PMATOP(1)PMATOP(1)NAMEpmatop - System & Process Monitor
SYNOPSIS
Interactive usage:
pmatop [-g|-m] [-L linelen] [-h host] [ interval [ samples ]]
Writing and reading raw logfiles:
pmatop-w rawfile [ interval [ samples ]]
pmatop-r [ rawfile ] [-g|-m] [-L linelen] [-h host]
DESCRIPTION
The program pmatop is an interactive monitor to view the load on a
Linux system. It shows the occupation of the most critical hardware
resources (from a performance point of view) on system level, i.e. cpu,
memory, disk and network. By default metrics from the local host are
displayed, but a different host may be specified with the [-h host]
option. It is modeled after atop(1) and provides a showcase for the
variety of data available via pmcd(1).
Every interval (default: 10 seconds) information is shown about the
resource occupation on system level (cpu, memory, disks and network
layers), followed by a list of processes which have been active during
the last interval If the list of active processes does not entirely fit
on the screen, only the top of the list is shown.
The intervals are repeated till the number of samples (specified as
command argument) is reached, or till the key 'q' is pressed in inter‐
active mode.
When pmatop is started, it checks whether the standard output channel
is connected to a screen, or to a file/pipe. In the first case it pro‐
duces screen control codes (via the ncurses library) and behaves inter‐
actively; in the second case it produces flat ASCII-output.
In interactive mode, the output of pmatop scales dynamically to the
current dimensions of the screen/window.
Furthermore in interactive mode the output of pmatop can be controlled
by pressing particular keys. However it is also possible to specify
such key as flag on the command line. In that case pmatop switches to
the indicated mode on beforehand; this mode can be modified again
interactively. Specifying such key as flag is especially useful when
running pmatop with output to a pipe or file (non-interactively).
These flags are the same as the keys that can be pressed in interactive
mode (see section INTERACTIVE COMMANDS).
OUTPUT FORMAT
The output of pmatop consists of system level and process level infor‐
mation. The system level information consists of the following output
lines:
PRC Process and thread level totals.
This line contains the total cpu time consumed in system mode
(`sys') and in user mode (`user'), the total number of processes
present at this moment (`#proc'), `sleeping interruptible'
(`#tslpi') and `sleeping uninterruptible' (`#tslpu'), and the num‐
ber of zombie processes (`#zombie').
CPU The occupation percentage of this process related to the available
capacity for this resource on system level.
This line contains the total CPU usage in system mode, in user
mode, in irq mode, in idle mode, and in wait mode. The cpu lines
contain this information on a per cpu basis.
CPL This line contains load average information for the last minute,
five minutes, and fifteen minutes. Also the number of context
switches and the number of device interrupts.
MEM This line contains the size of physical memory, free memory, page
cache, buffer cache, and slab.
SWP This line contains the size of swap, free swap, committed space,
and committed space limit.
PAG This line contains the number of page scans, allocstalls, swapins,
and swapouts.
LVM/MDD/DSK
For every logical volume/multiple device/hard disk one line is
shown containing the nàme, number of reads, and number of writes.
NET The first line is for the upper TCP/IP layer and contains the num‐
ber of packets received, packets transmitted, packets received.
The next line is one per network interface and contains the number
of packets received and number of packets transmitted.
PROCESS
The remaining lines are one line per process and can be controlled
as described below.
INTERACTIVE COMMANDS
When running pmatop interactively (no output redirection), keys can be
pressed to control the output.
g Show generic output (default).
Per process the following fields are shown in case of a window-
width of 80 positions: process-id, cpu consumption during the last
interval in system- and user mode, the virtual and resident memory
growth of the process.
The subsequent columns are the username, number of threads in the
thread group, the status and exit code are shown.
The last columns contain the state, the occupation percentage for
the chosen resource (default: cpu) and the process name.
When more than 80 positions are available, other information is
added.
m Show memory related output.
Per process the following fields are shown in case of a window-
width of 80 positions: process-id, minor and major memory faults,
size of virtual shared text, total virtual process size, total
resident process size, virtual and resident growth during last
interval, memory occupation percentage and process name.
When more than 80 positions are available, other information is
added.
Miscellaneous interactive commands:
? Request for help information (also the key 'h' can be pressed).
z The pause key can be used to freeze the current situation in order
to investigate the output on the screen. While pmatop is paused,
the keys described above can be pressed to show other information
about the current list of processes. Whenever the pause key is
pressed again, pmatop will continue with a next sample.
SEE ALSOPCPIntro(1), collectl(1), perl(1), python(1), pmlogger(1), pmcd(1),
pmprobe(1), pmval(1), PMAPI(3), and pcp.conf(4).
Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMATOP(1)
