Commands Reference, Volume 5

sysline Command

Purpose

Displays system status on the status line of a terminal.

Syntax

/usr/bin/sysline [ -b ] [ -c ] [ -d ] [ -e ] [ -h ] [ -i ] [ -j ] [ -l ] [ -m ] [ -p ] [ -q ] [ -r ] [ -s ] [ -w ] [ -D ] [ -H Remote ] [ +N ]

The sysline command runs in the background and periodically displays system status information on the status line of the terminal. Not all terminals contain a status line. If no flags are specified, the sysline command displays the following status items:

Time of day
Current number of processes which may be run
Number of users (followed by a u)
Number of executable processes (followed by an r)
Number of suspended processes (followed by an s)
Number of users who have logged on and off since the last status report

Finally, if new mail has arrived, a summary of it is printed. If there is unread mail in your mailbox, an asterisk appears after the display of the number of users. The display is normally in reverse video (if your terminal supports this in the status line) and is right-justified to reduce distraction. Every fifth display is done in normal video to give the screen a chance to rest.

If you have a file named .who in your home directory, then the contents of that file is printed first. One common use of this feature is to alias the chdir, pushd, and popd commands to place the current directory stack in /.who after it changes the new directory.

If you have a file named .syslinelock in your home directory, then the sysline command will not update its statistics and write on your screen, it will just go to sleep for a minute. This is useful if you want to momentarily disable sysline. Note that it may take a few seconds from the time the lock file is created until you are guaranteed that sysline will not write on the screen.

Flags

-b	Beeps once every half hour and twice every hour.
-c	Clears the status line for five seconds before each redisplay.
-D	Prints out the current day/date before the time.
-d	Prints status line data in human readable format, debug mode.
-e	Prints out only the information. Suppresses the control commands necessary to put the information on the bottom line. This option is useful for putting the output of the sysline command onto the mode line of an emacs window.
-H Remote	Prints the load average on the remote host Remote. If the host is down, or is not sending rwhod packets, then the down time is printed instead. If the prefix ucb is present, then it is removed.
-h	Prints out the host machine's name after the time.
-i	Prints out the process ID of the sysline command process onto standard output upon startup. With this information you can send the alarm signal to the sysline process to cause it to update immediately. The sysline command writes to the standard error, so you can redirect the standard output into a file to catch the process ID.
-j	Left-justifies the sysline command output on terminals capable of cursor movement on the status line.
-l	Suppresses the printing of names of people who log in and out.
-m	Suppresses mail check.
+N	Updates the status line every N seconds. The default is 60 seconds.
-p	Suppresses the report of the number of processes that are executable and suspended.
-q	Suppresses the printout diagnostic messages if something goes wrong when starting up.
-r	Suppresses reverse video display.
-s	Prints the short form of a line by left-justifying iff (if and only if ) escapes are not allowed in the status line. Some terminals (the Televideos and Freedom 100 for example) do not allow cursor movements (or other "intelligent" operations) in the status line. For these terminals, the sysline command normally uses blanks to cause right-justification. This flag disables the adding of blanks.
-w	Prints the status on the current line of the terminal, suitable for use inside a one line window (Window mode).

Examples

To display the day and date, the number of processes which may be run, the number of users, and to clear the screen five seconds before it updates, enter:

sysline -Dcr

Note: This will only work on screens which have status line capabilities.

Files

/etc/utmp	Contains the names of users who are logged in.
/dev/kmem	Contains the process table.
/var/spool/rwho/whod.*	Contains who/Uptime information for remote hosts.
${HOME}/.who	Specifies information to print on the bottom line.
${HOME}/.syslinelock	Specifies that when it exists, sysline does not print.

Related Information

The pstat command, vmstat command.