osview(1)                                                            osview(1)


NAME
     osview - monitor operating system activity data

SYNOPSIS
     osview [-in] [-nn] [-s] [-a] [-c]

DESCRIPTION
     osview monitors various portions of the activity of the operating system
     and displays them using the full screen capabilities of the current
     terminal.

     A large number of activity counters are monitored, and the display may be
     dynamically altered to hide or show only those counters in which the user
     is interested.  The default is no longer to display all the statistics
     initially, instead there is a selection menu at the bottom of the
     display; enter the number of the selection to switch displays.  See the
     -a option for the older behavior.  It is assumed that the osview user is
     somewhat familiar with the internal workings of an AT&T V.4 based kernel.

     osview lays out as much information as possible in the screen area
     available.  Each data item is grouped similarly to the grouping shown by
     sar(1).  A header line gives the group name, and members of the group are
     indented below along with the one-second average value over the last
     interval (or total value over the interval; see below).  If a graphics
     subsystem is not present on the machine being monitored, osview
     suppresses all graphics related statistics in the display.

     The -i parameter sets the delay between screen updates in seconds.  By
     default, a 5 second rate is used.  The -n parameter is used to override
     the default number of lines to use, which is usually the entire size of
     the display area.  This can be useful if the display is called up in a
     long window, to keep the counters grouped together at the top of the
     window.  The -s option informs osview to not reduce relevant values to
     the average over a second.  One second averaging allows instant
     performance estimates, but may show inaccuracies because of the short
     interval involved.  The -a option gives behavior like the older versions,
     with all possible statistics displayed at once (the same as the 0 option
     on the selection line, if this option isn't given.  The -c option causes
     a running count to be displayed, rather than an interval count.  The
     counts can be reset to zero by pressing the C key.

     In general, those parameters dealing with data throughput rather than
     events are presented as the number of bytes involved.  For instance,
     memory usage is reported in bytes, as well as buffer cache traffic.
     Those parameters dealing with events to the system, such as page fault
     activity, interrupts or system activity are reported as actual counts.
     This allows an instant estimate of the activity and throughput of the
     system.

     A group can be suppressed along with all its members to allow hidden
     groups to be brought into view if the screen area is too small.  This is
     done by moving the cursor over the header line of the group to suppress


     and typing a suppression character.  The cursor may be positioned in any
     of the standard ways; keyboard arrow keys, the h-j-k-l keys, or the
     backspace-return-tab keys.  osview highlights the line the cursor is on
     unless the cursor is on the top screen line (which is reserved for status
     information).  When positioned over a group name, typing the D character
     or one of the delete keys on the keyboard will suppress the group.  The
     group name will remain, with an asterisk (*) prefix to indicate that the
     group has been suppressed.  The group may be expanded again by
     positioning the cursor over the group name and typing the I character or
     one of the insert keys on the keyboard.  The home key moves the cursor to
     the osview status line.

OVERVIEW
     The information which osview displays and how to interpret it is given
     below.  See the documentation for sar(1) or gr_osview(1) for additional
     information.  Some headers, including Swap, and Interrupts are suppressed
     by default.  See above description of how to get them to display.  Some
     headers, including PathName Cache, EfsAct, and Getblk contain information
     that is subject to change and is of use primarily by IRIX development
     groups.  Tiles information is only displayed if the kernel supports that
     feature.

     Load Average
        These counters give load average over the last minute, 5 minutes and
        15 minutes.

     CPU Usage
        These counters display the proportion of the available processor
        cycles which were used by each of the following activities.  If
        multiple processors are present, then the CPU number will be added to
        the header line.

        user      - user programs
        sys       - system on behalf of user
        intr      - interrupt handling
        gfxc      - graphics context switching
        gfxf      - waiting on graphics input FIFO
        sxbrk     - waiting for memory
        idle      - doing nothing

     Wait Ratio
        These counters display the proportion of time no processes were
        available to run, and any processes were waiting for I/O to complete.

