Diagnostic commands
Ten commands that cost nothing, answer instantly, and are the whole of the investigation.
Last updated:
Diagnostics are free and instant. There is no budget cost, no time cost and no score penalty for running them — which means there is never a reason to act on a guess.
| Command | What it tells you |
|---|---|
status | Fleet overview: every server, its status, and the global metrics |
top | Process list for a host, sorted by CPU and RAM |
logs | Recent log lines for a host; -f follows them live |
netstat | Connection summary and request rate per source address |
df | Disk usage per mount point |
db_stat | Database status: active queries, locks and wait times |
ping | Whether a host answers, and how long it takes |
man | Manual page for a single command |
help | Every available command |
hint | A hint for the active incident |
Which one answers which question
Most of the fleet's failure modes map to one metric, and each metric has one command that can see it:
- Is anything wrong at all? —
status. It is the only command that shows the whole fleet at once, and it is usually the right first move. - Which process? —
top, with a host argument. Names, PIDs, CPU and RAM share. This is where processes stop being anonymous. - Who is connecting? —
netstat. Request rate per source address, which is how an address stops being a log line and becomes a target. - Is the disk the problem? —
df. One line per mount point, one command to rule the whole category in or out. - Is the database waiting? —
db_stat. The only view into locks and query wait times; nothing else in the game can see them. - Is that host alive? —
ping. Latency in milliseconds or a timeout.
hint is the exception
hint costs 15 score points, not budget. It is the only
diagnostic with a price, it is disabled entirely on hard difficulty, and it is
free during the tutorial.
Reading before typing
Nothing here changes the world. You can run every diagnostic in the list back to back while an incident is escalating and pay nothing for it except the seconds — and the seconds are the real currency, because the speed bonus decays from the moment the incident appears.