vmtouch is a useful utility to analyze and control the virtual memory used by the filesystem. It works on Unix-ish systems and BSD. It is a portable utility with minimal dependecies in the source code. In addition to understanding cache usage by files, you can also use vmtouch to preload files and speed up subsequent operations. Continue reading vmtouch: portable file cache analyzer
Tag: system information
sysstat: check device performance
sysstat is a collection of utilities to collect performance information and a plethora of other metrics from the system. The utilities are grouped in 4 sets:
- sar / sadc / sadf : collects system activity information in audit mode (memory, paging, swap…)
- iostat / tapestat / nfsiostat / cifsiostat : CPU, I/O, partition, disk information
- mpstat : processor statistics
- pidstat : process statistics
The full package is written in C and runs very fast.
Process resource usage: more tools
top (or htop) is the most popular tool to check per-process memory usage on Linux. However, there are situations where you may want more specific information. For example, what is the total memory used by all the instances of a single process (do you use Chromium based browsers?) or how is X11 (Linux graphics susbsystem) resources used by each process? We will explore 2 unique tools in this article. Continue reading Process resource usage: more tools
CPU-X: know your processor
There are numerous tools to fetch hardware information on Linux (lshw, dmidecode, hwinfo, i-Nex, i7z, inxi…). CPU-X is a new tool that specializes on gathering processor and motherboard information. Continue reading CPU-X: know your processor
dstat: live system information
$ dstat -a ----total-cpu-usage---- -dsk/total- -net/total- ---paging-- ---system-- usr sys idl wai hiq siq| read writ| recv send| in out | int csw 11 3 85 1 0 0| 51k 58k| 0 0 | 0 0 | 172 864 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 4096B| 0 0 | 0 0 | 81 224 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 57 174 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 14k 121B| 0 0 | 104 306 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 97B 121B| 0 0 | 124 596 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 218B 172B| 0 0 | 106 407 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 229B 121B| 0 0 | 84 296 1 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 785B 723B| 0 0 | 120 344 0 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 163B 121B| 0 0 | 67 208 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 54B 86B| 0 0 | 67 217 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 52 161 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 49 163 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 56 206 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 88 304 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 107 461 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 60 243 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 50 148 0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 47 128 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 90 431 1 0 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 100 408
What if you could have the functionality of vmstat, iostat, mpstat, netstat and ifstat in a single tool? dstat is a top like utility to fetch all the information from a running system and show it in the terminal with regular updates. Continue reading dstat: live system information
csysdig: trace your system
The sysdig utility is a open source tool to trace, explore, capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze. It is a combination of tools like strace, tcpdump, htop, iftop and lsof. sysdig allows you to dig into system metrics including CPU, memory, disk I/O, network I/O, application activity and more. Continue reading csysdig: trace your system
w: show logged-on users with activities
Yes, you read it right! w is the command to show which users are logged-on to the system and what they are doing. It shows much more information than the popular command who. Simple, isn’t it?
$ w 21:14:32 up 7:48, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.15, 0.16 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT user1 :0 :0 13:25 ?xdm? 5:43 0.83s /usr/bin/lxsession -s LXDE -e LXDE user2 pts/0 :0 21:12 0.00s 0.03s 0.00s w root pts/1 :0 21:14 8.00s 0.03s 0.00s watch free -m
Interesting options:
-p : show the IP address of remote users instead of hostname user : show information about 'user' only
w is available by default on Ubuntu. Do you know the only other single letter command (technically alias) that works by default on many Linux distros?
Meen more help? Run:
$ man w
i-Nex: hardware information on Linux
i-Nex is a fresh hardware information reporting tool on Linux. The author was inspired by the Windows tool CPU-Z and the the GUI of i-Nex bears a strong resemblance to it. i-Nex is a very powerful tool and provides as much information as CPU-Z, if not more. Capabilities:
- Basic information of your hardware like like CPU speed, model and L family cache sizes
- Advanced details like the number of transistors on the die, the multiplier size, the exact voltage and TDW it uses
- Covers GPU information, audio, drivers and more
- Software information like distribution, desktop environment etc.
- Xorg details and kernel information
Drawbacks:
- i-Nex depends on gambas3 which in turn has tons of dependencies. I am not sure if anyone would want to intall so may packages just to try out a hardware reporting utility.
Install i-Nex on Ubuntu:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:i-nex-development-team/stable $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gambas-team/gambas3 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install i-nex
Cmdline alternatives to i-Nex on Ubuntu
$ sudo dmidecode -t 4
$ lscpu
$ cat /proc/cpuinfoHomepage: i-Nex
inxi: fetch system information
inxi is a script that fetches the details of your system, specifically hardware for you. It is quite handy when you need to touch-base with your hardware.The options page extensively details on the numerous things that inxi can do. For simplifying the usage, the authors are working on a GUI as well, though the progress is admittedly slow.
Installation instructions on Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt-get install inxiTo get a list of full options, run:
$ man inxi
Besides showing system information, inxi can show you the weather too! Run:
$ inxi -xxxw
Webpage: inxi
