Operating System KBs

From Documentation

Revision as of 10:37, 11 July 2006

Overview

The primary aim of the operating system knowledge bases in Sentinel3G is to provide a base level of operations monitoring that is consistent across various UNIX/Linux platforms. Due to differences between the various operating systems we monitor, complete consistency is not always achievable. This document describes the general content of the OS knowledge bases, and the discrepancies between them on different platforms.

Standard Knowledge Base

The standard knowledge base is OS independent, and so is packaged with Sentinel3G on all Operating Systems. It can be upgraded, but not uninstalled.

¹ Connectivity and Event_Manager sentries are only started on the Event Host.
² Scheduler sentry is not started by default. Please read the online documentation for details on how to use the Scheduler sentry.
³ Agent only. Full Event Manager and Host Monitory available May 2003.

OS Knowledge Base Versions

OS Knowledge Bases

CPU Class

NOTE

Certain operating systems do not provide all the CPU statistics by default, and collecting them may require kernel patches or third party collection tools. Solaris requires packages SUNWaccr and SUNWaccu. Tru64 requires …

¹ All operating systems monitor % System, % User and % Idle CPU time, some OSes provide more information:

Disk Class

Error Log Class

Filesystem Class

¹ AIX provides two sentries for free space monitoring, one sentry specifically for /usr (with less sensitive thresholds) and another for the other filesystems.

Memory Class

NOTE

Certain operating systems do not provide all the memory statistics, as it may not be relevant (eg Swap_Rate on Tru64 and AIX).

Network Class

¹ Packets sent and received are known only as sent and received on Solaris and Linux.

Printers Class

¹ The Solaris Printer class is "off" by default. This is due to an intermittent issue with the printer agent. The symptoms are excessive cpu usage by the Eventmanager. This only occurs on a very small number of systems.

Processes Class

NOTE

All OS Knowledge Bases support the Process Management Console, provided as an action against Processes sentry class.

¹ On certain OSes the Processes sentry is turned off by default. Certain instances are provided as examples (nmdb, smdb) only, but should be changed to reflect the system on which the KB is installed. Note also that system services (daemons) are normally monitored via the Services sentry, so check in the Services folder before adding processes to be monitored.

Security Class

¹ On Linux, the Bad_SU sentry is not started by default, as it needs specific configuration to work correctly. Please read the sentry notes for more information on how to configure this sentry.

Services Class

¹ AIX provides a complete service management interface using lssrc, startsrc and stopsrc. This interface has been implemented via actions on the Services sentry on AIX.

² Linux provides a complete service management interface using chkconfig and the startup/shutdown scripts in /etc/init.d (/etc/rc.d/init.d on older systems). This interface has been implemented via actions on the Services sentry on Linux.

System Class

¹ The Linux OS on the i386 platform provides additional CPU information including the approximate speed and vendor of the processors.

Sentry Details

Overview

¹ Swap space statistics on Linux are collected by the Performance agent every 60s.
² Packets sent and received are known only as sent and received on Solaris and Linux.
³ The BadSU agent is a LogFile agent, and so does not have a poll time. Any new data is interpreted whenever the logfile being monitored changes.
&sup4; The Information agent is essentially run only once.