NAME
atop --- AT Computing's System & Process
Monitor
SYNOPSIS
Interactive usage: atop
[-g|-m|-d|-n|-u|-p|-s|-c|-v] [-C|-M|-D|-N|-A] [-af1x] [
interval [ samples ]] Writing and reading raw
logfiles: atop -w rawfile [-a] [-S] [ interval
[ samples ]]
atop -r [ rawfile ] [-b hh:mm ] [-e
hh:mm ] [-g|-m|-d|-n|-u|-p|-s|-c|-v] [-C|-M|-D|-N|-A] [-f1x]
DESCRIPTION
The program atop 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.
It also shows which processes are responsible for the indicated
load with respect to cpu- and memory load on process level; disk-
and network load is only shown per process if a kernel patch has
been installed.
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 (note that all processes that
were unchanged during the last interval are not shown, unless the
key 'a' has been pressed). If the list of active processes does not
entirely fit on the screen, only the top of the list is shown
(sorted in order of activity).
The intervals are repeated till the number of samples
(specified as command argument) is reached, or till the key 'q' is
pressed in interactive mode.
When atop is started, it checks whether the standard
output channel is connected to a screen, or to a file/pipe. In the
first case it produces screen control codes (via the curses
library) and behaves interactively; in the second case it produces
flat ASCII-output.
In interactive mode, the output of atop can be controlled
by pressing particular keys. However it is also possible to specify
such key as flag on the command line. In the latter case
atop will switch to the indicated mode on beforehand; this
mode can be modified again interactively. Specifying such key as
flag is especially useful when running atop with output to a
pipe or file (non-interactively). The flags used are the same as
the keys which can be pressed in interactive mode (see section
INTERACTIVE COMMANDS).
Additional flags are available to support storage of atop-data in
raw format (see section RAW DATA STORAGE).
PROCESS ACCOUNTING
When atop is started, it switches
on the process accounting mechanism in the kernel. This forces the
kernel to write a record with accounting information to the
accounting file whenever a process ends. Apart from the kernel
administration related to the running processes, atop also
interprets the accounting records on disk with every interval; in
this way atop can also show the activity of a process during
the interval in which it is finished.
Whenever the last incarnation of atop stops (either by
pressing `q' or by `kill -15'), it switches off the process
accounting mechanism again. You should never terminate atop
by `kill -9', because then it has no chance to stop process
accounting; as a result the accounting file may consume a lot of
disk space after a while.
COLORS
For the resource consumption on system level,
atop uses colors to indicate that a critical occupation
percentage has been (almost) reached. A critical occupation
percentage means that is likely that this load causes a noticable
negative performance influence for applications using this
resource. The critical percentage depends on the type of resource:
e.g. the performance influence of a disk with a busy percentage of
80% might be more noticable for applications/user than a CPU with a
busy percentage of 90%.
Currently atop uses the following default values to
calculate a weighted percentage per resource:
- Processor
- A busy percentage of 90% or higher is considered `critical'.
- Disk
- A busy percentage of 70% or higher is considered `critical'.
- Network
- A busy percentage of 90% or higher for the load of an interface
is considered `critical'.
- Memory
- An occupation percentage of 90% is considered `critical'.
Notice that this occupation percentage is the accumulated memory
consumption of the kernel (including slab) and all processes; the
memory for the page cache (`cache' and `buff' in the MEM-line) is
not implied!
If the number of pages swapped out (`swout' in the PAG-line) is
larger than 10 per second, the memory resource is considered
`critical'.
If the committed virtual memory exceeds the limit (`vmcom' and
`vmlim' in the SWP-line), the SWP-line is colored due to
overcommitting the system.
- Swap
- An occupation percentage of 80% is considered `critical'
because swap space might be completely exhausted in the near
future; it is not critical from a performance point-of-view.
These default values can be modified in the configuration file
(see section CONFIGURATION FILE).
When a resource exceeded its critical occupation percentage, the
entire screen line is colored red.
When a resource exceeded (default) 80% of its critical percentage
(so it is almost critical), the entire screen line is colored cyan.
This `almost critical percentage' (one value for all resources) can
be modified in the configuration file (see section CONFIGURATION
FILE).
