sysline(1) sysline(1)
NAME
sysline - display system status on status line of a terminal
SYNOPSIS
sysline [-b] [-c] [-d] [-e] [-h] [-D] [-i] [-l] [-m] [-p]
[-q] [-r] [-s] [-j] [-Hremote] [+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, c108, aaa, vt100, tvi925/tvi950 and
Freedom 100. 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)
[VAX only], the number of suspended processes (followed by a
s) [VAX only], 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 flag options may be used 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 flag
option is useful for putting the output of
sysline onto the mode line of an emacs window.
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sysline(1) sysline(1)
-H remote Print the load average on the remote host remote
[VAX only]. If the host is down, or is not
sending out rwhod packets, then the down time is
printed instead.
-h Print out the host machine's name after the time
[VAX only].
-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 [VAX only].
-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 tvi's and Freedom 100's, 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
option 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 disable sysline momentarily. 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.
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FILES
/usr/ucb/sysline
/etc/utmp names of people who are logged in
/dev/kmem contains process table [VAX only]
/usr/spool/rwho/whod.*
who/uptime information for remote hosts
[VAX only]
${HOME}/.who information to print on bottom line
${HOME}/.syslinelock
when it exists, sysline will not print
If you interrupt the display, you may
find your cursor missing or stuck on the
status line. The best thing to do is to
reset the terminal.
If there is too much for one line, the
excess is thrown away.
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