The topas command reports vital statistics about the activity on the local system in a character terminal. It requires AIX 4.3.3 or later with the perfagent.tools fileset, and AIX 5 or later with the bos.perf.tools fileset installed on the system.
The program extracts and displays statistics from the system with a default interval of two seconds. On the operating system version 4.3.3, the output consists on two fixed part and one variable section.
The top two lines at the left of the output show the name of the system the topas program runs on, the date and time of the last observation, and the monitoring interval. Following that is a fixed section which lists the CPU utilization in both numeric and block-graph format.
The second fixed section fills the rightmost 32 positions of the output. It contains five subsections of statistics, EVENTS/QUEUES, FILE/TTY, PAGING, MEMORY and PAGING SPACE.
The variable part of topas running on the operating system version 4.3.3, can have one, two or three subsections. If more than one appears, the subsections are always shown in the following order:
The three sections present respectively, a sorted list of the busiest network interfaces, disks, and processes. The following is an example of the output generated by the topas command running on the operating system 4.3.3:
Topas Monitor for host: lambic EVENTS/QUEUES FILE/TTY
Wed Nov 8 14:19:05 2000 Interval: 2 Cswitch 20 Readch 912
Syscall 13 Writech 42
Kernel 0.5 | | Reads 4 Rawin 0
User 0.0 | | Writes 0 Ttyout 42
Wait 0.0 | | Forks 0 Igets 0
Idle 99.5 |############################| Execs 0 Namei 0
Runqueue 0.0 Dirblk 0
Interf KBPS I-Pack O-Pack KB-In KB-Out Waitqueue 0.0
tr0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
lo0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 PAGING MEMORY
Faults 0 Real,MB 159
Disk Busy% KBPS TPS KB-Read KB-Writ Steals 0 % Comp 24.0
hdisk1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 PgspIn 0 % Noncomp 8.0
hdisk0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 PgspOut 0 % Client 0.0
PageIn 0
gil (1032) 0.5% PgSp: 0.0mb root PageOut 0 PAGING SPACE
topas (5436) 0.0% PgSp: 0.3mb root Sios 0 Size,MB 128
syncd (2370) 0.0% PgSp: 0.1mb root % Used 2.7
init (1) 0.0% PgSp: 0.6mb root % Free 97.2
snmpd (4386) 0.0% PgSp: 0.7mb root
sendmail (3880) 0.0% PgSp: 0.7mb root
ksh (5944) 0.0% PgSp: 0.3mb root Press "h" for help screen.
inetd (4128) 0.0% PgSp: 0.3mb root Press "q" to quit program.
portmap (3616) 0.0% PgSp: 0.5mb root
On the operating system Version 5, the topas program has been enhanced to add two alternate screens, the CPU utilization report has become an optional subsection, and the fixed section includes an additional subsection with NFS statistics, while the variable section includes a new WLM subsection. The complete list of optional subsections on the operating system version 5, in the order in which they are displayed is:
Here is an example of the main screen when the topas program runs on the operating system version 5:
Topas Monitor for host: mothra EVENTS/QUEUES FILE/TTY
Wed Nov 8 12:32:12 2000 Interval: 2 Cswitch 25 Readch 0
Syscall 24 Writech 23
Kernel 0.0 | | Reads 0 Rawin 0
User 0.2 | | Writes 0 Ttyout 0
Wait 0.0 | | Forks 0 Igets 0
Idle 99.7 |############################| Execs 0 Namei 0
Runqueue 0.0 Dirblk 0
Network KBPS I-Pack O-Pack KB-In KB-Out Waitqueue 1.0
lo0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
tr0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 PAGING MEMORY
Faults 0 Real,MB 511
Disk Busy% KBPS TPS KB-Read KB-Writ Steals 0 % Comp 30.0
hdisk0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 PgspIn 0 % Noncomp 29.0
PgspOut 0 % Client 0.0
WLM-Class (Active) CPU% Mem% Disk-I/O% PageIn 0
System 0 9 0 PageOut 0 PAGING SPACE
Shared 0 4 0 Sios 0 Size,MB 0
% Used 0.6
Name PID CPU% PgSp Class NFS (calls/sec) % Free 99.3
topas 14446 0.2 0.6 System ServerV2 0
gil 1806 0.0 0.0 System ClientV2 0 Press:
syncd 3144 0.0 0.1 System ServerV3 0 "h" for help
wlmsched 2064 0.0 0.0 System ClientV3 0 "q" to quit
sendmail 5426 0.0 0.7 System
Additionaly, except for the Process variable subsection, all subsections can be sorted by any of their columns by simply moving the cursor on top of the desired column. All variable subsections, except the Processes list, now have two views, one presenting the top resource users, and another view presenting the sum of the activity in a one line report: showing the total disk or network thoughput for instance. For the CPU subsection, the user can select either the list of busiest processors, or the global CPU utilization as shown in the previous example.
