[X4U] How to SSH and report a system sample?

[Nick Scalise]

On Apr 22, 2006, at 10:20 AM, Nick Scalise wrote:

> On Apr 22, 2006, at 10:13 AM, Michael Elliott wrote:
>
>> I know that there are some great Terminal jockeys out there, but  
>> I'm definitely a GUI kind of guy.
>>
>> I reported a bug to Apple via http://bugreport.apple.com  and  
>> they've asked for more information.  Since this is an intermittent  
>> freeze (one app will go Beachball, then multiple others eventually  
>> follow, and I'm unable to log out or select menu items), they've  
>> asked me if I'm
>>
>>  "able to SSH into the machine that is hung and capture a sample  
>> of the system while it's in the hung state"
>>
>> I can SSH into my iMac via
>>
>> SSH imac.local     and run top, etc.
>>
>> But then I have no idea how to "capture a sample of the system".
>>
>> Can someone give a neophyte some succinct instructions on how to  
>> do this?
>
> One way would be to just send the output of Top to a file.
>
> In terminal, type:
>
> top >>top.txt
>
> After a few seconds you can hit command . and stop the output. The  
> top.txt file will be in whatever directory your terminal app opens  
> in. For me, that is at the root of my users directory.
>
> Anything app that outputs to screen can be output to a file using  
> the >>

I just realized that if you SSH in, your 'location' will be on that  
box and so the file will not write to the box you were SSH'ing from.  
But that should be OK. While SSH'ed in, output the file, then reboot  
the box from your SSH session by typing:

sudo shutdown -r NOW

Then when the box comes back up, you will still have that text file  
saved off.

--
Nick Scalise
nickscalise at cox.net