TASKVIEW(tm) - Product Bulletin - System Monitoring Tool

PRSM Systems 3200 Series Products - TASKVIEW™

Taskview™ Reference Manual and User Guide

Program license information

The TASKVIEW™ software (‘TV’) is the copyrighted property of PRSM Systems. PRSM Systems retains ownership of the program and grants end users a non-exclusive license to use the program under the conditions of this license. TV is copyrighted under US law and subject to these laws, which prohibit unauthorized copying or duplication of the software, documentation or other materials. This license is valid for the original licensee, and covers the use of a single copy of the software, running on only a single computer at any one time. Use or installation of the software on more than one computer at a time is expressly prohibited unless explicitly authorized in writing by PRSM Systems. The end user may make copies for normal security and backup purposes, subject to the above restrictions on use or installation on multiple machines.

disclaimer

PRSM Systems reserves the right to make changes to this manual and the associated software programs without notice. Reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of this manual and the proper operation of the software program(s) described. However, PRSM Systems assumes no responsibility for, nor liability for, errors contained in the software or documentation, nor for consequential, incidental or special damages arising out of use or misuse of the product. Good standard systems-management is required for the use of this product, including but not limited to the responsibility of the actual end user to assure the appropriateness of the product for his uses. This would include normal, rigorous exercise and testing of the product before assuming that its operation was safe, reliable and in keeping with the end user's expectations. No warranty, expressed or implied, is in effect, including no warranty of implied merchantability or suitability to task. Under no circumstances will the liability of PRSM Systems exceed the refund and return of money actually paid for the product.

PRSM Systems
1700 Arndt Road
Easton, PA 18040-8145
(610) 258-6630
(610) 559-8120 (fax)

1. TaskView: General information

1.1 Overview and Philosophy

The PRSM Systems TASKVIEW package (‘TV’) is a systems management utility for the Concurrent Computer Corp. OS/32 operating system. It is designed to show, quickly and concisely, "what is happening" in the system at any given time. As such, it is an excellent place to begin to seek the answer to that irate user’s phone query, "Why is the system so slow?" It was developed primarily for just this purpose. TV may also be used to collect task behavioral data to a disk file for analysis of longer-term resource utilization.

1.2 product structure

This manual describes the TV R03 product set. Specific product numbers are:

CC120-P00-R03 TASKVIEW. The OS/32 product set, including the utility task image and TV.CSS

CC120-P10 Annual maintenance for the TV package.

RM120-R03 TV Reference Manual and User Guide

2. Usage and operation

2.1 The tv.css

The TV.CSS is supplied to conveniently run the TASKVIEW utility. The CSS loads the task, makes the necessary logical unit (LU) assignments, and STARTs the task with the most common and generally useful displays selected. When run with no parameters, TV.CSS runs the utility with a 15 second display interval, using the TOP PRO feature to display the topmost total-processor-using tasks in the system, along with their resource-related statistics. Optional parameters allow convenient specification of one or two additional display switches.

The CSS is straightforward in content, and the user should feel free to modify it to reflect his most common use of the product.

Example usage:

TV - start the TASKVIEW utility, displaying on the console, with the default options.

TV SW 30 - TERM

- start the TaskView utility, displaying to the console, with default parameters except for a 30-second display "SWEEP" and the omission of the tasks’ load TERMINAL information.

2.2 TASKVIEW Utility

The TV utility itself is a single OS/32 E-task that may be run from the systems console or any (suitably privileged) MTM account. Its only I/O is the display device assigned to LU 5.

TaskView displays two ‘sections’ of information each sweep. First, a table of tasks, one per row, with associated data for each. The second section displays information on the system disk drives.

2.2.1 Task Display Section

Tasks selected or omitted from display, along with the information shown for each are determined by parameters supplied by TaskView’s START command and / or user SEND messages to the utility. Individual options may be ‘turned on’ by use of "...ADD <option>..." or "...+ <option>..." syntax in the START or SEND data. As many options as will fit in the SATRT or SEND line are allowed, each separated by one or more spaces. The following table summarizes each of the supported parameters. The minimum portion of each keyword is in uppercase.

FIELD-DISPLAY OPTIONS

Tnumber Slot number in TCB table.

Name Name of task.

FIle Name of task load file.

TErminal Terminal from which task was initiated.

Account Account number.

Group Group account number.

Priority Task run priority.

Volume Default task volume.

Lpu Logical Processing Unit. An asterisk is added if the task is currently LPU-mapped.

Queue OS/32 task queue number.

Usertime User CPU time of the task. (% of last sweep.)

SVctime System CPU time for task. (% of last sweep.)

APUtime User APU time of task. (% of last sweep.)

PRocessor Total processor time. (Sum of prior three fields.)

INio Number of indexed file I/O requests.

COio Number of contiguous file I/O requests.

DIskio Number of disk I/O requests.

TAPeio Number of tape I/O requests.

PRintio Number of print I/O requests.

COMio Number of communications I/O requests.

PAGE DISPLAY OPTIONS (Convenient ‘packages’ of above fields):

PRocessor Display processor utilization fields.

IO Display I/O count fields.

TASK SELECT/EXCLUDE OPTIONS:

SYstem Display tasks starting with "."

MTM Display MTM user tasks.

FOreground Display foreground tasks.

2.2.2 Disk Display Section

The second section of display each sweep is an optional table of each disk device / volume in the system, arranged five-across. For each, the device name is shown if the volume is not marked on and the OFFDISK option is enabled. If the volume is marked on, the volume name is shown. With each device is displayed the number of seeks that were recorded by the driver during the last sweep. If the SEEK option is disabled, the number of I/O requests during the interval is shown instead. As SCSI drivers do not update the sweep counts in the device’s internal OS structure, the most useful information from these drives may be obtained via disabling of the SEEK option.

DISK VOLUME STATISTICS COMMANDS

DISK Display disk volume information in addition to tasks. Default is ON.

OFFD Display information for MARKed-OFF disk volumes. Default is OFF.

SEEK Display disk seek counts if available, identified by ‘s’ beside disk name and count field. Default is ON. If OFF, total I/O requests to the disk are shown, identified by ‘i’ beside field.

ACCUM Accumulate disk counts, i.e., show running totals rather than number during last sweep period.

MISCL. COMMANDS:

CLR Clear screen of old task information at beginning of each sweep. Default is ON.

STop Stop execution.

SWeep n Set sweep and display periods to n seconds.

Add p Enable field or option p.

+ p Synonym for ADD.

Remove p Disable field or option p.

SUbtract p Synonym for REMOVE.

- p Synonym for REMOVE.

PAGe p Select page p.

Low n Set minimum TCB table number.

HIgh n Set maximum TCB table number.

HELP Display summary of commands, then PAUSE.

TOP f Display 15 tasks with top field ‘f’ values.

OS/32 Version 20

MS-DOS Version 20