How-to configure Unix System Resource monitoring

Posted: April 21st, 2008 | Author: TnT Admin | Filed under: How-Tos | Tags: , , | No Comments »

To monitor Unix System Resources, you will require rstatd. The rstatd daemon is a server that returns performance statistics obtained from the kernel. The rstatd daemon is normally started by the inetd daemon.

In most cases, rstatd is already configured and started from inet. Therefore, you should verify if the rstatd daemon is already running using rup command. The command should report various machine statistics, including rstatd configuration. Run the following command to view the machine statistics:

rup host

If you fail to retrieve and statistics, then you may need to proceed to the next step of configuring the rstatd daemon.

To configure the rstatd daemon:

    1. Run the command: su root

    2. Go to /etc/inetd.conf and look for the rstatd row (it begins with the word rstatd). If it is commented out (with a #), remove the comment directive, and save the file.

    3. From the command line, run:

    kill -1 inet_pid

    where inet_pid is the pid of the inetd process. This instructs the inetd to rescan the /etc/inetd.conf file and register all daemons which are uncommented, including the rstatd daemon.

    4. Run rup again.

If the command still does not indicate that the rstatd daemon is configured, contact your system administrator. (Source: LoadRunner Monitor Reference) .

Even though rstatd is easy to configure (by uncommenting the rstatd in /etc/inetd.conf). It poses a challenge in terms of port clearance for load test. This is due to the dynamic ports that is been assigned everytime rstatd is been started.

That’s to say, if inetd is been rstarted or the server is been restarted, the port for rstatd will change. And if your client is one that’s particular about specified port clearance, you will get a headache out of it.

There are couple of alternatives that I can proposed briefly here.

  1. Monitor locally using a script that collects statistics using vmstat then import into Analysis graph.
  2. Use SiteScope to monitor via SSH (which also offers more security and flexibility.

Hope you find the steps simple and things to note for configuring Unix System Resource.

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