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Atoptool / atop

System and process monitor for Linux
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Document the meaning of the timestamp in the top bar when using atop -r #313

Closed martinvonwittich closed 3 months ago

martinvonwittich commented 3 months ago

When I open a raw atop recording with atop -r /var/log/atop/atop_<DATE> and use the b/t/T keys to browse through the samples, atop displays the timestamp of the sample in the top bar, e.g.:

ATOP - host                 2024/07/24  13:00:02                 ----------------                  10m0s elapsed

For the longest time, I believed this timestamp to refer to the start of the sample, e.g. that the 13:00:02 here refers to a sample that spans 13:00 - 13:10. Apparently I was wrong about this, because when I switch to the [v]arious view, I see that processes have ENTIMEs somewhere between 12:50 - 13:00, so the timestamp does seem to refer to the end of the sample.

I've looked through man atop for an explanation of the timestamp, but I haven't found any. This seems to me like something that should be documented :)

Atoptool commented 3 months ago

The time stamp in the header line reflects the moment that the sample is taken/shown, consistently for live measurements and for viewing raw recordings. I added a description of the header line to the man page of atop.