---
name: "osvis"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "pcp"
version: "7.2.2-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/osvis"
---

# osvis(1)

visualize high-level system activity

## NAME

**osvis** - visualize high-level system activity

## SYNOPSIS

**osvis** \[**-V**\] \[**-b** *bytes*\] \[**-d** *activity*\] \[**-i** *ops*\] \[**-m** *packets*\] \[*pmview options*\] \[*interface* ...\]

## DESCRIPTION

**osvis** displays an high-level overview of performance statistics collected from the Performance Co-Pilot (**PCP**(1)) infrastructure.  The display is modulated by the values of the performance metrics retrieved from the target *host* (which is running [**pmcd**(1)](/pmcd/1.md)) or from the PCP archive log identified by *archive*. The display is updated every *interval* seconds (default 2 seconds).

As in all [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md) scenes, when the mouse is moved over one of the bars, the current value and metric information for that bar will be shown in the text box near the top of the display. The height and/or color of the bars is proportional to the performance metric values relative to the maximum expected activity, as controlled by the **-d**, **-i** and **-m** options (see below).

The bars in the **osvis** scene represent the following information:

- **CPU**

  This column shows CPU utilization, aggregated over all CPUs.

- **Disk**

  The first stack is the rate of disk read and write operations aggregated over all disk spindles.  The second bar is the average time the disks are busy, which approximates average time utilization of all disks.

- **Disk Controllers**

  The average time the disks were busy on each controller, which approximates the average time utilization of all disks on each controller.

- **Load**

  The three bars represent the average load for the past 1, 5 and 15 minutes. This is normalized by twice the number of CPUs on the machine.

- **Mem**

  The stack shows memory utilization by breaking down real memory into kernel, file system and user usage.  The memory utilization metrics (*mem.util*) may not be available on all hosts, so **Mem** may only show the amount of free memory as a single bar on some hosts.

- **Network Input**

  The two rows of bars show the input byte rate and the input packet rate for each network interface, except loopback and slip interfaces.

- **Network Output**

  The two rows of bars show the output byte rate and the output packet rate for each network interface, except for loopback and slip interfaces.

## COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

If any optional *interface* arguments are specified in the command line, then just the network interfaces matching the *interface* arguments will appear in the **Network Input** and **Network Output** sections.  By default, all interfaces will be used. The *interface* arguments are used as patterns for [**egrep**(1)](/egrep/1.md) matching against the interface names, so **ec** would select all external Ethernet interfaces for a Challenge S.

**osvis** uses [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md), and so the user interface follows that described for [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md), which in turn displays the scene within an Inventor examiner viewer.

**osvis** passes most command line options to [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md). Therefore, the command line options **-A**, **-a**, **-C**, **-h**, **-n**, **-O**, **-p**, **-S**, **-t**, **-T**, **-x**, **-Z** and **-z**, and the user interface are described in the [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md) man page.

Options specific to **osvis** are:

- **-b**

  Controls the maximum expected network throughput, in bytes. The default value is 65536 bytes.

- **-d**

  Controls the maximum expected disk utilization, as a percentage. The default value is 30%.

- **-i**

  Controls the maximum (normalization) value for the disk read and write rates. The default value is 100 operations/second.

- **-m**

  Controls the maximum (normalization) value for the packet input and packet output rates. The default value is 750 packets/second.

- **-V**

  The derived configuration file for [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md) is written on standard output. This may be saved and used directly with **pmview** if the user wishes to customize the display, or modify some of the normalization parameters.

## FILES

- **$PCP\_VAR\_DIR/pmns/***\**

  default PMNS specification files

- **$PCP\_VAR\_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.osvis**

  [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) configuration file that can be used to create a PCP archive suitable for display with **osvis**

## PCP ENVIRONMENT

Environment variables with the prefix **PCP\_** are used to parameterize the file and directory names used by PCP. 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)](/pcp.conf/4.md).

## SEE ALSO

[**pmcd**(1)](/pmcd/1.md), [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md), [**pmview**(1)](/pmview/1.md), [**pcp.conf**(4)](/pcp.conf/4.md), [**pcp.env**(4)](/pcp.env/4.md) and **pmlaunch**(5).

## DIAGNOSTICS

**osvis** will silently remove those blocks from the scene whose metrics are not available from the live host or the archive.