Welcome to the ATOP home page

An advanced interactive monitor for Linux-systems to view the load on system-level and process-level.

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News:

» Release of ATOP version 1.24 (January 25, 2010)

• Modifications for atop:
  1. Complete redesign of the screen interface with support of variable number of columns depending on the window size.
     It is also possible to define your own output-line with process-level statistics by using the 'o' key.
  2. Introduce system-wide configuration file /etc/atoprc that can be overruled by your personal ~/.atoprc file.
  3. Improved logfile handling:
     Find the logfile of yesterday, the day before yesterday, etc. by using the flag -r [yy...].
     Branch to a specific time in the logfile by using the 'b' key.
  4. Drop the root-priviliges earlier in case of setuid-root.
  5. More process-level counters like ruid, euid, suid, fsuid and rgid, egid, sgid, fsgid. Also the date and time that a process has finished is maintained.
     More system-level counters like dirty cache size and guest CPU-utilization.
  6. Bugfixes.
• Modifications for atopsar:
  1. More system-level counters like dirty cache size and guest CPU-utilization.
  2. Find the logfile of yesterday, the day before yesterday, etc. by using the flag -r y[y...].
• General: The format of the raw file is incompatible with earlier versions.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.28.1 (January 31, 2009)

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.27.4 (November 7, 2008)

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.26.7 (November 7, 2008)

» Corrected patches for kernel versions 2.6.20, 2.6.21, 2.6.23, 2.6.24 and 2.6.25 (July 11, 2008)

• Bug-solution:
  For received network-packets, the size of the total receive-buffer is accumulated instead of the real size of the packet. This means that the average size of received packets as shown by atop is too high (when pressing the 'n' key).

  Notice that the same problem applies to the patches for older kernels. A solution for older kernels can be obtained on request.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.25.4 (May 23, 2008)

» Release of ATOP version 1.23 (March 6, 2008)

• Modifications for atop:
  1. Gather/show for each process the number of threads that are in the state 'running', 'interruptible sleeping' and 'non-interruptible sleeping'.
  2. Show PPID for each process.
  3. Sort network-interfaces on their busy-percentage and not on the number of transferred packages.
  4. Optionally specify the name of a specific process accounting file by using the environment variable ATOPACCT. If this variable exists but has no value, process accounting will not be used at all.
  5. Bugfixes.
• Modifications for atopsar:
  1. Option to repeat the header of a report every N lines (flag -H).
  2. Option to make summary reports by calculating the average values over a period of N samples (flag -R). For example, if the logfile contains samples of 10 minutes, the option -R6 generates a report with lines containing the averages per hour.
  3. Show the total number of threads that are in the state 'running', 'interruptible sleeping' and 'non-interruptible sleeping' (flag -P).
  4. Show the top-3 of processes that have consumed most CPU time (flag -O), most memory (flag -G), most disk accesses (flag -D) and most network accesses (flag -N only if kernel patches are installed).
  5. Show 100% usage per CPU instead of 100% for all CPUs (now consistent with the output generated by atop).
  6. Rename forks/s to clones/s (this counter reflects thread creations, not process creations).
• General: The format of the raw file is compatible with version 1.21 and 1.22.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.24.2 (February 25, 2008)

» Release of ATOP version 1.22 (November 20, 2007)

• Addition of colors (default) and markers (flag -M) to reports generated by the command atopsar to highlight that resources are (almost) overloaded.
  Personal default flags for atopsar can also be specified in the file ~/.atoprc now.
• Bugfixes (mainly for large and busy machines):
1. Always use line-buffering on stdout for atopsar, even for pipes and files.
2. Solve huge exit-codes on 64-bits machines.
3. Avoid wrong matches on machines with lots of process-creations (reuse of same PID by other program).
4. Detect process-exit while reading its administration.
5. Several minor bugfixes.
• The format of the raw file is compatible with version 1.21.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.23.8 (November 20, 2007)

» Release of ATOP version 1.21 (August 17, 2007)

• Introduction of the integrated command atopsar to produce system activity reports similar to the UNIX command sar. These reports can be generated from the (daily) raw files that are written by atop or stand-alone by specifying an interval on the command line.
• Minor bugfixes.
• Warning:
  The format of the raw file is incompatible with previous versions because many counters are added for the command atopsar!

