Sizing up a system

[saskia]

Can someone tell me how to size up a system? I know about /etc/inittab and /sbin, /var/adm/syslog log's etc.

But I can't discern all the daemons that should be started and how and any other important factors. Yes, I know I can do a ps -ef, but if something has died I'd never know!?

Thanks in advance for the information!

[Rick Garland]

Lot of variables here in that how is the system configured - what is its purpose.
Example, if running oracle, you would probably want to make sure the listener is running (lnsctrl) and as well as the pmon and smon for the instances. Then how many instances are running. This will vary if you are running other databases as well or in place of.

If running a firewall, you probably want to turn off most of the services.

Other daemons could include the backup processes, telnet, ftp, swapper, etc.

For me, it comes with time on a particular system and knowing what the system is doing.

[Brian M. Fisher]

To fully monitor processes a product such as IT/Operations (Now VantagePoint Operations) could be purchased. Or a less expensive solution is to write a shell script to check for running processes. A short list of running processes is: database program (i.e. oracle), in-house applications,swapper, init, vhand, syslogd, biod, nfsd, portmap, syncer, sendmail, ... etc.

Many of these processes are started at system startup from the /sbin/rcX.d directories. The configuration files for these startups are in the /etc/rc.config.d directory. The balance of processes are started by the Super daemon inetd.

I hope this helps,
Brian
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[Adrian Voysey]

To monitor processess on the system , it depends if you have 3rd party software e.g. TNG UNicenter , which allows you to configure/monitor important daemons,thresholds etc... If you do not have such a tool you can implement check scripts that checks whether an application is running and its dependencies. You can have a simple check list that can be used to check if all applications are running *i.e. all processes it uses , here you must know what processes the application relies on .
The check list is done on a daily basis , so problems are fixed before the end user logs in.
You can also use free shareware software that can monitor file permissions, (security aspects ) called cops,sudo,tripwire

Hope this helps.

[rajsri]

Hi Sorry
Your question is not very clear , is question is 1. How to sizeup the system means protecting filesystems being fill or you want to monitor all nessesary process on system ?

[S.Jagadeesh Babu]

Hi,

there are lot of network management software for monitoring the system in a enterprise wide network. They are like HP's ITO, Tivoli from IBM. Where you can configure accordingly to monitor the required process and alert the concerned person through tivoli screen or mail.
Hope this is what you require.

Regs,
S.J.Babu