[plug] Tracking system problems...

[Trevor Phillips]

Christian wrote:
> 
> I would have thought ps(1) would provide all the info you would need -
> although top(1) may be useful, as David suggested, for immediate feedback,
> particularly of CPU utilisation.  vmstat(8), free(1) and procinfo(8) (part
> of the sysutils package in Debian) may also help with memory issues.

Yes, yes, I know of tools such as that, but I have a system that's grinding to
a halt on average once every two days, and I'm not going to stare at Top the
whole time. I'm after something a little more intelligent, preferrably with
log capabilities, that can take note of changes.

eg; I fire up SETI at Home, it should report "setiathome just shot up in CPU
usage, grabbed 10 Meg RAM, and is hammering for all its worth", and no other
log entries, as that's basically how it changes.
Or "Observed gradual memory drain in process XXX of YMeg over Ztime".

I've got Procinfo3 with most options on in a nice big graph, but that's
useless if my machine crashes while the graph isn't visible... And it's not
going to tell me what process is causing the problem...

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: CWIS Technical Officer         -           T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                       -               Murdoch University | 
 >------------------- Member of the #SAS# & #CFC# --------------------<
| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of     /
| course. But mostly evil, on the whole.                             /
 \      -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)                          /