking has a local loopback interface
called lo0. This interface is not usually displayed unless
specifically called out, and it does not have the INerr, OUTerr
and coll fields.
tlb The tlb monitor bar measures translation lookaside buffer (TLB)
activity on the system. mpsync counts how many times a request
is made to flush all TLB entries on all processors and vmwrap
indicates how many times mpsync is caused by a depletion of clean
(with respect to the TLB) kernel virtual addresses. flush counts
how many times an entire TLB is flushed on any one processor and
idwrap shows how many times this happens because a processor's
TLB ids have been depleted. idget monitors TLB id allocation and
idpurge counts how many times a tlb id is forcefully removed from
a process. Lastly, vapurge counts individual tlb entries being
purged.
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intr The interrupt monitor bar measures the interrupt rate in the
system, and is broken out into VME interrupts and others, which
are typically local interrupts to the CPU chip, such as serial
I/O ports. The operating system clock also interrupts the CPU at
100HZ, thus at least this interrupt rate will always show as a
background value. A large interrupt value, coupled with
extremely sluggish performance, may indicate hardware problems,
such as continuously interrupting device.
disk The disk monitor bar comes in two flavors, an EFS version and an
"everything else" version. In the EFS version, the first two
parameters specify the space taken by the used and free I-nodes
on the volume. The third is the space used by files, and any
remainder is free space. In the non-EFS version, only the space
used by files is shown. The tracksum and max values are the
number of bytes used on the file system.
swp This bar monitors the amount of logical swap space on the system.
If swap space is added or deleted, the bar will update to the
appropriate values automatically. The total amount of logical
swap space is computed as the sum of the amount of physical
memory available to processes plus the amount of physical swap
space plus the amount of virtual swap space. Physical swap space
is further divided into free and used. Logical swap is reserved
(used) by processes' private mappings (see swap(1m) for more
information on private mappings). The swp bar combines these two
kinds of information (logical swap makeup and reserved logical
swap) by splitting each of the four parts that make up the sum
logical swap into two pieces - reserved and available. The 8
components of this bar are:
mem The amount of physical memory available to processes that is
not reserved.
mem-r The amount of physical memory available to processes that is
reserved.
fswp The amount of physical swap that is neither allocated nor
reserved.
fswp-r
The amount of physical swap that is not allocated but is
reserved.
uswp The amount of physical swap that is allocated but not
reserved.
uswp-r
The amount of physical swap that is allocated and reserved.
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vswp The amount of virtual swap that is not reserved.
vswp-r
The amount of virtual swap that is reserved.
The tracksum and max values are the number of bytes of logical
swap reserved.
EXAMPLE
The following description file gives a layout identical to that used when
the -a option of gr_osview is given:
cpu
rmem max tracksum
wait
sysact max
gfx
FILES
/usr/sbin/gr_osview
$HOME/.grosview
SEE ALSOgr_top(1), ps(1), top(1).
BUGS
When using a strip chart display, and some other window obscures part of
the strip chart, the bar will gradually turn to black. This is because
an in-framebuffer copy operation is used to make the strip appear to
move, and when part of the window is obscured there is nothing to copy.
It is not clear that this bug will ever be fixed, because of the
performance advantages of this style of update.
If the gr_osview window is redrawn, perhaps due to a repaint or resizing
of the window, the next tick mark to be drawn on the strip may be drawn
at an incorrect position. Following marks will have correct position and
interval.
If the arbsize option is used, a tiny window can be drawn which is
unintelligible. It is assumed that if the arbsize option is given, then
a truly arbitrary size is desired.
A global colors option will only affect bars declared after the colors
declaration. It seems that this is the proper behavior, since it allows
groups of bars to be set to the same colors.
If a small window is used, and a width greater than one is specified, the
bar header and variable names may continue beyond the end of the bar.
This does not effect the operation of the program, but may cause some
visual confusion.
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If you use csh(1), gr_osview does not work if your .cshrc file on the
remote host unconditionally executes interactive or output-generating
commands. Put these commands inside the following conditional block:
if ($?prompt) then
endif
so they won't interfere with gr_osview and other non-interactive,
rcmd(3N)-based programs.
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