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Performance Management Guide

Using the topas Monitor

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.

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