Parameter Settings

The parameters displayed by the stripchart can be examined and edited using the Parameter Editor window. Although stripchart provides great potential for adding custom parameters, most users will initially be satisfied with the selecting from the list of pre-configured parameters supplied. Adding or deleting these parameters is described in the section called Parameter Editor Quickstart Guide.

Parameter Editor Quickstart Guide

To delete one of the currently active parameters:

To add one of the pre-defined parameters:

Creating Custom Parameters

FIX THIS

equation: STRING

An equation used to obtain the value to be plotted for this parameter.

A value is obtained by evaluating the "equation" line using these field values. The first (or only) value is denoted by $1, the next by $2, and so forth. The difference between the field values between the last and the current iteration is denoted by ~1, ~2, and so forth. The elapsed time in seconds between the last and current iteration is ~t. The requested update interval is $i, and the delta (which will always be zero) is ~i.

The usual infix arithmetic operators — addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), and remaindering (%) — are available, along with parenthesis for grouping subexpressions.

filename: FILENAME

The file from which a parameter value is read. When a filename beginning with a "|" is supplied, input lines will be read from a pipe.

On each iteration, a value to be displayed is obtained for each parameter in the configuration file. The file named in the "filename" line is opened -- either as a pipe if the filename begins with a pipe character ( | ), or as a regular file otherwise -- and a line is read.

If a pattern was specified, lines are read until one is found that contains the pattern string anywhere in the line. This line is split into a series of whitespace separated fields, each of which is interpreted as a floating point number.

pattern: STRING

The pattern which identifies the line from which a parameter value is to be extracted. If no pattern is provided, the first line of the file is used.

libgtop Values

Normally, the stripchart program will be built with the libgtop library linked in. The libgtop library provides a portable and well-standardized method of accessing common system performance parameters. This is the preferred method of obtaining a value to be plotted.

The following libgtop parameters are available:

These are all signed long integer quantities, except for uptime, idletime, and the five load values which are floating point values.