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.21.3 (June 7, 2007)

» Correction for ATOP version 1.20 (April 11, 2007)

• Create directory /var/log/atop during installation of RPM (modified spec-file).

» Release of ATOP version 1.20 (March 27, 2007)

• Produce unformatted output to be processed by scripts.
• Show steal-percentage for virtual machines.
• Show system-level counters for disks within virtual machines.
• Restructured scripts for daily logging.
• Adapted spec-file and Makefile for improved installation.
• Bugfix: Allow more than 65535 processes to be logged per interval.
• Minor bugfixes.
• Restructure layout of raw logfile.
  Warning: The format of the raw file is incompatible with previous versions!
• Support standard disk I/O statistics per process (kernel 2.6.20 and higher).
  For full accounting of disk I/O and network I/O per process, still the kernel patches are preferred. When these patches are not installed, the standard disk I/O statistics will be shown.

» Release of ATOP version 1.19 (January 18, 2007)

• For network-interfaces the busy percentage is shown.
• Use of colors for lines with system statistics to indicate that a particular resource has (almost) reached a critical busy percentage. Use of these colors can be switched on/off with a new subcommand 'x'.
• Automatic determination of the most critical resource to adapt the sort order for active processes with each sample dynamically. This feature can be activated with a new subcommand 'A'.
• Startup time improved when running on a system with lots of processes.
• Minor bugfixes.

» Release of ATOP version 1.17 (November 29, 2006)

• New line with system-level counters called CPL (processor-related counters showing the load averages, number of context-switches and number of interrupts).
• For network-interfaces the effective line speed in bits-per-second has been adapted (divisions by 1000 i.s.o. 1024 for Kbps/Mbps/Gbps).
• Subcommand 'U' allows user-id's to be specified as numerical value.
• Show numerical user-id/group-id i.s.o. "unknown" when corresponding name can not be found.
• Minor bugfixes.
• Warning:
  The format of the raw file is incompatible with previous versions!

» Release of ATOP version 1.16 (April 19, 2006)

• New line with system-level counters called PAG (paging-related counters like scan, stall, swin and swout).
  New threshold 'vmlim' added to line SWP.
• For network-interfaces the effective line speed in bits-per-second for incoming and outgoing traffic is shown (so Kbps/Mbps/Gbps).
• New subcommand '1' to show the average per second wherever applicable (instead of total utilization during interval).
• Improved output that is easier to parse (i.e. fixed number of fields per line).
• Minor bugfixes.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.16 (April 19, 2006)

» Release of ATOP version 1.15 (November 7, 2005)

• Cumulated counters per user (subcommand 'u').
• Cumulated counters per program name (subcommand 'p').
• Support process-accounting record version 3 (a.o. used by Mandriva).
• Minor bugfixes.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.13 (November 7, 2005)

» Release of ATOP version 1.14 (December 21, 2004)

• Adapted to newly delivered kernel-patches.
• Minor bugfixes.
• Correction usage-info and man-page.
• New counter for committed space.

» Release of patches for kernel version 2.6.8 (December 21, 2004)

» Initial release of home-page (December 15, 2004)

» Release of ATOP version 1.13 (September 23, 2004)

• Recognition of thread-groups.
• Consistent cpu-percentages on system and process level.
• New subcommand to show scheduling information.
• Minor bugfixes.

» Release of ATOP version 1.12 (June 1, 2004)

• Major feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.10 (July 9, 2003)

• Major feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.9 (February 6, 2003)

• Major feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.8 (December 4, 2002)

• Minor feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.7 (October 8, 2002)

• Major feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.6 (September 3, 2002)

• Major feature enhancements.

» Release of ATOP version 1.4 (July 23, 2002)

• Major bugfixes.

» Release of ATOP version 1.2 (December 1, 2001)

• Initial announcement.