ATOPCAT(1)

💖 ATOPCAT — the manual, but make it slay 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because atopcat is genuinely one of those little tools that's lowkey iconic once you get it. It's a general commands manual page situation, and I'm gonna walk you through every single crumb. no cap. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

atopcat — concatenate raw log files to stdout

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

atopcat [-dv] rawfile [rawfile]...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the vibe: atopcat takes several raw log files and smushes them together into one single stream, and that stream goes straight to stdout. that's it. that's the whole job. 💅

and because it's stdout, you have options, bestie:

• redirect stdout into a file and boom, you've merged multiple raw log files into one bigger file ✨
• or pipe that merged data directly into atop or atopsar and it just works 🎀

Both paths are valid, both are valid, and both are literally the point of this program.

🍓 Options

• -d — dry-run: it reads the logfile(s) but does not generate any output on stdout. it's giving "I'm just here to observe, not to participate" 🙈
• -v — verbose: prints one line per sample. that line contains the date/time, the interval length in seconds, the compressed length of the system-level information, the compressed length of the process-level information, the compressed length of the cgroup-level information, and the compressed length of the PID list. yes that's a lot of numbers per line, and yes, she's thorough 👑

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

concat five contiguous working days into one new raw log file and view the week interactively

atopcat /var/log/atop/atop_2024021[0-4] > week_2024_7

atop -r week_2024_7

concat a week of raw log files and view it interactively

atopcat /var/log/atop/atop_2024021[0-6] | atop -r -

heads up bestie: since atop reads from a pipe here, previous intervals can not be retrieved while viewing. it's a one-way stream situation, no rewind. 😭

concat all raw log files of January 2024 and get parsable output about CPU utilization

atopcat /var/log/atop/atop_202401?? | atop -r - -PCPU

concat the daily raw log files of February 3 and 4, and generate a report about memory utilization from 14:00h on the first day till 11:00h on the second day

atopcat /var/log/atop/atop_2024020[34] |
            atopsar -m -r - -b 202402031400 -e 202402041100

repair a raw log file whose last interval wasn't completely written

atopcat /var/log/atop/atop_20240303 > /tmp/repaired

like, say you intend to expand the file with new samples later — this is the move. 🛠️

⚠️ in that last case, atopcat reports that the input file is incomplete and stops after the last consistent sample. it knows when something's off and it will not pretend otherwise. periodt.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

atop(1), atopsar(1), atophide(1), atopconvert(1)

https://www.atoptool.nl

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Gerlof Langeveld (gerlof.langeveld@atoptool.nl)

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and that's the whole page, bestie. this one came out of the Linux scene back in January 2024, and the tool lives at version ATOPCAT(1) — so go forth, concat those raw logs, and remember: she's small, she's simple, and she absolutely ate. 💅✨🦋