Appendix B   Monitoring Tools


The following table lists system tools you can use to monitor your server environment. These tools are available on various Unix platforms. For more information about these tools, see the man pages delivered with your Unix system.

Table B-1 General Unix tools 

Tool	Description
iostat	Provides information about disk I/O and CPU usage.
lsof	Provides information about open file descriptors. Available in source from: :ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix.
lslk	Provides information about file system locks. Available in source from: :ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix
netstat	Provides statistics about network functions.
nslookup	Allows you to query DNS servers for information about hosts and domains; for example you can print a list of hosts in a particular domain; also provides an IP address-to-host name mapping function (and vice versa).
ping	Allows you to query the status of a remote host or network gateway.
sar	Unix SysV performance monitoring tool. Useful for gathering system information over a longer period of time to use in long term planning, for example.
tcpdump	Public domain tools used in debugging and to monitor network traffic.
top	Provides quick, easy monitoring of processes and CPU activities. (This is a public domain tool that works on most Unix platforms.)
trace	Similar to truss on Solaris. Sometimes included by the vendor; otherwise, you can download this tool from an Internet site.
traceroute	Determines the path a packet takes throughout the Internet to reach its final destination.
vmstat	Provides statistics about process, virtual memory, disk, trap, and CPU activity.

Table B-2 System monitoring tools - Sun Solaris

Tool	Description
lockstat	Provides information on OS and application locking. Available on Solaris 2.6 only.
mpstat	Provides statistics about each processor on the system
pmap	Provides breakdown on how much memory a process is using so you can see how much is shared and how much is private. (Located in /usr/proc/bin.)
proctool	Monitors processes and threads. (Available from Sun's web site.)
snoop	Monitors network traffic; indispensable when debugging low-level packets.
SymbEL/Virtual Adrian	A very powerful system monitoring toolkit. Provides the functionality of the above listed tools and more. Can be used to tune the ncsize and ufs_ninode parameters and even has a mode to tune the operating system automatically.
truss	Provides information about which system calls a process makes.

Table B-3 System monitoring tools - HP-UX

Tool	Description
glance	Provides detailed system information about open file descriptors, locks, threads, and so on.
gpm	Provides detailed system information about open file descriptors, locks, threads, and so on.
tusc	A system call trapper. Might not be available on all systems.
sysdef	Provides information about kernel parameters.
landiag	A tool for monitoring network statistics.
sam	System Administration Manager. A tool for general system administration.

Table B-4 System monitoring tools - SGI Irix

Tool	Description
dkstat	Similar to iostat. Provides information about disk I/O and CPU use.
gmemusage (Irix 6.x)	X windows tool for viewing information about virtual memory.
netstat -C	Provides real-time, full-screen data.
osview	Provides full-screen information; combines functionality of vmstat, mpstat, and netstat.
par	Similar to truss on Solaris. Provides information about system calls made by a process.
Performance Copilot	An SGI add-in package.