April 2011
Intermediate to advanced
840 pages
18h 7m
English
Chapter 27
Advanced Shell Scripts
In This Chapter
- Monitoring system statistics
- Problem-tracking database
In this chapter, we will look at more advanced methods to use in shell scripts. These techniques enable you to work with scripts on your system in a variety of different ways.
Monitoring System Statistics
There are many utilities in the bash shell to help you keep an eye on Linux system performance and resource usage. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find the time to use them, especially when you have several systems to manage. Creating a few shell scripts to create reports using the output from these utilities can be an excellent use of your time.
This section will take you through the creation of some advanced shell scripts to assist you in monitoring various system performance statistics.
System Snapshot Report
A nice way to stay informed about your system's performance and resource usage is via a snapshot report. A snapshot report is a picture of a system's statistics at a certain point in time. A report of this kind is an “executive summary” of a system's health.
The script to create this snapshot report can be run as many times a day as you want a picture. Even better, the script will send you the report via e-mail.
The Required Functions
You will need to use four different bash shell commands to create the snapshot report: uptime, df, free, and ps. These various commands will give you the statistics needed.
Up Time
The first command, uptime, is the most basic system ...