On the operating system version 5, two additional screens are available. The first alternate screen (reachable with the P command or the -P flag), presents the list of busiest processes, similar to the processes subsection of the main screen, but with more columns. This screen is sortable by any of its columns. Here is an example of such a display:
Topas Monitor for host: mothra Interval: 2 Wed Nov 8 12:27:34 2000
DATA TEXT PAGE PGFAULTS
USER PID PPID PRI NI RES RES SPACE TIME CPU% I/O OTH COMMAND
root 1806 0 37 41 16 3374 16 13:25 1.0 0 0 gil
root 1032 0 16 41 3 3374 3 0:00 0.0 0 0 lrud
root 1290 0 60 41 4 3374 4 0:02 0.0 0 0 xmgc
root 1548 0 36 41 4 3374 4 0:26 0.0 0 0 netm
root 1 0 60 20 197 9 180 0:24 0.0 0 0 init
root 2064 0 16 41 4 3374 4 0:04 0.0 0 0 wlmsched
root 2698 1 60 20 14 2 14 0:00 0.0 0 0 shlap
root 3144 1 60 20 40 1 36 5:19 0.0 0 0 syncd
root 3362 0 60 20 4 3374 4 0:00 0.0 0 0 lvmbb
root 3666 1 60 20 135 23 123 0:00 0.0 0 0 errdemon
root 3982 0 60 20 4 3374 4 0:01 0.0 0 0 rtcmd
root 4644 1 17 20 6 3374 6 0:00 0.0 0 0 dog
root 4912 1 60 20 106 13 85 0:00 0.0 0 0 srcmstr
root 5202 4912 60 20 94 8 84 0:01 0.0 0 0 syslogd
root 5426 4912 60 20 195 76 181 0:12 0.0 0 0 sendmail
root 5678 4912 60 20 161 11 147 0:01 0.0 0 0 portmap
root 5934 4912 60 20 103 11 88 0:00 0.0 0 0 inetd
root 6192 4912 60 20 217 61 188 0:21 0.0 0 0 snmpd
root 6450 4912 60 20 137 10 116 0:00 0.0 0 0 dpid2
root 6708 4912 60 20 157 29 139 0:06 0.0 0 0 hostmibd
root 0 0 16 41 3 3374 3 7:08 0.0 0 0
root 6990 1 60 20 106 10 86 0:06 0.0 0 0 cron
The second alternate screen (reachable with the W command, or the -W flag), is divided in two sections. The top section is the same list of busiest WLM classes as presented in the WLM subsection of the main screen, also sortable by any of its columns. When the user selects one the WLM classes shown using the arrow keys and the "f" key, the second section of the screen will show the list of hot processes within the selected WLM class. Here is an example of the WLM full screen report:
Topas Monitor for host: mothra Interval: 2 Wed Nov 8 12:30:54 2000
WLM-Class (Active) CPU% Mem% Disk-I/O%
System 0 0 0
Shared 0 0 0
Default 0 0 0
Unmanaged 0 0 0
Unclassified 0 0 0
==============================================================================
DATA TEXT PAGE PGFAULTS
USER PID PPID PRI NI RES RES SPACE TIME CPU% I/O OTH COMMAND
root 1 0 108 20 197 9 180 0:24 0.0 0 0 init
root 1032 0 16 41 3 3374 3 0:00 0.0 0 0 lrud
root 1290 0 60 41 4 3374 4 0:02 0.0 0 0 xmgc
root 1548 0 36 41 4 3374 4 0:26 0.0 0 0 netm
root 1806 0 37 41 16 3374 16 13:25 0.0 0 0 gil
root 2064 0 16 41 4 3374 4 0:04 0.0 0 0 wlmsched
root 2698 1 108 20 14 2 14 0:00 0.0 0 0 shlap
root 3144 1 108 20 40 1 36 5:19 0.0 0 0 syncd
root 3362 0 108 20 4 3374 4 0:00 0.0 0 0 lvmbb
root 3666 1 108 20 135 23 123 0:00 0.0 0 0 errdemon
root 3982 0 108 20 4 3374 4 0:01 0.0 0 0 rtcmd
The individual command line flags, commands, and sections are described in the formal documentation of the topas command in the AIX 5L Version 5.2 Commands Reference.