Ps-watcher can run ps periodically and match patterns based on the output of ps. You can check for memory usage, number of processes, etc. Let’s grab the program and try to compile: [root@test psw]# ls ps-watcher-1.0.tar.gz [root@test psw]# tar -xzf *.gz [root@test psw]# cd ps* [root@test ps-watcher-1.0]# ls aclocal.m4 configure install-sh mkinstalldirs README touch.pl AUTHORS […]
Using Ps-watcher to Monitor Processes
Disabling Performance Counters on Windows
One extremely annoying thing to get alerted about in the Windows application logs are the Perflib errors: The Open Procedure for service “pcAnywhere” in DLL “C:\Program Files\ Symantec\pcAnywhere\PcaPerfCtrs.dll” failed. Performance data for this service will not be available. Status code returned is data DWORD 0. or: The Open Procedure for service “ISAPISearch” in DLL “QPerf.dll” […]
A Simple Perl Load Monitoring Script
I wondered how to monitor load on my GNU/Linux boxen. Sure, there are a lot of canned apps out there. But what if I wanted to use Perl? (IUD SIS, you must use Perl, cuz Perl’s the best… Readin’ from my Camel book like you wanted me… script the pain away…) Anyhoo… I wanna use […]
Monitoring Windows CPU Performance With Perl
The Win32::PerfLib module is a glorious way to extract performance data from Windows boxen. Check out this site for more information. We used perl 5.6.1. Here is a script that shows how to use this module: use Win32::PerfLib; $processor = 238; $proctime = 6; while (6 ne 9){ if(my $perflib = new Win32::PerfLib(‘srv-48’)){ $proc_ref0 = […]
Troubleshooting Slowness/Lockups Over a WAN or VPN
One problem with network monitoring is that latency and router performance do not tell the whole story. What you really want to know is if you can transfer data at the application level across the WAN/VPN. This is particularly useful if you are skimping on your connection to your remote offices by using DSL or […]
AreWeDown TCP Latency Tester
There is a service we wrote available at AreWeDown.com that will measure the network health of TCP connections. It does this by issuing two insert commands via a MySQL ODBC connection from a system service at 30 second intervals. The idea is that this can be loaded on XP workstations at client sites on the […]
Running a GNU/Linux Distribution on Mac OS X using Bochs – Part 3
There are 3 parts to this article: Part1 – Part2 – Part3 Here is what the hardware is looking like on our boot from our hard disk image: This /etc/fstab file worked for us: The next boot went well: Here are the /etc/init.d srcripts that we removed to make booting tolerable: Now, these automagic scripts […]
Creating a Disk Image for Bochs
Bochs is an open source PC (x86) emulator that runs on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux and Mac OS X. One of the first things that you need to do to get started is to create a disk image. There is a utility that comes with Bochs, that does much of the work for […]
Migrating From VMware to Bochs
There is a utility that will allow you to mount your VMware vmdk images here: www.vmware.com/download/ws/ We used VMware-mount-5.0.0-13124.exe: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount w: s:\usr-2\d.vmdk C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>dir w: Volume in drive W has no label. Volume Serial Number is 3344-0E04 Directory of W:\ 08/24/1996 11:11a 93,812 COMMAND.COM 04/07/2004 06:48a 0 CONFIG.SYS 04/05/2004 07:28a […]
Emulators for Mac OS X
We have always used Bochs in the past as our free emulator of choice. Bochs for OS X is very, very slow. Unreasonably so. There is another emulator project, though, QEMU that works much better. The speed seems five times faster on our particular O/S we boot in the emulator. It is actually usable without […]
Using a Full Desktop with VNC
We’ve run into problems remotely running some applications via X. Even when the app runs OK, it is quite sluggish. We also had trouble running in secondary X sessions, which is the default behavior of vncserver. Most apps acted just fine; however, some apps got confused about what desktop to use. We tried VNC, though, […]
A is for at
The at command is your willing and punctual servant for odd jobs, reminders and one-offs. A more footloose sibling of steadfast cron, at is used to schedule a task to run once at a given time. Then all is forgotten. The following examples and file paths are true for Red Hat Linux, and more or […]
B is for bash
Bash is a huge subject! The purpose of this article is demonstrate & explain some of the basics so you can write shell scripts and work at the command line more effectively. See also our article on Aliases and Functions in bash for ways to customize your environment. I recommend highly the bash man page!!! […]
C is for ch ch ch changes….
C is an extremely useful letter of the alphabet in Linux, especially when paired with an h. With these letters one can chown, chmod, chroot, and change lots of other things. One can even chkconfig. ***************************** chown – change ownership of a file. ***************************** Nothing too exciting to report here, but there are a couple […]
D is for df, du, dd
These three classic Unix utilities like to get their hands dirty with file systems. **************************************************** df – display disk space usage on mounted filesystems **************************************************** Every newbie sysadmin learns df right off the bat; it displays mounted file systems and the disk space usage on each. By default (in linux) it displays the statistics as […]
E is for Ext3fs Part 1
The ext3 filesystem now installs as the default file system in most Linux distributions. Essentially ext2 with journaling, ext3 retains the stability and robustness of ext2 while adding the much needed journal for high-availability. Part 1 of this article will discuss some filesystem basics and Part 2, some tips for working with the Linux native […]
E is for Ext3fs Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, we discussed some basics of the ext* filesystems in Linux. In this section we’ll have some good old filesystem fun. The most commonly used tools for working with Linux filesystems are mke2fs (create ext2/ext3 filesystem), tune2fs (adjust filesystem parameters) and e2fsck (check and repair filesystem.) ADD JOURNAL TO EXT2 […]
F is for Find
One-liners illustrating the use of the find command abound on the world wide web. The command’s operation is straight forward, but it has so many options that the man page always makes for fascinating reading. The find command is your friend whenever you need to *find* files based on name, size, file type, creation/access/modification time, […]
G is for grep
Like using the word “grok” in conversation, saying “grep” out loud brands you a SuperGeek, at least in the mundane reckoning of members of the “normal” population. They don’t understand that grep is simply an odd concatenation of the phrase “grab regular expression”; and even if they did know, it would mean nothing to them. […]
H is for Head, Tail, or Split the Difference
Head, tail and split are three of the most commonly used utilities on GNU/Linux systems for the manipulation of text files. They are tiny, sharp, and all possess some handy options of which even the experienced user may be unaware. Head returns the first lines of a file or standard input. By default, it outputs […]