        %IO       - waiting on IO
        %Swap     - waiting on swap IO
        %Physio   - waiting on physical IO

     System Memory

        Phys      - physical memory size
         kernel   - memory consumed by kernel text and data


          heap    - part of kernel used by heap
           stream - part of heap used by streams
          zone    - part of kernel used by zone allocator
          ptbl    - part of kernel used by process page tables
         fs ctl   - memory holding filesystem meta-data
         fs data  - memory holding filesystem file data
          delwri  - modified filesystem file data
         free     - memory not in use
         userdata - in use holding valid user data
         pgalloc  - physical pages allocated from free pool

     System Activity

        syscall   - system calls
         read     - read system calls
         write    - write system calls
         fork     - fork system calls
         exec     - exec system calls
        readch    - characters read via read()
        writech   - characters written via write()
        iget      - efs inode searches

     Block Devices

        lread     - amount of logical buffer reads
        bread     - amount of physical buffer reads
        %rcache   - read hit ratio on buffer cache
        lwrite    - amount of logical buffer writes
        bwrite    - amount of physical buffer writes
        wcancel   - amount of delayed writes cancelled
        %wcache   - write hit ratio; negative for write-behind
        phread    - amount of raw physical reads
        phwrite   - amount of raw physical writes

     Swap

        freeswap  - amount of free physical swap
        vswap     - amount of free virtual swap
        swapin    - page swapins
        swapout   - page swapouts
        bswapin   - bytes swapped in
        bswapout  - bytes swapped out

     System VM

        Dynamic VM     - total dynamic system VM
         avail    - system VM available
         in use   - system VM in use
          fs data - in use by FS buffer cache
         allocs   - pages of system VM allocated
         frees    - pages of system VM freed


     Memory Faults

        vfault    - page faults
        pfault    - protection faults
        demand    - demand zero and demand fill faults
        cw        - copy-on write faults
        steal     - page steals
        onswap    - page found on swap
        oncache   - page found in page cache
        onfile    - page read from file
        freed     - pages freed by paging daemon
        unmodswap - clean swap page, dirty incore page
        unmodfile - clean file page, dirty incore page
        iclean    - number of icache cleans

     TLB Actions

        newpid    - new process ID allocated
        tfault    - second level TLB misses
        rfault    - reference faults (during paging)
        flush     - flush of entire TLB
        sync      - cross-processor TLB synchronizations

     Graphics

        griioctl  - graphics ioctl's
        gintr     - graphics interrupts
        swapbuf   - swapbuffer completes
        switch    - context switches
        fifowait  - wait on FIFO
        fifonwait - wait on FIFO, below low-water mark on check

     Tiles

        tavail    - tiles available, no locked pages
         avfree   - free pages in available tiles
        tfrag     - tiles fragmented with locked pages
         fraglock - locked pages within tfrags
         fragfree - free pages within tfrags
        tfull     - tiles full, all pages locked
         ttile    - tiles allocated
        pglocks   - tile page locks
        tallocmv  - pages relocated for tile_alloc
        tiledmv   - pages relocated by tiled daemon

     TCP

        conns     - connections accepted
        sndtotal  - packets sent
        rcvtotal  - packets received
        sndbyte   - bytes sent
        rcvbyte   - bytes received


     UDP

        ipackets  - packets received
        opackets  - packets sent
        dropped   - packets dropped
        errors    - input errors

     IP

        ipackets  - packets received
        opackets  - packets sent
        forward   - packets forwarded
        dropped   - output errors
        errors    - input errors

     NetIF
        These counters display the activity on a particular network interface.
        If multiple interfaces are present, than a separate set of counters is
        displayed for each interface.  The interface name is displayed as part
        of the header.

        Ipackets  - packets received
        Opackets  - packets transmitted
        Ierrors   - packets received in error
        Oerrors   - errors transmitting a packet
        collisions- collisions detected

     Scheduler

        runq      - number of processes on run queue
        swapq     - number of processes on swap queue
        switch    - context switches

     Interrupts

        all       - total interrupts handled
        vme       - VMEBus interrupts

SEE ALSO
     gr_osview(1), top(1), sar(1).

BUGS
     osview cannot atomically get all the data it needs.  On a very busy
     system, some percentages could sum to greater than 100, since there could
     be a gap between the time osview reads the current time and when it reads
     the data counters.


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