With the key 'x' (or flag -x), line coloring can be suppressed.
INTERACTIVE COMMANDS
When running atop interactively
(no output redirection), keys can be pressed to control the output.
In general, lower case keys can be used to show other information
for the active processes and upper case keys can be used to
influence the sort order of the active process list.
- g
- Show generic output (default).
Per process the following fields are shown: 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 contain the username, number of threads in
the thread group, the status and exit code. However if the kernel
patch `cnt' has been installed, the number of read- and write
transfers, and the number of received and sent network packets are
shown.
The last columns contain the state, the occupation percentage for
the choosen resource (default: cpu) and the process name.
- m
- Show memory related output.
Per process the following fields are shown: 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.
- d
- Show disk-related output.
Per process the following fields are shown: process-id, number
of physical disk reads, average size per read (bytes), total size
for read transfers, physical disk writes, average size per write
(bytes), total size for write transfers, disk occupation percentage
and process name.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
- n
- Show network related output.
Per process the following fields are shown: process-id, number
of received TCP packets with the average size per packet (in
bytes), number of sent TCP packets with the average size per packet
(in bytes), number of received UDP packets with the average size
per packet (in bytes), number of sent UDP packets with the average
size per packet (in bytes), and received and send raw packets (e.g.
ICMP) in one column, the network occupation percentage and process
name.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
- s
- Show scheduling characteristics.
Per process/thread the following fields are shown: process-id,
thread group id, number of threads in thread group, scheduling
policy (normal timesharing, realtime round-robin, realtime fifo),
nice value, priority, realtime priority, current processor, status,
state, the occupation percentage for the choosen resource and the
process name.
- v
- Show various process characteristics.
Per process the following fields are shown: process-id, user
name and group, start date and time, status (e.g. exit code if the
process has finished), state, the occupation percentage for the
choosen resource and the process name.
- c
- Show the command line of the process.
Per process the following fields are shown: process-id, the
occupation percentage for the choosen resource and the command line
including arguments.
- u
- Show the process activity accumulated per user.
Per user the following fields are shown: number of processes
active or terminated during last interval (or in total if combined
with command `a'), accumulated cpu consumption during last interval
in system- and user mode, the current virtual and resident memory
space consumed by active processes (or all processes of the user if
combined with command `a').
When the kernel patch `cnt' has been installed, the accumulated
number of read- and write transfers on disk, and the number of
received and sent network packets are shown. When the kernel patch
is not installed, these counters are zero.
The last columns contain the accumulated occupation percentage for
the choosen resource (default: cpu) and the user name.
- p
- Show the process activity accumulated per program (i.e. process
name).
Per program the following fields are shown: number of processes
active or terminated during last interval (or in total if combined
with command `a'), accumulated cpu consumption during last interval
in system- and user mode, the current virtual and resident memory
space consumed by active processes (or all processes of the user if
combined with command `a').
When the kernel patch `cnt' has been installed, the accumulated
number of read- and write transfers on disk, and the number of
received and sent network packets are shown. When the kernel patch
is not installed, these counters are zero.
The last columns contain the accumulated occupation percentage for
the choosen resource (default: cpu) and the program name.
- C
- Sort the current list in the order of cpu consumption
(default). The one-but-last column changes to ``CPU''.
- M
- Sort the current list in the order of resident memory
consumption. The one-but-last column changes to ``MEM''.
- D
- Sort the current list in the order of disk accesses issued. The
one-but-last column changes to ``DSK''.
- N
- Sort the current list in the order of network packets
received/transmitted. The one-but-last column changes to
``NET''.
- A
- Sort the current list automatically in the order of the most
busy system resource during this interval. The one-but-last column
shows either ``ACPU'', ``AMEM'', ``ADSK'' or ``ANET'' (the
preceding 'A' indicates automatic sorting-order). The most busy
resource is determined by comparing the weighted busy-percentages
of the system resources, as described earlier in the section
COLORS.
This option remains valid until another sorting-order is explicitly
selected again.
A sorting-order for disk or network is only possible when kernel
patch `cnt' is installed.
Miscellaneous interactive commands:
- ?
- Request for help information (also the key 'h' can be
pressed).
