News

January 4, 2024

Atop version 2.10.0

May 13, 2023

Atop version 2.9.0

January 7, 2023

Atop version 2.8.1

December 29, 2022

Atop version 2.8.0

January 8, 2022

Atop version 2.7.1

December 18, 2021

Atop version 2.7.0

Download kernel patch

These kernel patches are obsolete and will not be maintained any more for future kernel versions.
Instead, the kernel module netatop can be used to gather statistics of network utilization per process/thread.

General

When atop is used on a system running a standard Linux-kernel, no information is available about the network-accesses per process and only limited information about disk-accesses per process. This means a.o. that the selection 'n' (show network-transfers per process) cannot be used, and that the columns shown in the generic screen are different.
For extended use of atop two kernel-patches are delivered.

Patch 1: atopcnt

Patch 01patch-version_atopcnt takes care that statistical counters are added to the process-administration (task_struct) and that these counters are incremented per process. The additional counters are shown via the file /proc/pid/stat as a second line of counters.
When this patch is installed, atop automatically shows another layout for the generic screen (including disk- and network-transfers for active processes). However for terminated process these additional counters are not shown, because the conventional layout of the process-accounting record has not been adapted.

Patch 2: atopacct

Patch 02patch-version_atopacct takes care that the additional statistical counters are added to the process-accounting record (yes, this means an incompatible layout of this record). Notice that this patch is an extension of the patch 01patch-version-atopcnt, i.e. it can not be installed on its own.
When this patch is installed, atop automatically shows the additional counters for terminated processes as well. Since the pid of processes is also stored in the modified process-accounting record, matching this info with the formerly running process is less time-consuming compared to the conventional process-accounting record.

Install kernel patches

After the archive with patches has been downloaded and extracted, the following steps are required to install these patches:

  1. Take care that the kernel sources are installed (e.g. as a subdirectory of /usr/src). The kernel sources in this new subdirectory will be modified with the patch(es).
  2. Go to the subdirectory with new kernel sources (e.g. called linux-2.6.33) and start the command to patch the tree.
    Example (install both patches):
    patch -p1 < /tmp/atoppatch-kernel-2.6.33/01patch-2.6.33_atopcnt
    patch -p1 < /tmp/atoppatch-kernel-2.6.33/02patch-2.6.33_atopacct
             	
  3. Build a new kernel and reboot.
Disclaimer:
The authors deny any warranty for any data loss and damage whatsoever that may be caused directly or indirectly by using this software. This is experimental software. Use at your own risk.