SYSLINE(1)SYSLINE(1)NAMEsysline - display system status on status line of a terminal
SYNOPSISsysline [ -bcdewhDilmpqrsj ] [ -H remote ] [ +N ]
DESCRIPTION
Sysline runs in the background and periodically displays system status
information on the status line of the terminal. Not all terminals
contain a status line. Those that do include the h19, concept 108, Ann
Arbor Ambassador, VT100, Televideo 925/950 and Freedom 100. (Note that
sysline cannot be run in a Terminal window or Workspace Manager shell
window.) If no flags are given, sysline displays the time of day, the
current load average, the change in load average in the last 5 minutes,
the number of users (followed by a `u'), the number of runnable process
(followed by a `r'), the number of suspended processes (followed by a
`s'), and the 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 will appear 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 chdir, pushd, and popd to place the current directory stack in
~/.who after it changes the new directory.
The following flags may be given on the command line.
-b Beep once every half hour and twice every hour, just like
those obnoxious watches you keep hearing.
-c Clear the status line for 5 seconds before each redisplay.
-d Debug mode -- print status line data in human readable
format.
-D Print out the current day/date before the time.
-e Print out only the information. Do not print out the
control commands necessary to put the information on the
bottom line. This option is useful for putting the output
of sysline onto the mode line of an emacs window.
-w Window mode -- print the status on the current line of the
terminal, suitable for use inside a one line window.
-H remote Print the load average on the remote host remote. If the
host is down, or is not sending out rwhod packets, then the
down time is printed instead. If the prefix "ucb" is
present, then it is removed.
-h Print out the host machine's name after the time.
-l Don't print the names of people who log in and out.
-m Don't check for mail.
-p Don't report the number of process which are runnable and
suspended.
-r Don't display in reverse video.
+N Update the status line every N seconds. The default is 60
seconds.
-q Don't print out diagnostic messages if something goes wrong
when starting up.
-i Print out the process id of the sysline 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. sysline writes to the standard
error, so you can redirect the standard output into a file
to catch the process id.
-s Print "short" form of line by left-justifying iff escapes
are not allowed in the status line. Some terminals (the
Televideos and Freedom 100 for example) do not allow cursor
movement (or other "intelligent" operations) in the status
line. For these terminals, sysline normally uses blanks to
cause right-justification. This flag will disable the
adding of the blanks.
-j Force the sysline output to be left justified even on
terminals capable of cursor movement on the status line.
If you have a file .syslinelock in your home directory, then sysline
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.
FILES
/etc/utmp names of people who are logged in
/dev/kmem contains process table
/usr/spool/rwho/whod.* who/uptime information for remote hosts
${HOME}/.who information to print on bottom line
${HOME}/.syslinelock when it exists, sysline will not print
AUTHORS
John Foderaro
Tom Ferrin converted it to use termcap.
Mark Horton added terminfo capability.
BUGS
If you interrupt the display then you may find your cursor missing or
stuck on the status line. The best thing to do is reset the terminal.
If there is too much for one line, the excess is thrown away.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution June 5, 1986 SYSLINE(1)