- V
- Request for version information (version number and date).
- x
- Use colors to highlight critical resources (toggle).
- z
- The pause key can be used to freeze the current situation in
order to investigate the output on the screen. While atop 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, atop will continue with a next sample.
- i
- Modify the interval timer (default: 10 seconds). If an interval
timer of 0 is entered, the interval timer is switched off. In that
case a new sample can only be triggered manually by pressing the
key 't'.
- t
- Trigger a new sample manually. This key can be pressed if the
current sample should be finished before the timer has exceeded, or
if no timer is set at all (interval timer defined as 0). In the
latter case atop can be used as a stopwatch to measure the
load being caused by a particular application transaction, without
knowing on beforehand how many seconds this transaction will last.
When viewing the contents of a raw file, this key can be used to
show the next sample from the file.
- T
- When viewing the contents of a raw file, this key can be used
to show the previous sample from the file.
- r
- Reset all counters to zero to see the system and process
activity since boot again.
When viewing the contents of a raw file, this key can be used to
rewind to the beginning of the file again.
- U
- Specify a search string for specific user names as a regular
expression. From now on, only (active) processes will be shown from
a user which matches the regular expression. The system statistics
are still system wide. If the Enter-key is pressed without
specifying a name, active processes of all users will be shown
again.
- P
- Specify a search string for specific process names as a regular
expression. From now on, only processes will be shown with a name
which matches the regular expression. The system statistics are
still system wide. If the Enter-key is pressed without specifying a
name, all active processes will be shown again.
- a
- The `all/active' key can be used to toggle between only
showing/accumulating the processes that were active during the last
interval (default) or showing/accumulating all processes.
- f
- Fixate the number of lines for system resources (toggle). By
default only the lines are shown about system resources (cpu,
paging, disk, network) that really have been active during the last
interval. With this key you can force atop to show lines of
inactive resources as well.
- 1
- Show relevant counters as an average per second (in the format
`..../s') instead of as a total during the interval (toggle).
- l
- Limit the number of system level lines for the counters
per-cpu, the active disks and the network interfaces. By default
lines are shown of all cpu's, disks and network interfaces which
have been active during the last interval. Limiting these lines can
be useful on systems with huge number cpu's, disks or interfaces in
order to be able to run atop on a screen/window with e.g.
only 24 lines.
For all mentioned resources the maximum number of lines can be
specified interactively. When using the flag -l the maximum
number of per-cpu lines is set to 0, the maximum number of disk
lines to 5 and the maximum number of interface lines to 3. These
values can be modified again in interactive mode.
- k
- Send a signal to an active process (aka kill a process).
- q
- Quit the monitor program.
- ^F
- Show the next page of the process list (forward).
- ^B
- Show the previous page of the process list
(backward).
RAW DATA STORAGE
In order to store system- and process
level statistics for long-term analysis (e.g. to check the system
load and the active processes running yesterday between 3:00 and
4:00 PM), atop can store the system- and process level
statistics in compressed binary format in a raw file with the flag
-w followed by the filename. If this file already exists and
is recognized as a raw data file, atop will append new
samples to the file (starting with a sample which reflects the
activity since boot); if the file does not exist, it will be
created.
By default only processes which have been active during the
interval are stored in the raw file. When the flag -a is
specified, all processes will be stored.
The interval (default: 10 seconds) and number of samples (default:
infinite) can be passed as last arguments. Instead of the number of
samples, the flag -S can be used to indicate that
atop should finish just before midnight.
A raw file can be read and visualized again with the flag
-r followed by the filename. If no filename is specified,
the file /var/log/atop/atop_YYYYMMDD is opened for
input (where YYYYMMDD are digits representing the current
date). If a filename is specified in the format YYYYMMDD
(representing any valid date), the file
/var/log/atop/atop_YYYYMMDD is opened.
The samples from the file can be viewed interactively by using the
key 't' to show the next sample and the key 'T' to show the
previous sample. When output is redirected to a file or pipe,
atop prints all samples in plain ASCII.
With the flag -b (begin time) and/or -e (end time)
followed by a time argument of the form HH:MM, a certain time
period within the raw file can be selected.
