1. VSD 4.0.2 Release Notes

Overview

Visual Statistics Display (VSD) version 4.0.2 is a new version of the VSD product. This is a maintenance release containing several minor features and bug fixes.

These release notes include changes since VSD version 4.0.1.

This version of VSD, like previous versions, supports statmonitor files generated from:

Statmonitor files generated by later versions are very likely to work, but have not been tested.

Supported Platforms

Platforms for Version 4.0.2

VSD version 4.0.2 is supported on the following platforms:

  • Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, and Windows 8
  • Solaris 10 and 11 on SPARC
  • Solaris 10 on x86
  • AIX 6.1, TL1, SP1, and AIX 7.1
  • Red Hat Linux ES 6.1, 6.4 and 6.5; Ubuntu 12.04; and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 3, on x86
  • Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), with Darwin 10.8.0 kernel, on x86

 

Changes in this Release

Ability to set background color

When running multiple instances of VSD, it can be helpful to be able to distinguish the VSD charts belonging to different instances. To support this, you may now select the background color of the VSD instance. Once selected, all VSD windows for that VSD instance will display this color.

Setting a master background color changes the window background, which ordinarily is a light gray, and process lists, fields, and graphs which ordinarily have a white background.

The color may be set in a number of ways:

  • the Choose a background color dialog, which can be opened using either by <control>b or by using a new menu item on the main window, Main >> Set Master Background Color...

On UNIX platforms:

On Windows:

  • using the -b argument to the vsd executable. In addition to accepting a RGB hex color value, you may also use a TK symbolic color name.

TK color names and RGB values are provided here:

http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.4/TkCmd/colors.htm

TK provides over 750 color names describing over 500 unique colors.

  • setting the environment variable VSD_MASTER_BG_COLOR to a hex RGB value or to a symbolic color name.

Note that the background color is intentionally not saved to the .vsdconfig file, since it is intended as a way to distinguish different instances of VSD on the same machine, rather than as a configured color for VSD in general.

Ability to copy statistics value from a graph

When viewing a statistics graph in a Chart Window, you can now copy the Y value at a particular point to the clipboard. To do this, the cursor must be on a point in the chart; use the right mouse button to pop up a menu item "Copy Y value".

Double-click on file in load dialog truncated file

When running statmonitor using Windows as an X-terminal for VSD running on UNIX, if you double-click on the filename in the "Load Data File..." dialog, the statmonitor data was truncated. (45048)

Values that exceed 64 bit force associated statistic to 64 bit

When a statistic value that is written to statmonitor is larger than 232, but the associated statistic as defined within that version of vsd was not 64 bit, the results were not correct. Now, if a number over 232 is read, that statistic is promoted to 64 bit on the fly and will display correctly.

Color for live monitoring changed

The color that indicates live monitoring has been adjusted to a darker, more readable shade of green.