copyright © 1998 by Roberto Attias
SysR is a tool showing some information about your hardware configuration and operating system such as CPU and platform type, BeOS kernel version, memory status, threads and teams, Plug & Play hadware. This is my first application developed for BeOS, mainly to learn using this new wonderful OS so, please, don't expect too much from it. If you have wonderful ideas on how to improve the app, please let be know it!
A previous version of this program was uploaded on Beware with the name SysInfo. Unfortunately, a different application with the same name was already present (but for PPC). For this reason, I decided to rename my application to SysR. SysR stands for System Roamer (as it roams through your system collecting information on it). You should read it the same way as "Caesar".
To contact me, write to attias@sisinfo.it
The GUI of SysR is organized as a single window containing a set of selectable tabs. Each tab give access to different kind of information.
Also a two items pulldown menu is present. Since V1.0, selecting the "Save" item of the menu you can save all the information shown in SysR interface into a plain text file.
Let's now examine each tab in detail.
This first tab is splitted in two parts, named System and Memory.
The System part shows the platform you are running BeOS on, the number and type of CPUs, their clock, the clock of the system bus, the version of the kernel and the date it has been built. As you may notice, on my system (the one shown in the figure) the bus speed was erroneously reported equal to zero. I suspect that the OS kernel call I used will work only on certain systems.
The Memory part shows the size of a virtual memory page and the amounts of total, used and free memory in the system, both as number of pages and kilobytes. In the last line of this part, the total number of page faults that occured since the boot is shown.
Information in the Memory tab are updated every 2 seconds.
When we make this tab visible for the first time a list is shown in the left side of the window.
Each red item in the list correspond to a team of threads currently loaded in the system.
By clicking on the little arrow shown on the left of the team, you may reaveal or hide the threads
of this team, shown as blue items under the red team item.
If you select a team by a mouse click, the right part of the window is filled with information of such team, as in the following image:
The information shown are the number of threads, the number of loaded images (citing the BeBook: "This isn't about graphics. An image is compiled code. There are three types of images: app images, library images and add-on images"), The number of memory areas (chunks of virtual memory), the total amount of virtual memory and real memory used by the team.
If you select a thread instead of a team, a different set of items is shown on the right side of the window:
The status of the thread may be:
The priority is the "level of attention that the thread gets"; User Time and Kernel Time are the amounts of time in millisecond spent executing user and kernel code.
The list of teams and threads is not updated automatically; to update it you have to press the Update button.
If you want to kill a thread or a team, select it and press the Kill button; anyway be aware that this is a dicouraged action and it's done at your own risk.
The PCI tab shows information about the PCI hardware that BeOS recognized in your system. By selecting an item in the left side list, the type of the device and its vendor are shown on the right part.
NOTE: there are some more information that could be shown about a device, but I didn't find them interesting. If you think something more should be shown (see struct pci_info on the BeBook, section Device Drivers, PCI Functions), let me know it.
The last tab should show a lot of information about Plug & Play hardware installed in your computer. I say "should", because on my computer it does not show anything, so I can't verify if it works correctly.
The use is the same as for previous cases: select the device shown in the left side list to show its information in the right side items.
As I couldn't test this part, any feedback from you is welcome (oh, well, a feedback is welcome also for the rest of the program :-) ).
SysR is freeware, but copyrighted: you have the right to use it, but you don't own it. You are encouraged to share SysR with other BeOS users.
ROBERTO ATTIAS PROVIDES THIS SOFTWARE "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
IN NO EVENT WILL ROBERTO ATTIAS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT DAMAGES OR OTHER RELIEF ARISING OUT OF YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM INCLUDING, BY WAY OF ILLUSTRATION AND NOT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS, LOST BUSINESS OR LOST OPPORTUNITY, OR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF SUCH USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM, EVEN IF ROBERTO ATTIAS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY CLAIM BY ANY OTHER PARTY.
The license stuff has been cloned from Blanket documentation (Duncan, I hope you don't mind!)
Special thanks to Pierre Brua for a strong beta-testing of SysR and for helping me in setting up a comfortable environment under BeOS.
Copyright © 1998 Roberto Attias. All rights reserved.
Last modified Jun 1, 1998.