When atop is installed, two scripts are stored in the
/etc/atop directory. Each of these scripts take care that
atop is activated every day to write compressed binary data
to the file /var/log/atop/atop_YYYYMMDD with an
interval of 10 minutes.
Furthermore the script removes all raw files which are older than
four weeks.
Only one of these scripts should be used for automatic storage
of the system- and process level information:
- atop.daily
- This script should be used for systems on which process
accounting is not activated via logrotate (i.e. the
file /etc/logrotate.d/psacct is not present). In that case
the script atop.daily can be activated every day (at
midnight) via the cron daemon by creating the file
/etc/cron.d/atop with the contents
1 0 * * * root
/etc/atop/atop.daily
- atop.24hours
- For systems on which process accounting is daily restarted via
logrotate the script atop.24hours should be used:
The section 'postrotate' in the file /etc/logrotate.d/psacct
should be extended by calling the script
/etc/atop/atop.24hours (without arguments) after
reactivating process accounting with the accton
command.
OUTPUT DESCRIPTION
The first sample shows the system level
activity since boot (the elapsed time in the header shows the
number of seconds since boot). Note that particular counters could
have reached their maximum value (several times) and started by
zero again, so do not rely on these figures.
For every sample atop first shows the lines related to
system level activity. If a particular system resource has not been
used during the interval, the entire line related to this resource
is suppressed. So the number of system level lines may vary for
each sample.
After that a list is shown of processes which have been active
during the last interval. This list is by default sorted on cpu
consumption, but this order can be changed by the keys which are
previously described.
If values have to be shown by atop which do not fit in
the column width, another notation is used. If e.g. a
cpu-consumption of 233216 milliseconds should be shown in a column
width of 4 positions, it is shown as `233s' (in seconds). For large
memory figures, another unit is chosen if the value does not fit
(Mb instead of Kb, Gb instead of Mb). For other values, a kind of
exponent notation is used (value 123456789 shown in a column of 5
positions gives 123e6).
The system level information consists of the following output
lines:
- PRC
- Process 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'), the number of zombie processes
(`#zombie') and the number of processes that ended during the
interval (`#exit', which shows `?' if process accounting could not
be switched on).
- CPU
- CPU utilization.
One line is shown for the total occupation of all CPU's together.
In case of a multi-processor system, an additional line is shown
for every individual processor (with `cpu' in lower case), sorted
on activity. Inactive cpu's will not be shown by default. The lines
showing the per-cpu occupation contain the cpu number in the last
field.
Every line contains the percentage of cpu time spent in kernel mode
by all active processes (`sys'), the percentage of cpu time
consumed in user mode (`user') for all active processes (including
processes running with a nice value larger than zero), the
percentage of cpu time spent for interrupt handling (`irq')
including softirq, the percentage of unused cpu time while no
processes were waiting for disk-I/O (`idle'), and the percentage of
unused cpu time while at least one process was waiting for disk-I/O
(`wait').
In case of per-cpu occupation, the last column shows the cpu number
and the wait percentage (`w') for that cpu.
The number of lines showing the per-cpu occupation can be
limited.
- CPL
- CPU load information.
This line contains the load average figures reflecting the number
of threads that are available to run on a CPU (i.e. part of the
runqueue) or that are waiting for disk I/O. These figures are
averaged over 1 (`avg1'), 5 (`avg5') and 15 (`avg15') minutes.
Furthermore the number of context switches (`csw') and the number
of serviced interrupts (`intr') are shown.
- MEM
- Memory occupation.
This line contains the total amount of physical memory (`tot'), the
amount of memory which is currently free (`free'), the amount of
memory in use as page cache (`cache'), the amount of memory used
for filesystem meta data (`buff') and the amount of memory being
used for kernel malloc's (`slab' - always 0 for kernel 2.4).
- SWP
- Swap occupation and overcommit info.
This line contains the total amount of swap space on disk (`tot')
and the amount of free swap space (`free').
Furthermore the committed virtual memory space (`vmcom') and the
maximum limit of the committed space (`vmlim', which is by default
swap size plus 50% of memory size) is shown. The committed space is
the reserved virtual space for all allocations of private memory
space for processes. The kernel only verifies whether the committed
space exceeds the limit if strict overcommit handling is configured
(vm.overcommit_memory is 2).
