SYSLINE(1,C) AIX Commands Reference SYSLINE(1,C)
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sysline
PURPOSE
Displays system status on the status line of a terminal.
SYNTAX
+-----------+ +-------------+ +-------+
sysline ---| +-------+ |---| |---| |---|
+-| -b -i |-+ +- -H remote -+ +- + N -+
^| -c -l ||
|| -d -m ||
|| -D -p ||
|| -e -q ||
|| -w -r ||
|| -h -s ||
|| -j ||
|+-------+|
+---------+
DESCRIPTION
The sysline command runs in the background and periodically displays system
status information on the status line of the terminal. Not all terminals
contain a status line. If no flags are given, the sysline command 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 processes able
to be run (followed by an "r"), the number of suspended processes (followed by
an "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, when using csh
(c-shell) only, to alias chdir, pushd, and popd to place the current directory
stack in $HOME/.who after it changes the new directory.
FLAGS
-b Beep once every half hour and twice every hour.
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-c Clear the status line for 5 seconds before each re-display.
-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.
-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 able to be run 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 if 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. It may
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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.
RELATED INFORMATION
See the terminfo file in AIX Operating System Technical Reference.
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