Re: Does 'top' work any more on Solaris ???

From: David Kirkby (nospam_at_nowhere.com)
Date: 11/10/04 

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 22:27:44 +0000

Hans Surst wrote:
>
> top is not good. Use prstat -m for accurate results. With parameter -m
> you get exact microstate accounting information from the kernel and not
> just a "best guess" from a programm like top poking around on CPUs.
>
Actually, looking at the data from top and prstat, the two did agree
quite closely, so my suspicions about the usefulness in top in Solaris 9
were unfounded.

I'm not saying there is not a use for very accurate stats, but 'top'
seems to sum up roughly what state a system in in better than any other
single page of data can. Sure, with sar, vmstat, prstat you can get a
huge amount of information, but it takes a bit more effort to process it
mentally, whereas the single page of data from top, whilst not detailed,
gives you a rough idea of how a system is behaving. Which for me is all
I ever need.

I don't know how good the memory data is, but it is well known Solaris
does not reclaim memory when there is no need to, so on my systems,
which is very 'quite' at the minute (browser and vi open), it shows:

Memory: 4096M real, 2651M free, 517M swap in use, 3627M swap free

I don't know if its true that 517MB of swap is in use. It would seem odd
when there is plenty of RAM in the system, but perhaps it is true.

Anyway, I quite like 'top'. I don't deny there are more accurate
programs, or that a combination of programs can give you far more
information, but 'top' seems to sum up a system quite neatly for me. And
I suspect others too, as it quite popular, not only on Solaris.