- PAG
- Paging frequency.
This line contains the number of scanned pages (`scan') due to the
fact that free memory drops below a particular threshold and the
number times that the kernel tries to reclaim pages due to an
urgent need (`stall').
Also the number of memory pages the system read from swap space
(`swin') and the number of memory pages the system wrote to swap
space (`swout') are shown.
- DSK
- Disk utilization.
Per active disk one line is produced, sorted on disk activity. Such
line shows the name of the disk (e.g. hda or sda), the busy
percentage i.e. the portion of time that the disk was busy handling
requests (`busy'), the number of read requests issued (`read'), the
number of write requests issued (`write') and the average number of
milliseconds needed by a request (`avio') for seek, latency and
data transfer.
The number of lines showing the disk occupation can be
limited.
- NET
- Network utilization (TCP/IP).
One line is shown for activity of the transport layer (TCP and
UDP), one line for the IP layer and one line per active
interface.
For the transport layer, counters are shown concerning the number
of received TCP segments including those received in error
(`tcpi'), the number of transmitted TCP segments excluding those
containing only retransmitted octets (`tcpo'), the number of UDP
datagrams received (`udpi') and the number of UDP datagrams
transmitted (`udpo'). These counters are related to IPv4 and
IPv6.
For the IP layer, counters are shown concerning the number of IP
datagrams received from interfaces, including those received in
error (`ipi'), the number of IP datagrams that local higher-layer
protocols offered for transmission (`ipo'), the number of received
IP datagrams which were forwarded to other interfaces (`ipfrw') and
the number of IP datagrams which were delivered to local
higher-layer protocols (`deliv'). These counters are related to
IPv4 and IPv6.
For every active network interface one line is shown, sorted on the
interface activity. Such line shows the name of the interface and
its busy percentage in the first column. The busy percentage for
half duplex is determined by comparing the interface speed with the
number of bits transmitted and received per second; for full duplex
the interface speed is compared with the highest of either the
transmitted or the received bits. When the interface speed can not
be determined (e.g. for the loopback interface), `---' is shown
instead of the percentage.
Furthermore the number of received packets (`pcki'), the number of
transmitted packets (`pcko'), the effective amount of bits received
per second (`si') and the effective amount of bits transmitted per
second (`so').
The number of lines showing the network interfaces can be
limited.
Following the system level information, the processes are shown
from which the resource utilization has changed during the last
interval. These processes might have used cpu time or issued disk-
or network requests. However a process is also shown if part of it
has been paged out due to lack of memory (while the process itself
was in sleep state).
Per process the following fields may be shown (in alphabetical
order), depending on the current output mode as described in the
section INTERACTIVE COMMANDS:
- CMD
- The name of the process. This name can be surrounded by
"less/greater than" signs (`<name>') which means that the
process has finished during the last interval.
Behind the abbreviation `CMD' in the header line, the current page
number and the total number of pages of the process list are
shown.
- COMMAND-LINE
- The full command line of the process (including arguments),
which is limited to the length of the screen line. Th command line
can be surrounded by "less/greater than" signs (`<line>')
which means that the process has finished during the last
interval.
Behind the verb `COMMAND-LINE' in the header line, the current page
number and the total number of pages of the process list are
shown.
- CPU
- The occupation percentage of this process related to the
available capacity for this resource on system level.
- DSK
- The occupation percentage of this process related to the total
load that is produced by all processes (i.e. total disk accesses by
all processes during the last interval).
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
- EXC
- The exit code of a terminated process (second position of
column `ST' is E) or the fatal signal number (second position of
column `ST' is S or C).
- GROUP
- The real primary group identity under which the process
runs.
- MAJFLT
- The number of page faults issued by this process.
- MEM
- The occupation percentage of this process related to the
available capacity for this resource on system level.
- MINFLT
- The number of page reclaims issued by this process.
- NET
- The occupation percentage of this process related to the total
load that is produced by all processes (i.e. network packets
transferred by all processes during the last interval).
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
- NPROCS
- The number of active and terminated processes accumulated for
this user or program.
