OpenSolaris™ Bible

Chapter 14. Monitoring and Observability

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting system configuration information

• Primary utilities

• /proc

• Kstats

• Other utilities

• Logs

• SNMP

System management can be broadly divided into two main tasks: configuration and monitoring. The configuration and monitoring capabilities of the various OpenSolaris subsystems are described in the individual chapters in this book. System-wide hardware fault handling is described in Chapter 12 on FMA, and system-wide software service management is covered in Chapter 13 on SMF. However, some system monitoring capabilities don't fit neatly into a specific subsystem. This chapter describes these various tools and procedures.

Because there is such a broad range of different utilities, this chapter may feel a bit eclectic. The sections group the various utilities into general categories, but because many different utilities are introduced, each utility is not described in complete detail. To learn more about all of the options and features of a particular tool, consult the man page for that utility.

Although the predefined utilities described in this chapter can be used for many day-to-day monitoring and troubleshooting tasks, you will occasionally encounter a complex problem that cannot be understood using these tools. OpenSolaris includes the innovative DTrace facility, which can be used to programmatically monitor and analyze problems in a way that many other operating systems cannot match—although because OpenSolaris is open source, DTrace ...