Pf and rf are the two final subroutines we need to discuss for our Ping Monitoring Over a WAN perl script. Both modules use the Net::Ping::External module, which we chose because it works on Windows and GNU/Linux (and because of this, probably works on most every platform that perl runs on). Here is the pf […]
Ping Monitoring Over a WAN – pf and rf routines
Make Windows Talk to Syslog
One of our networks has just a few production Windows servers on it, and a whole bunch of Linux boxes. Being a Unix sysadmin by trade and inclination, this situation is mostly dreamy except for one thing: auditing the event logs on the Windows servers. We can’t just put our head in the sand and […]
Graphical Ps With Xps
Xps shows *nix processes as a tree. The status is indicated by color. Compile and run: u-1@srv-1 xps $ ls xps-4.2.tar.gz u-1@srv-1 xps $ tar -xzf *.gz u-1@srv-1 xps $ cd xps* u-1@srv-1 xps-4.2 $ u-1@srv-1 xps-4.2 $ ./configure checking for a BSD-compatible install… /bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane… yes checking for […]
Using Ps-watcher to Monitor Processes
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 MSInfo
Do check out msinfo32.exe. Virtually everything that you would want to know about the system configuration of a Windows machine will be revealed with this command. Msinfo32.exe is located under /Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/MSInfo (at least on our system). If you wish to dump the report to a file, use: msinfo32 /report reportname.txt It takes […]
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” […]
Automated Log Monitoring with LogSentry and a Central Syslog Server
Part One: Installing and Configuring LogSentry by Urbana Der Ga’had If you haven’t automated the monitoring of your system logs, you’re flying blind. By proactively identifying hardware failures, unusual patterns of user behavior, and intrusion attempts, you can often solve problems before they become painful. festering. scars that won’t heal. Oh yes! In Part One […]
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 […]
Automated Log Monitoring with LogSentry and a Central Syslog Server II
Part Two: Configuring a Central Syslog Server By Urbana Der Ga’had In Part 1 of this article we installed and configured LogSentry to automate the monitoring of the system logs on our machine. That’s great if we’ve only got one or two systems, but what if we have a dozen *nix systems, or fifty, or […]
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 = […]
Monitoring Servers With GKrellM
GKrellM is a GPL’d multi-platform monitoring program. For a Windows port, see Bill’s Software. In this article we will get GKrellM running on 5 different systems and use client/server mode to connect via SSH, and monitor the systems from a centralized console. We are quite excited about this project because it is client/server (now), has […]
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 […]
Grabbing Top Stats Remotely
One particularly useful tool for systems administration is top. One thing you may not be aware of, is that you can output the information top provides to a file. You may also not know that you can run commands like this remotely via ssh. Here is a short script that demonstrates this: #!/bin/sh /usr/bin/ssh user@domain.com […]
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 […]
Using Composite To Create Status Wallpaper
We have written several articles on pulling stats from various locations and integrating them. Well, Agatha has been busy, and finally got her desktop integrated. Here is a snapshot of Agatha’s desktop using these techniques: Click for a larger image The trick to creating this desktop is to use gozer to create images from the […]
Creating Log Archives on Windows 2000
We have a process that creates a log file, and we want to archive the log files every day. The easiest way to rotate these logs is to create a batch file that copies the log file to a filename that includes the date of the file as the file name. Now, we can’t really […]
Monitoring a Bunch of Servers in Windows Performance Monitor
We recently had to monitor a farm of Windows servers with Performance Monitor. True, we could add one counter at a time from the various servers… point, click, wait, pulldown, click, ok, click…. aaarghhh. Burning hot pokers in the brain working on these boxes. Now, it turns out that you can edit the log settings […]
Installing SNMP on Windows Server 2003 Using Net-SNMP
Net-SNMP is an open source SNMP project that is released under a BSD license. Installing SNMP will allow you to further Monitor your Servers or Network devices via a Centralized software or management console as well as monitoring bandwidth usage and utilization. To install on Windows Server, grab the .exe from here. Simply run the […]
Logging Performance Monitor Counters to SQL Server – Part 4
There are 4 parts to this article: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 After you close out the settings, the counter log should be started. If not, then start it: Add the counters from the database by clicking on the log icon from System Monitor and selecting the database via […]
Configuring SNMPv3 Security On Windows Server 2003
In this article we set up SNMP using the Net-SNMP package. We showed how to set up user security for GNU/Linux on our Centos 4 box in this article. The procedure is a little different for Windows, because the net-snmp-config command is not available. The userid and passphrase need to be in the snmpd.conf file: […]
