Martin Baulig
208c7a0ce0
I'm preparing LibGTop and its documentation for the upcoming 1.0 release at the moment, but this release will be made together with GNOME 1.0. Martin
147 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
147 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGTOP 0.25 STABLE
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
OVERVIEW
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
LibGTop is a library that read information about processes and the running
|
|
systems. This information include:
|
|
|
|
General System Information
|
|
|
|
cpu - CPU Usage
|
|
mem - Memory Usage
|
|
swap - Swap Usage (including paging activity)
|
|
loadavg - Load average (including nr_running, nr_tasks, last_pid)
|
|
uptime - Uptime and Idle time, can be calculated from CPU usage
|
|
|
|
SYS V IPC Limits:
|
|
|
|
shm_limits - Shared Memory Limits
|
|
msg_limits - Message Queue Limits
|
|
sem_limits - Semaphore Set Limits
|
|
|
|
Process List:
|
|
|
|
proclist - List of processes
|
|
|
|
Process information:
|
|
|
|
proc_state - cmd, state, uid, gid
|
|
proc_uid - uid,euid,gid,egid,pid,ppid,pgrp
|
|
session,tty,tpgid,priority,nice
|
|
proc_mem - size,vsize,resident,share,rss,rss_rlim
|
|
proc_time - start_time,rtime,utime,stime,cutime,cstime
|
|
timeout,it_real_value,frequency
|
|
proc_signal - signal,blocked,sigignore,sigcatch
|
|
proc_kernel - k_flags,min_flt,maj_flt,cmin_flt,cmaj_flt
|
|
kstk_esp,kstk_eip,nwchan,wchan
|
|
proc_segment - text_rss,shlib_rss,data_rss,stack_rss,dirty_size
|
|
start_code,end_code,start_stack
|
|
|
|
Process maps:
|
|
|
|
proc_map - Process map (/proc/<pid>/maps under Linux)
|
|
|
|
File system usage:
|
|
|
|
mountlist - List of currently mounted filesystems
|
|
fsusage - File system usage
|
|
|
|
PORTABILITY:
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
LibGtop is designed to be as portable as possible. None of the functions
|
|
and retrieved information should be specific to a specific operating
|
|
system. So you only need to port the system dependent part of the library
|
|
to a new system and all application programs can then use libgtop on this
|
|
new system.
|
|
|
|
CLIENT/SERVER MODEL:
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
Some systems like DEC OSF/1 or BSD require special priviledges for the calling
|
|
proces to fetch the required information (SUID root/SGID kmem). To solve this
|
|
problem, I designed a client/server model which makes a call to a SUID/SGID
|
|
server which fetches the required information whenever it is required. This
|
|
server is only called for features that really require priviledges, otherwise
|
|
the sysdeps code is called directory (every user can get the CPU usage on
|
|
DEC OSF/1, but only root can get information about processes other than the
|
|
current one).
|
|
|
|
There is also some kind of daemon which can be used to fetch information from
|
|
remote systems (still experimental). This daemon normally runs as nobody and
|
|
calls the SUID/SGID itself when needed.
|
|
|
|
GNOME APPLETS:
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
There are some applets and applications which already use LibGTop. They can
|
|
be found in the `libgtop-apps' module in the GNOME CVS tree:
|
|
|
|
* Applets: cpuload, cpumemusage - they need LibGTop to get their information
|
|
on all systems other than Linux.
|
|
|
|
* Applets: diskusage - just uses the mountlist/fsusage features of LibGTop,
|
|
the one in gnome-core also works on other systems.
|
|
|
|
* Applets: multiload - I enhanced the cpuload applet a little bit, it is
|
|
now a multi applet and can display CPU, Memory and
|
|
Swap usages.
|
|
|
|
GTOP:
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
This cool GNOME app has been ported to use LibGTop. It can be found in
|
|
`libgtop-apps/gtop' in the GNOME CVS tree.
|
|
|
|
You can now use nearly the full functionality of GTop on FreeBSD !
|
|
|
|
|
|
PLATTFORM SPECIFIC NOTES FOR LINUX:
|
|
==================================
|
|
|
|
Under Linux, LibGTop should work without problems and read everything
|
|
from /proc.
|
|
|
|
There is also an experimental kernel interface to read this information
|
|
directly from the kernel with a system call - but this is still experimental
|
|
and not well tested while I made this release.
|
|
|
|
PLATTFORM SPECIFIC NOTES FOR FREEBSD:
|
|
====================================
|
|
|
|
LibGTop should now work under FreeBSD and give you the full functionality
|
|
of GTop.
|
|
|
|
There are a few caveats:
|
|
|
|
* You need to manually make the `$(prefix)/bin/libgtop_server' SGID to kmem
|
|
after installation and mount the /proc filesystem of FreeBSD
|
|
(/proc/<pid>/mem is used withing kvm_uread ()).
|
|
|
|
* To get the filenames of the process maps displayed in GTop, you need to
|
|
configure with the `--with-libgtop-inodedb' option (you need GDBM for this
|
|
to work).
|
|
|
|
* You have then to create an inode database which is used to look up to
|
|
filenames. This is done using the `mkinodedb' program which comes along
|
|
with libgtop.
|
|
|
|
See the file src/inodedb/README for details:
|
|
|
|
The `mkinodedb' program which is build in this directory takes two
|
|
command line arguments: the full pathname of the database to be created
|
|
and the name of a configuration file consisting of directory and file names
|
|
each on a line by itself - see `/etc/ld.so.conf' for an example.
|
|
|
|
Putting a directory name in this file means all regular files found in this
|
|
directory are included in the database, but it will not recursively descend
|
|
into subdirectories (for instance, we want everythink in `/usr/lib' but not
|
|
every single file in `/usr/lib/sgml'). You can also use filenames to include
|
|
a single file.
|
|
|
|
Have fun,
|
|
|
|
Martin <martin@home-of-linux.org>
|