Topic: How to determine the general health of your SME server

[BobWilliams]

I have a newbi type question. When I putty to a sme server and log in I want to determine the general health and well being of the kernel and status of the hard drives. Is there a command or script that I can enter that simply gives that information. I know that seasoned guru's enter their favorite info gathering thingie - share it please.

Bob...

[Reinhold]

Bob,

If and when you can ssh-putty into your SME there's little to worry .-)
... but there is always: top and ps and netstat, maybe ifconfig
( and man top and man ps and man netstat... <eg>)

For your HDs you could use S.M.A.R.T via smartmontools and issue a smartctl -a /dev/hdx
 
Why not monitor with "e-smith-sysmon" by Messrs Wells and ShadLord (look in the contribs area) to see things graphically ...over a long timespan.
IMHO lm-sensors is a lifesaver if you do not physically visit a box frequently.

Regards
Reinhold

[BobWilliams]

Thanks Reinhold, I'll try your suggestions. I use top on a regular basis but needed to compile a list of the best indicators of system health.

Bob...

[BobWilliams]

when I try it install smartmontools-5.33-1.i386.rpm I receive the following error msg:
[root@bci-sme-server Smartmontools]# rpm -ivh smartmontools-5.33-1.i386.rpm
error: failed dependencies:
        libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3)   is needed by smartmontools-5.33-1
The instructions say: If you receive an error message, you have probably previously installed the smartsuite package, or RedHat's kernel-utils package, which provide older versions of the smartd and smartctl utilities.  In this case you should use the --nodeps or --force arguments of rpm to replace these two utilities:
I'm not too sure I want to do that.
Anybody have a suggestion to fix this?
I'm running SME-6.0.1-01 with a Sleepy 2.4.27 kernel update.
Bob...

[Reinhold]

Bob,

Not sure about your problem...
(and on the road ...)

Just try smartcl --help  (as usual)
If it doesn't work use rpm -qa to check if the rpm did install and remember to use RH7.2 or RH7.3 packages only.
The only version-no. I have in reach now is "5.30" ...
The homepage of the toolset:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
(but you probably used google already and do not really need this .-)

Regards
Reinhold

[gzartman]

I've used the following contrib on SME and it works great:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/smeserver/contribs/dmay/mitel/contrib/phpSysInfo/

The interface is web based and very easy to use.

Greg Zartman

[BobWilliams]

Thanks, Greg. I'll give that a try.

Bob...

[mbachmann]

Except phpsysinfo there is mrtg and isoqlog contribs to monitor health, another one to monitor temperatures whose name i don't recall also is in the howto/contribs area. A search will bring it up.

[nigeltodd]

I have just installed mrtg on SME 6, and instal went fine! however i getan error 403 when trying to access the page in the ibay. Anyone have any ideas - the permissions look fine!

Nigel

[Brenno]

Has anybody figured out how to upgrade smartctl and get around or solve the dependencies issue?  (I get antsy when upgrading all sorts of things just to install one package.) I, too, have 6.0 (final) here.

I'm having issues with a 4 disc SCSI setup and all the current smartctl can report on the drives is their temperature.  I'm hoping the upgrade will give me more troubleshooting information.