PMATOP(1)

NAME
pmatop - System and Process Monitor

SYNOPSIS
Interactive usage:

pmatop [-g|-m] [-L linelen] [-h host | -a archive] [interval [samples]]

Writing and reading PCP archive folios:

pmatop -w rawfile [interval [samples]]
pmatop -r [rawfile] [-g|-m] [-L linelen]

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, or from a PCP archive using the -a/--archive option.

It is modeled on atop(1) and provides a showcase for the variety of data available from 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 interactive 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 produces screen control codes (via the ncurses library) and behaves interactively; 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 information. 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 number 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 number 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 ALSO
PCPIntro(1), atop(1), python(1), pmlogger(1), pmcd(1), pmprobe(1), pmval(1), PMAPI(3), and pcp.conf(5).