I recently came across the procinfo utility, and use it periodically to view system utilization and configuration data on the Linux servers I support. Procinfo is a monitoring utility that interfaces with the Linux /proc file system, and displays data such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, interrupts serviced and information on the modules that are currently loaded into the kernel. The full list of options is documented in the procinfo “-h” (print a help screen) option:
$ procinfo -h
procinfo version 18 (2001-03-02)
usage: ./procinfo [-fsmadiDSbhv] [-nN] [-Ffile]
-s display memory, disk, IRQ & DMA info (default)
-m display module and device info
-a display all info
-f run full screen
-i show all IRQ channels, not just those used
-nN pause N second between updates (implies -f)
-d show differences rather than totals (implies -f)
-D show current memory/swap usage, differences on rest
-S with -nN and -d/-D, always show values per second
-r show memory usage -/+ buffers/cache
-Ffile print output to file -- normally a tty
-v print version info
-h print this help
To see this nifty utility in action, you can run it without arguments to get the basic display:
$ procinfo
Linux 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5 (bhcompile@hs20-bc1-3) (gcc 4.1.0 20060304 ) #1 Sun May 21 15:01:01 EDT 2006 1CPU [fedora]
Memory: Total Used Free Shared Buffers
Mem: 515816 509384 6432 0 21924
Swap: 522104 76 522028
Bootup: Sat Jun 24 10:12:53 2006 Load average: 1.83 1.10 0.55 1/63 5420
user : 0:01:21.51 1.8% page in : 0
nice : 0:00:16.94 0.4% page out: 0
system: 0:01:24.18 1.8% swap in : 0
idle : 1:06:15.81 87.1% swap out: 0
uptime: 1:16:05.69 context : 350192
irq 0: 1136198 timer irq 9: 78 Intel 82801BA-ICH2,
irq 1: 232 i8042 irq 10: 183597 eth0
irq 2: 0 cascade [4] irq 12: 310 i8042
irq 6: 6 irq 14: 110425 ide0
irq 8: 1 rtc
In addition to displaying status information, you can also display the modules, devices and file systems that are present in the kernel by invoking procinfo with the “-m” (display module and device info) option:
$ procinfo -m
Linux 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5 (bhcompile@hs20-bc1-3) (gcc 4.1.0 20060304 ) #1 Sun May 21 15:01:01 EDT 2006 1CPU [fedora]
Kernel Command Line:
ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
Modules:
220 *ipv6 19 *autofs4 16 *hidp 34 rfcomm 23 *l2cap 43 *bluetooth
133 *sunrpc 5 ipt_REJECT 3 xt_tcpudp 12 *x_tables 20 dm_mirror 50 *dm_mod
12 lp 25 parport_pc 34 *parport 56 floppy 8 nvram 28 uhci_hcd
30 snd_intel8x0 82 *snd_ac97_codec 2 *snd_ac97_bus 4 snd_seq_dummy 28 snd_seq_oss 7 *snd_seq_midi_e
46 *snd_seq 9 *snd_seq_device 44 snd_pcm_oss 16 *snd_mixer_oss 75 *snd_pcm 22 *snd_timer
10 ne2k_pci 49 *snd 10 *8390 9 *soundcore 10 *snd_page_alloc 113 *ext3
51 *jbd
Character Devices: Block Devices:
1 mem 13 input 1 ramdisk
4 /dev/vc/0 14 sound 2 fd
4 tty 29 fb 3 ide0
4 ttyS 116 alsa 9 md
5 /dev/tty 128 ptm 253 device-mapper
5 /dev/console 136 pts 254 mdp
5 /dev/ptmx 180 usb
6 lp 189 usb_device
7 vcs 216 rfcomm
10 misc 254 pcmcia
File Systems:
[sysfs] [rootfs] [bdev] [proc] [binfmt_misc] [debugfs]
[securityfs] [sockfs] [usbfs] [pipefs] [futexfs] [tmpfs]
[inotifyfs] [eventpollfs] [devpts] ext2 [ramfs] [hugetlbfs]
iso9660 [mqueue] ext3 [rpc_pipefs] [autofs]
As with most utilities, you can also invoke procinfo with the “-f” (run full screen) option to get a full screen display that is periodically refreshed (you can control the refresh rate with the “-n” (pause N seconds) option).