MPVIS(1)

🎀 MPVIS 🎀

ok so hi bestie, welcome to the mpvis page — it's giving "visualize cpu utilization/performance" and honestly? iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mpvis [-biV] [-r rowlength] [-R rowlength] [pmview options] [cpuid ...]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

mpvis serves up a three dimensional bar chart of CPU utilization, no cap. The display refreshes with brand-new values pulled from the target host or archive every interval seconds — and the default interval is 2 seconds, periodt.

The height of each bar is proportional to the CPU utilization in each of these modes, bestie:

• idle — with no I/O pending
• wait — idle, but waiting for I/O (only visible in IRIX)
• intr — interrupt processing (only visible in IRIX)
• nice — nice state (only visible in Linux)
• sys — in the kernel
• user

How many CPUs end up in each row of the scene is governed by the default maximum row length, plus the options -b, -r and -R. If you don't pass any of those flags, mpvis uses the default maximum row length to figure out the actual number of rows and columns in the view, according to:

nrows = (ncpus + maxrowlen - 1) / maxrowlen
ncols = (ncpus + nrows - 1) / nrows.

The -r option rides the exact same algorithm, it just lets you override the maximum row length. main character energy, honestly.

The CPUs get sorted in ascending order. They're displayed left to right, and front to back (that second part matters when there's more than one row of CPUs, iykyk).

You can hand mpvis a list of CPUs as cpuid arguments, using the naming scheme that's reported by:

$ pminfo -f kernel.percpu.cpu.user

i.e. cpuN or cpuA:B depending on the operating system version and platform. Alternatively — plot twist — if your cpuid argument contains one of the characters ^, . or [, then cpuid gets treated as a regular expression in the style of egrep(1), and the matching set of CPU names is used instead of cpuid. slay.

If you specify one or more cpuid arguments, then only the CPUs in that list are displayed in the view. The list of CPUs is sorted into ascending CPU number, and they're displayed from left to right, and front to back (again: only relevant when there's more than one row of CPUs).

mpvis generates a pmview(1) configuration file, and passes most command line options through to pmview(1). So the command line options -A, -a, -C, -h, -n, -O, -p, -S, -t, -T, -Z and -z, plus the whole user interface, are described over in the pmview(1) man page. go read her 💅

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👑 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS 👑

The mpvis-specific options are:

• -b — use a ratio for row:column of 1:8. This one's best for large numbers of CPUs. If the row length isn't a factor of the number of CPUs, then the last row will be shorter than all the other rows. Also, this option ignores the maximum row length.
• -i — label each CPU column with the CPU number.
• -r — split the view into a number of rows, where each row has a maximum length of n CPUs. This is a soft limit. The actual row length is calculated by an algorithm (see above, bestie) which produces a balanced view with no more than n CPUs per row.
• -R — split the view into a number of rows, where each row has a length of n CPUs. This is a hard limit. If the row length isn't a factor of the number of CPUs, then the last row will be shorter than all the other rows.
• -V — verbose mode: outputs the generated pmview(1) configuration file.

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🚀 LAUNCH 🚀

The behavior of pmchart(1) when it's launched from mpvis depends on the number of CPUs in each row. If there are more than 6 CPUs in a row, then each chart will contain a separate metric. Otherwise, each chart will contain a separate CPU instance. that's just how she works 🤷

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🍓 FILES 🍓

• $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.mpvis — a pmlogger(1) configuration file for mpvis metrics.
• $PCP_SHARE_DIR/lib/pmview-args — shell procedures for parsing pmview(1) command line options.

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🌈 PCP ENVIRONMENT 🌈

Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the file and directory names that PCP uses. On each installation, the file /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration file, as described in pcp.conf(4).

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

dkvis(1), nfsvis(1), pmcd(1), pmchart(1), pmlogger(1) and pmview(1).

The CPU view for pmchart(1).

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okay and that's the whole page bestie, every last flag accounted for, not a single detail left behind 💖

this little baddie is brought to you by Performance Co-Pilot — yes, she's MPVIS(1) and she ate, fr fr 🎀✨💅