SUMMARY: Five tools every Sun manager should have

From: Rich Kulawiec (rsk@itw.com)
Date: Thu Nov 07 1996 - 10:53:46 CST


This is not actually a summary to a question that I asked, but
since this keeps coming up over and over again, I thought I'd
write this up for everyone's mutual benefit.

At least a third of the problems that I've read about people
having in the last couple of months can be addresssed in some
part by some simple tools that are freely available. I'd strongly
recommend that everyone running Sun systems get their hands on
these ASAP and learn how to use them. It's amazing how many
problems you can solve with such a small set of tools; but, then again,
these are pretty darn good tools. Below are brief descriptions
of each tool with a note about where you can get them.

This is by the no means an exhaustive list -- it's simply one person's
take on which tools solve the most problems the fastest.

==========
top:
==========
Top is an animated curses-driven ps with facilities for sorting
and manipulating processes.

ftp://eecs.nwu.edu/pub/top/top-3.4.tar.gz

==========
ntop:
==========
Ntop is like top, only it deals with network connections; sort
of an animated netstat.

ftp://coombs.anu.edu/pub/net/ident/ntop1.18.tar.Z

Haven't found it anywhere else, but I expect it may be mirrored.

==========
nfswatch:
==========
Nfswatch doesn't just do NFS, it handles other kinds of traffic as well,
and includes extensive filtering and logging capabilities.

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/net/ip/nfs/nfswatch4.3.tar.gz

Mirror in lots of places.

==========
lsof:
==========
Lsof tells you which files/sockets/etc. are open, who's got them open, and all
sorts of other useful info.

ftp://vic.cc.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/lsof/lsof_3.79_W.tar.gz

This site is also mirrored in numerous places; if you connect to
it and "cd" into the directory, you'll get a list of mirrors.

==========
sysinfo:
==========
Sysinfo reports the basic configuration of your machine including the
bus layout, kernel parameters, etc.

ftp://usc.edu/pub/sysinfo/sysinfo-3.2.2.tar.gz

Probably also mirrored at other sites.

Cheers,
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@itw.com



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