I would like to pipe "top -n" to a text file, but I get an error:

top: cannot open /dev/kmem
kvm_open: Permission denied

I am a non-root user.

If I could find a way to get this type of output:
"Memory: 2048M real, 1516M free, 4099M swap free"
into a text file, I could further automate my daily system healthchecks.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

See this post and check your man page for top.

Thanks, RTM, for your quick reply. I did search the forum before posting, but did not find the post you reference. I did also try man and google and the Sun site, but could not find the help I needed. (Just so you know, I am not a lazy newbie, just a clueless one!)

I do not have man pages for top on any of my five Solaris servers. This is probably because I rigged top to run by myself, as I couldn't get a unix admin who had time to do it. I copied an executable from somewhere else & got it to run. But I did not so an actual install.

These are the options I have for top on my machines:
Top version 3.5beta8
Usage: top-3.5b8-sun4u-5.9-64bit [-ISbinqu] [-d x] [-s x] [-o field] [-U username] [number]

I tried the "-f" option, even though it is not listed, but no success.

Any other ideas you have for me will be appreciated. Thanks so much.

How about:

Carl

You could also try this:

Position 4 ad 5 are swap and free.

Carl

Carl,

Thanks so much for your replies.

These will only give me virtual memory, is that correct? Are there similar commands for physical memory usage? I have used vmstat before, but swap is new to me; I'm glad to learn of it.

I am a little embarrassed to be asking such elementary questions. Thanks again.

Shirley