Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!delta.eecs.nwu.edu!phil From: phil@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Bill LeFebvre) Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore Subject: Re: Things I miss.... Message-ID: <989@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Aug 89 16:41:38 GMT References: <988@accuvax.nwu.edu> <16531@ut-emx.UUCP> Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: phil@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Bill LeFebvre) Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA Lines: 36 In article <16531@ut-emx.UUCP> clyde@ut-emx.UUCP (Clyde W. Hoover) writes: >Well, you are discovering that UMAX 4.2 is not BSD 4.2. Those particular >programs won't work under UMAX (well, clri probably could). The others in your >list (vmstat, sps, top, pstat) all rely on the kernel data structure formats >and naming convention from BSD kernels. UMAX uses a sufficently different way >of organizing its kernel structures that these BSD-isms won't work. Yeah, I figured that, having written one of those utilities :-). But clri?!? C'mon! >However, all is not lost - there are sufficent equivilants available in the >'sysmon' command: Yes, and thanks to all who pointed me at sysmon. I didn't know it was there (I haven't had time to explore yet). I wish there was something simpler to use, but it will have to do. Think about it, tho.... The times when you REALLY want to run something like sysmon are the times when the system is misbehaving. Chances are that you are going to have a difficult time getting anything started. Sysmon uses curses, which is a big hog. It's going to take forever to crank up if someone has started a bunch of processes running amok. And when I noticed that pstat was missing was when processes were dying from an inability to allocate virtual memory. I NEEDED to find out how much swap space was left to see if that's what the problem was. Sysmon is HUGE! There's no way it would have started up. So it's pretty much useless at that point. If I'm stuck in a traffic jam, I can't use a car to get to the source of the jam very easily. I need something smaller, like a bike! So my feeling is: sysmon is a cute toy, but it isn't going to be much of a help when I really need it. William LeFebvre Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University