NAME

sysline − display system status on status line of a terminal

SYNOPSIS

sysline [ options ]

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 which do include the following:  h19, concept 108, Ann Arbor Ambassador, vt100, Televideo 925/950 and Freedom 100. 

If no flags are given, sysline displays the following information:  time of day;  current load average;  change in load average in the last 5 minutes;  number of users (followed by “u”); number of runable processes (followed by “r”);  number of suspended processes (followed by “s”); and list of 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 the user’s mailbox, an asterisk appears after the display of the number of users.  The display is normally in reverse video (if the terminal supports this in the status line) and is right-justified to reduce distraction.  Every fifth display is done in normal video to enable the screen to rest. 

If the user has a file named .who in his or her home directory, then the contents of that file is printed first.  A common use of this feature is to alias chdir, pushd, and popd in order to place the current directory stack in ~/.who after it changes the new directory. 

OPTIONS

−b Beeps once every half hour and twice every hour. 

−c Clears the status line for five seconds before each redisplay. 

−d Debug mode:  prints status line data in human readable format. 

−D Prints out the current day/date before the time. 

−e Prints out only the information.  Does 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. 

−h Prints out the host machine’s name after the time. 

−H remote Prints 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. 

−i Prints the process ID of the sysline process onto standard output upon startup.  With this information the user can send the alarm signal to the sysline process to cause it to update immediately.  Sysline writes to the standard error, so the user can redirect the standard output into a file to catch the process ID. 

−j Forces left-justification of the sysline output even on terminals capable of cursor movement on the status line. 

−l Does not print the names of people who log in and out. 

−m Does not check for mail. 

+n Updates the status line every n seconds. The default is 60 seconds. 

−p Does not report the number of processes which are runable and suspended. 

−q Does not print out diagnostic messages if something goes wrong when starting up. 

−r Does not display in reverse video. 

−s Prints “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 addition of the blanks. 

If the user has a file .syslinelock in his or her home directory, then sysline will not update its statistics and write on the screen; it will merely suspend operation for a minute.  This is useful if the user wishes to momentarily disable sysline.  Note that it may take a few seconds from the time the lock file is created until the user is guaranteed that sysline will not write on the screen. 

FILES

/etc/utmpnames of people who are logged in
/dev/kmemprocess table
/usr/spool/rwho/whod.∗who/uptime information for remote hosts
${HOME}/.whoinformation to print on bottom line
${HOME}/.syslinelockwhen it exists, sysline will not print

BUGS

If the user interrupts the display, the cursor may disappear or become stuck on the status line.  To remedy this, the user should reset the terminal. 
If there is too much for one line, the excess is discarded.

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  1 August 1985