- PID
- Process-id. If a process has been started and finished during
the last interval, a `?' is shown because the process-id is not
part of the standard process accounting record. However when the
kernel patch `acct' is installed, this value will be shown.
- POLICY
- Policy 'normal' (SCHED_OTHER) refers to a timesharing process,
'fifo' (SCHED_FIFO) and 'roundr' (SCHED_RR) to a realtime
process.
- PRIO
- The process' priority ranges from 0 (highest priority) to 139
(lowest priority). Priority 0 to 99 are used for realtime processes
(fixed priority independent of their behavior) and priority 100 to
139 for timesharing processes (variable priority depending on their
recent CPU consumption and the nice value).
- RAWRS
- The number of raw datagrams received and sent by this process.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not registered in the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- RDDSK
- The number of read accesses issued physically on disk (so
reading from the disk cache is not accounted for). This information
can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is installed.
- RGROW
- The amount of resident memory that the process has grown during
the last interval. A resident growth can be caused by touching
memory pages which were not physically created/loaded before
(load-on-demand). Note that a resident growth can also be negative
e.g. when part of the process is paged out due to lack of memory or
when the process frees dynamically allocated memory. For a process
which started during the last interval, the resident growth
reflects the total resident size of the process at that moment.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since resident memory occupation is not part of the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- RNET
- The number of TCP- and UDP packets received by this process.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not part of the standard process
accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- RSIZE
- The total resident memory usage consumed by this process (or
user).
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since resident memory occupation is not part of the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- S
- The current state of the process: `R' for running (currently
processing or in the run queue), `S' for sleeping interruptable
(wait for an event to occur), `D' for sleeping non-interruptable,
`Z' for zombie (waiting to be synchronized with its parent
process), `T' for stopped (suspended or traced), `W' for swapping,
and `E' (exit) for processes which have finished during the last
interval.
- SNET
- The number of TCP- and UDP packets transmitted by this process.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network-counters are not part of the standard process
accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- ST
- The status of a process.
The first position indicates if the process has been started during
the last interval (the value N means 'new process').
The second position indicates if the process has been finished
during the last interval.
The value E means 'exit' on the process' own initiative; the
exit code is displayed in the column `EXC'.
The value S means that the process has been terminated
unvoluntarily by a signal; the signal number is displayed in the in
the column `EXC'.
The value C means that the process has been terminated
unvoluntarily by a signal, producing a core dump in its current
directory; the signal number is displayed in the in the column
`EXC'.
- STDATE
- The start date of the process.
- STTIME
- The start time of the process.
- SYSCPU
- CPU time consumption of this process in system mode (kernel
mode), usually due to system call handling.
- TCPRCV
- The number of receive requests issued by this process for TCP
sockets, and the average size per transfer in bytes. This
information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not registered in the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- TCPSND
- The number of send requests issued by this process for TCP
sockets, and the average size per transfer in bytes. This
information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not registered in the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- THR
- A multithreaded application consists of various threads. All
related threads are contained in a thread group, represented by
atop as one line.
On Linux 2.4 systems it is hardly possible to determine which
threads (i.e. processes) are related to the same thread group.
Every thread is represented by atop as a separate line.
- UDPRCV
- The number of UDP datagrams received by this process, and the
average size per transfer in bytes. This information can only be
shown when kernel patch `cnt' is installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not registered in the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- UDPSND
- The number of UDP datagrams transmitted by this process, and
the average size per transfer in bytes. This information can only
be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is installed.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since network counters are not registered in the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- USERNAME
- The real user identity under which the process runs.
- USRCPU
- CPU time consumption of this process in user mode, due to
processing the own program text.
- VGROW
- The amount of virtual memory that the process has grown during
the last interval. A virtual growth can be caused by e.g. issueing
a malloc() or attaching a shared memory segment. Note that a
virtual growth can also be negative by e.g. issueing a free() or
detaching a shared memory segment. For a process which started
during the last interval, the virtual growth reflects the total
virtual size of the process at that moment.
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since virtual memory occupation is not part of the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- VSIZE
- The total virtual memory usage consumed by this process (or
user).
If a process has finished during the last interval, no value is
shown since virtual memory occupation is not part of the standard
process accounting record. However when the kernel patch `acct' is
installed, this value will be shown.
