tictimed Utility

tictimed is a heartbeat daemon for the Oracle Lightweight Availability Collection Tool. It changes the modified time (the UTC) of the log file once a second, and updates the time event once a minute. This utility starts automatically via the /etc/rc2.d/S95lwact script. An entry in /etc/inittab makes sure that it is re-spawned even if it is killed or it crashes for an unknown reason. It writes the system halts, panic, and boot records to a log file to track system availability. If the update file (lwact.update) is present under the update directory, the tictimed also modifies the event to update cause codes.

tictimed captures the following five event types:

1. epoch - the beginning of event tracking

2. boot - UTC when system leaves run-level 2

3. halt - UTC when system exits run-level 3

4. panic - a boot event without a preceding halt recorded. Last modified time of the log file is used as the panic UTC

5. time- the last recorded UTC for off-line reporting

The Oracle Lightweight Availability Collection Tool has init scripts which are invoked by the system during run level changes. If the you try to invoke these scripts manually, it logs the appropriate info log to /var/adm/messages:

• LWACT is started — Indicates that a user has used /etc/init.d/lwact script to re-initialize the init tab

• LWACT is going down — Indicates a user has stopped the Oracle Lightweight Availability Collection Tool using the /etc/init.d/lwact script. This causes the tictimed daemon to respawn and re-write the lock file under /var/spool/locks with the new tictimed pid