SYSLINE

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: %Q
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NAME

sysline - display system status on status-line of a terminal

SYNOPSIS

sysline [ -bcDdehijlmpqrsw ] [ -H remote ] [ +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, concept 108, Ann Arbor Ambassador, vt100, Televideo 925/950 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 processes (followed by a `r'), the number of suspended processes (followed by a `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.

Options

The following flags may be given 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: Print out the current day/date before the time.
-d: Debug mode -- print status-line data in human readable format.
-e: Print out only the information. Do 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 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.
-h: Print out the host machine's name after the time.
-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.
-j: Force the sysline output to be left justified even on terminals capable of cursor movement on the status-line.
-l: Don't print the names of people who log in and out.
-m: Don't check for mail.
+N: Update the status-line every N seconds. The default is 60 seconds, minimum is 10 seconds, maximum 500 seconds.
-p: Don't report the number of processes which are runnable and suspended.
-r: Don't display in reverse video.
-q: Don't print out diagnostic messages if something goes wrong when starting up.
-s: Print "short" form of line by left-justifying iff 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.
-w: Window mode -- print the status on the current line of the terminal, suitable for use inside a one line window.

File contents displayed on the status-line

If you have a file named .who or .sysline in your home directory, then the contents of that file is printed first on the status-line (the contents of only one of these is displayed; only if .who is not found is .sysline read). One common use of this feature is to alias chdir, pushd, and popd to place the current directory stack in ~/.who or ~/.sysline after it changes the new directory.

Another might be to display short messages from for instance cron(8) or at(1).

(Note: dependent on compiling options, these files may be named .who.<tty> and .sysline.<tty> where <tty> is the basename of the terminal on which the copy of sysline is running).

Temporarily disabling sysline

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. 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. (Note: dependent on compiling options, this file may be named .syslinelock.<tty> where <tty> is the basename of the terminal on which the copy of sysline is running).

STATUS-LINE COLORIZATION

You can give the status-line most any color you like by setting an environment variable SYSLINE_COLORS (or SYSLINE_COLOURS ). This variable is expected to contain the values of attributes and colors of both the normal status-line and the reversed status-line.

Its format is "rv=aa[;bb[;cc...]]:nm=zz[;yy[;xx...]]" , where aa, bb, ... and zz, yy, ... each represent a color attribute or (foreground or background) color, separated from one another by a semi-colon. The attributes/colors following rv= are for the reversed status-line (the one displayed most of the time ), those following nm= are for the normal (un-reversed) status-line (the one that will show only every fifth display - I know this seems counterintuitive). For clarity, separate the "rv=" part from the "nm=" part with a character like a blank or a colon; the order of rv or nm is unimportant. A maximum of 8 attributes/colors can be set for each.

An example: to have a bold/blue-bg/yellow-fg status-line which becomes a bold/red-bg/white-fg status-line every fifth display, do:

SYSLINE_COLORS="rv=1;44;33:nm=1;41;37"

Note that fancy colorization of the normal status-line defeats the purpose of displaying it in normal video, namely to give the screen a rest every 5th display.

Attributes are as follows (incomplete):

          0 = all attributes off
          1 = intensity 2 (bold)
          2 = intensity 0 (half-bright)
          4 = underline on
          5 = blink on
          7 = reverse on

Color codes are as follows:

          color       foreground  background
          -----       ----------  ----------
          black       30          40
          red         31          41
          green       32          42
          yellow      33          43
          blue        34          44
          magenta     35          45
          cyan        36          46
          white       37          47

FILES

/var/run/utmp           names of people who are logged in
/proc                   process information file-system
/var/spool/rwho/whod.*  who/uptime info for remote hosts
${HOME}/.who            information to print on bottom line
${HOME}/.sysline        information to print on bottom line
${HOME}/.syslinelock    when it exists, sysline will not print

AUTHORS

John Foderaro
Tom Ferrin converted it to use termcap.
Mark Horton added terminfo capability.
Linux port -- bjdouma@xs4all.nl (Bauke Jan Douma)

BUGS

If there is too much to display on one line, the excess is thrown away.

BUG REPORTS TO

For this Linux port:
Bauke Jan Douma bjdouma@xs4all.nl

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Options
File contents displayed on the status-line
Temporarily disabling sysline

STATUS-LINE COLORIZATION

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 15:53:35 GMT, November 05, 2024