- VSTEXT
- The virtual memory size used by the shared text of this
process.
- WRDSK
- The number of write accesses issued physically on disk (so
writing to the disk cache is not accounted for). Usually
application processes just transfer their data to the cache, while
the physical write accesses are done later on by kernel daemons.
This information can only be shown when kernel patch `cnt' is
installed.
Note that the number read- and write accesses are not separately
maintained in the standard process accounting record. This means
that only one value is given for read's and write's in case a
process has finished during the last interval. However when the
kernel patch `acct' is installed, these values will be shown
separately.
EXAMPLES
To monitor the current system load interactively
with an interval of 5 seconds:
- atop 5
To monitor the system load and write it to a file (in plain
ASCII) with an interval of one minute during half an hour with
active processes sorted on memory consumption:
- atop -M 60 30 > /log/atop.mem
Store information about the system- and process activity in
binary compressed form to a file with an interval of ten minutes
during an hour:
- atop -w /tmp/atop.raw 600 6
View the contents of this file:
atop -r /tmp/atop.raw
CONFIGURATION FILE
The default values used by atop can be overruled by a
personal configuration file. This file, called ~/.atoprc
contains a keyword-value pair one every line (blank lines and lines
starting with a #-sign are skipped). The following keywords can be
specified:
- flags
- A list of default flags can be defined here. The flags which
are allowed are 'g', 'm', 'd', 'n', 'u', 'p', 's', 'c', 'v', 'C',
'M', 'D', 'N', 'A', 'a', 'f', '1' and 'x'.
- interval
- The default interval value in seconds.
- username
- The default regular expression for the users for which active
processes will be shown.
- procname
- The default regular expression for the process names to be
shown.
- maxlinecpu
- The maximum number of active CPU's which will be shown.
- maxlinedisk
- The maximum number of active disks which will be shown.
- maxlineintf
- The maximum number of active network interfaces which will be
shown.
- cpucritperc
- The busy percentage considered critical for a processor (see
section COLORS). This percentage is used to determine a weighted
percentage for line coloring and sorting of active processes. When
this value is zero, no line coloring or automatic sorting is
performed for this resource.
- dskcritperc
- The busy percentage considered critical for a disk (see section
COLORS). This percentage is used to determine a weighted percentage
for line coloring and sorting of active processes. When this value
is zero, no line coloring or automatic sorting is performed for
this resource.
- netcritperc
- The busy percentage considered critical for a network interface
(see section COLORS). This percentage is used to determine a
weighted percentage for line coloring and sorting of active
processes. When this value is zero, no line coloring or automatic
sorting is performed for this resource.
- memcritperc
- The percentage considered critical for memory utilization (see
section COLORS). This percentage is used to determine a weighted
percentage for line coloring and sorting of active processes. When
this value is zero, no line coloring or automatic sorting is
performed for this resource.
- swpcritperc
- The occupation percentage considered critical for swap space
(see section COLORS). This percentage is used to determine a
weighted percentage for line coloring and sorting of active
processes. When this value is zero, no line coloring or automatic
sorting is performed for this resource.
- almostcrit
- A percentage of the critical percentage to determine if the
resource is almost critical (see section COLORS). When this value
is zero, no line coloring for `almost critical' is performed.
An example of the ~/.atoprc file:
-
-
flags af
interval 5
username
procname
maxlinecpu 4
maxlinedisk 10
maxlineintf 5
cpucritperc 80
almostcrit 90
FILES
- /tmp/atop.d/atop.acct
- File in which the kernel writes the accounting records if the
standard accounting to the file /var/log/pacct or
/var/account/pacct is not used.
- ~/.atoprc
- Configuration file containing personal default values.
- /var/log/atop/atop_YYYYMMDD
- Raw file, where YYYYMMDD are digits representing the
current date. This name is used by the scripts atop.daily
and atop.24hours as default name for the output file, and by
atop as default name for the input file when using the
-r flag.
All binary system- and process-level data in this file has been
stored in compressed format.
SEE ALSO
atsar, logrotate
AUTHOR
Gerlof Langeveld, AT Computing (gerlof@ATComputing.nl)