Hey, there. I'm working on a Java applet, loosely based on my
Chernoff Faces applet[1] that will take in rstatd output and
draw an informative face. The idea, very simply, is that the
Chernoff Faces applet draws a face based on ten params. I got
to noticing that perfmeter(1) displays ten params, so I had a
flash of sudden brain activity and said...
"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could use Faces to see
at a glance what the performance stats are on my box?"
So, through guile and deceit, I got a friend to hack up a
set of Java RPC libs and we put together a simple applet, which
actually displays the face based on some mixture of rstatd
output and my own wildly inaccurate guesses at which params mean
what, how to scale them, how to compensate for the fact that
they are relative to the last boot time (you should have seen
the faces I got until I figured *that* one out)...
I would be extremely gratified if someone could tell me what the
following rstatd output params mean, and, in a related note (for
compatibility of a sort with perfmeter(1)) how perfmeter(1) uses
them in its displays.
* Item one: CPU times
I get four different params back for CPU. what do they refer to,
and how do they interrelate?
* Item two: Disk XFers
I get four different disk xfer params as well. same question.
* Item three: scales for the other params. (i.e., how does perfmeter
turn Interrupts: 23320109 into a value from 0 to 200?)
* Item four: any other useful info on standard scale settings
for different system configs (cpu, disk, network, RAM, swap, etc)
The intention is to provide a better perfmeter that will work in
a web browser. I'm trying to account for stupidities in the real
perfmeter, like the fact that it doesn't distinguish between the
swap ins and swap outs (which I can get from rstatd) and same for
paging.
The bottom line is that I think it would be cool to have an applet
that gives a wicked smile when it's running well. :)
Anyone who helps gets a free copy of the final applet :)
Thanks,
Steve
[1] http://www.hesketh.com/schampeo/Faces/
--
Steven Champeon | Negative forces have value
http://www.hesketh.com/schampeo | - Henry Adams