What commands needed to sanity check and performance eval a linux box?

[Michael Steele_2]

Comments/

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

>>> sanity check

Maybe logwatch or Insight Agents

>>> performance eval

collectl, sar, vmstat, iostat, top, pmap, ipcs, free

Benchmark tools

http://lbs.sourceforge.net/

[Gerardo Arceri]

May i suggest also looking for errors on the IML (use hplog if you are running PSP).
I can also suggest you use stress and leave it running for an entire day.
http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/stress/
(Use google to look for rpms if you are lazy to compile it from source)

Another option would be to use StressLinux

http://www.stresslinux.org/sl/
From their homepage:

What is stresslinux ?

stresslinux is a minimal linux distribution running from a bootable cdrom, usb, vmware or via PXE (wip).

stresslinux makes use of some utitlities available on the net like: stress, cpuburn, hddtemp, lm_sensors ...

stresslinux is dedicated to users who want to test their system(s) entirely on high load and monitoring the health.

[Michael Steele_2]

I guess I'm looking for more information about the internals of the /proc file system, which seems to me to be the obvious place to go since o/s commands like sar are also going to refer to /proc.

Or am I missing something?

Question: Why don't other Linux Admins use /proc to eval linux?

[Gerardo Arceri]

I think we don't use /proc because it's cumbersome to lookup info there, it's much easier to use system tools to do it.
For example, sar output can be easily plotted to a chart with excel or other tools and quickly discover any trends.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I think sar is a great way to go.

For years I've been meaning to port http://hpux.ws/system.perf.sh to Linux.

That is where I'd start.

I'd also consider hobbit monitoring or Openview.

SEP

[Alzhy]

Hey Mike...

On a UNIX-away path too eh? Yeppers -- the new Nehalems and Magny Cours X86-64 systems are just awesome and can compete with the UNIX big irons.

But I digress... as a UNIX person who's also crossing to the Penguin side (at work -- been using at for "magny" years now at home and NGOs/small-biz shops) -- most of the UNIX tools you've been accustomed to are available on LINUX ... there are also tons of OSS (open source tools) available out on the internet wild...

You can be at home rather quicly man... and most stuff are actually simpler and easier on Linux.

[Prasanth V Aravind]

For performance i would like to suggest a nice tool, which is available free.

NMON...

you can create graphs in xls with nmon analyzer. Hav a look on attached sample output.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-analyze_aix/index.html

GUdluck
Prasanth

[Michael Steele_2]

What happened to the days when you weren't considered a sys admin if you couldn't get what you wanted from the command line?

I guess I'm old fashioned. Using applications with embedded command line operations isn't being a sys admin. Its something a lot less.

[Alzhy]

Mikhail,

If you manage HP-UX systems (or other UNIX Flavours) -- the tools you've been accustomed be SHOULD be available "including" the commercial one$ -- you know, OVPA/Insight/GlancePlus, Director (hmm thats Blue), Patrol/BMC, CA...etceterum.

IF it is a DB machine... then for "sanity/performance" checks/tests -- I always go with:

- IOZONE for I/O
- ORION (an Oracle Tool) for simulating DB I/O Load (and characterisation)
- and finally SwingBench


Ch33rs.