LBCDCLIENT(1)

📦 version 3.5.2, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ LBCDCLIENT ✨

okay so this is a page from the lbcd manual, section 1, and it's literally the whole vibe of "hey bestie, what's your load?" 🦋

💖 NAME 💖

lbcdclient — slides into a remote lbcd daemon's DMs and asks it for the system load 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

lbcdclient [-2] [-p port] [-s service[,service ...]]
    [-t timeout] host

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So lbcdclient sends a query packet to a remote lbcd server and then prints out whatever it got back. No cap, the output looks something like this:

PROTOCOL 3

MACHINE STATUS:
l1           = 16           (0.16)
l5           = 5            (0.05)
l15          = 6            (0.06)
current_time = 1387677198   (2013-12-21 17:53:18)
boot_time    = 1386357534   (2013-12-06 11:18:54)
user_mtime   = 1387250916   (2013-12-16 19:28:36)
tot_users    = 12
uniq_users   = 1
on_console   = false
tmp_full     = 8%
tmpdir_full  = 8%

SERVICES (1):
default (0): weight 368, increment 200

Let's break it down bestie, one field at a time 💅

l1, l5, and l15 are the one-minute, five-minute, and fifteen-minute load averages — except they're multiplied by 100 and handed over as integers. The normal, human-friendly load averages (the ones you'd see with uptime) are chilling over on the right in parentheses.

current_time is the current system time, in seconds since epoch. boot_time is when the machine last booted. user_mtime is the last time the info about logged-in users got modified. And for all three of those, there's a date-and-time translation sitting on the right, because they love you. 😭

tot_users is the total number of logged-in users, and uniq_users is how many of those are unique users. on_console will be "true" if somebody's logged into the console, and "false" if not.

tmp_full is the percentage of space used in the system /tmp directory, and tmpdir_full — yes, "full" appears twice in that sentence in the original, iconic — is the percentage used in the system /var/tmp directory.

And finally 🥁 for protocol version three queries (which is the default, btw), those last lines give you info for every service that got queried, using the extended service response from the version three packet format. For each service you get: its name, its sequence number in the reply, its current weight, and its current increment. Slay.

Heads up: if you use the -2 option, lbcdclient sends a version two packet instead, and the results you get back will not include that extended services output. Gone. Not invited. 🚫

🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

  • --v2, -2 — sends a version two protocol packet instead of a version three one. Version two doesn't do the separate service weights, so that part just isn't a thing. 🙈
  • -m, --man, --manual — prints out this documentation. And like, it does that in the simplest way imaginable: it just feeds the script to perldoc -t. That's the whole trick.
  • --port=port, -p port — sends the query to port instead of the default, which is 4330.
  • --service=service, -s service,[service ...] — asks for info about the service names you name. You can pass this option multiple times to request a bunch of services. You can also just hand over a comma-separated list, or go feral and do a combination of multiple options and comma-separated lists. All valid, all supported. 👑
  • --timeout=timeout, -t timeout — uses a timeout of timeout seconds instead of the default of 10 seconds.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Send a version three query to www.example.com and print the results:

lbcdclient www.example.com

Send a version two query to foo.example.org on port 14330, asking for info about the "smtp" and "http" services in addition to the default service, with a timeout of five seconds:

lbcdclient -2 -p 14330 -t 5 -s smtp -s http foo.example.org

🧚 AUTHORS 🧚

Written by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>, based on an earlier version by Larry Schwimmer. Legends, honestly. 💜

Copyright 2000, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2013 The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

okay bestie, this next bit is the legal part, so I'm giving it to you exactly as written — no vibes-based paraphrasing on legal text, that's the one place I'm not playing 😌:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

💀 SEE ALSO 💀

and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 this was version 3.5.2, dated 2015-04-26. go ask a server how it's feeling, it'll tell you. 🎀✨

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