README and Installation Instructions for SymbEL release 2.4 ----------------------------------------------------------- 22 May 95 SymbEL (known as SE) is an interpreted language that provides an extensive toolkit for building performance tools and utilities. If you are fed up with the limitations of vmstat, iostat and sar, then this is the tool for you. We provide trivial scripts that are improved versions of the basic utilities and build on them to provide powerful rule based performance monitors and viewers. The extensions package includes a Motif based GUI library and the rules package implements the complete Appendix A ruleset of the bestselling reference book "Sun Performance and Tuning: SPARC and Solaris" by Adrian Cockcroft, SunSoft Press/Prentice Hall. This package is not a Sun supported product. Think of it as a vehicle for documenting the data sources, processing and behavioural rules of Solaris 2. All the real work is done in scripts, so you can fix, maintain and modify the package. If you want to incorporate the scripts in a product you should recode them in C first, so you do not depend on the unsupported SymbEL interpreter. If you want support you should buy one of the many commercial performance management products. If you are writing such a product we want it to do a good job of collecting data and monitoring Solaris 2, so use the information provided here and give us some credit for our efforts. Adrian Cockcroft Rich Pettit Installation ------------ There are three packages provided, they are: RICHPse The SymbEL Interpreter RICHPsex The SE eXtensions Package ANCrules Adrian's Rules & Tools All packages contain support for installation on four OS/hardware combinations, there are four binaries of the interpreter provided as part of RICHPse that are selected automatically during install: Solaris 2.3 on SPARC Solaris 2.4 on SPARC Solaris 2.4 on Intel x86 Solaris 2.5beta on SPARC This stuff will never work on SunOS 4/Solaris 1, so don't ask! The Intel release doesn't get tested very much, but the SPARC release is regularly used on everything from a SPARCstation IPX, a 16MB SPARCstation Voyager, a dual CPU SPARCstation 20, SPARCserver 1000, and a 20CPU, 1.5GB RAM, SPARCcenter 2000 database server. It should work on any sun4c, sun4m and sun4d kernel architecture systems. You may find that the code is provided as compressed tar files, first uncompress to create the spooled package directories: # zcat RICHPse.tar.Z | tar xf - # zcat RICHPsex.tar.Z | tar xf - # zcat ANCrules.tar.Z | tar xf - Then install the packages with pkgadd, the postinstall scripts setup some machine dependent limits so its best to install individually on every machine you want, you need 2MB in /opt to install all three packages, you could save 700KB by deleting the three interpreter binaries you don't need after install if space is tight. The packages must be installed in this order, as there are dependencies. # pkgadd -d . RICHPse RICHPsex ANCrules At the end of ANCrules installation you are asked if you want to install startups in /etc/rc2.d. The first time you try this out you should probably say no. You can then try out the scripts by hand as a regular user to build up confidence in them then try them as root. If all seems well, enable the auto-startup next time you pkgadd ANCrules on a system. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special installation instructions. This package includes three scripts that can be started automatically at boot time from files in /etc/rc2.d. These scripts all use the same basic rules but have different outputs and update rates. virtual_adrian does much more than use the basic rules, it checks and tunes your system before it starts, then monitors every 30 seconds, with output sent to the console as messages in the form of modified vmstat, iostat nfsstat or netstat output. Its most useful for detailed diagnosis, and its output is also logged to /var/adm/sa/monitor.log monlog runs the basic rules and looks for state changes, these are entered into syslog, so can be redirected to the loghost system. It runs every 120 seconds and just logs the state and action string. mon_cm runs the basic rules and logs the state codes only into the local root calendar. You must run /usr/openwin/bin/cm as root to create the root@nodename calendar before entries will appear. It runs every 15 minutes and the output can be browsed with cm, and multiple systems can be multibrowsed to see correlated activity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The reason there are three packages is that we hope that the base level RICHPse package will remain stable for longer periods than the RICHPsex and ANCrules packages. Updated rules and extensions may become available relatively more often. The whole thing can be removed cleanly by removing the packages in reverse order. The preremove script kills any monitors via the /etc/init.d files before removing the package. # pkgrm ANCrules RICHPsex RICHPse You can check the version you have installed and who to send neat bits of code to with pkginfo: # pkginfo -l ANCrules PKGINST: ANCrules NAME: Adrian's Rules & Tools CATEGORY: application ARCH: sparc,i386 VERSION: 1.0 BASEDIR: /opt VENDOR: Adrian Cockcroft DESC: Adrian's Rules & Tools PSTAMP: 22 May 95 INSTDATE: May 22 1995 09:05 HOTLINE: http://www.sun.com/smi/performance EMAIL: Adrian.Cockcroft@Sun.COM STATUS: completely installed FILES: 36 installed pathnames 4 shared pathnames 6 linked files 4 directories 10 executables 377 blocks used (approx) # pkginfo -l RICHPsex PKGINST: RICHPsex NAME: The SE eXtensions Package CATEGORY: application ARCH: sparc,i386 VERSION: 1.0 BASEDIR: /opt VENDOR: Rich Pettit, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business DESC: The SE eXtensions Package PSTAMP: 22 May 95 INSTDATE: May 22 1995 08:38 HOTLINE: http://www.sun.com/smi/performance EMAIL: Richard.Pettit@West.Sun.COM STATUS: completely installed FILES: 22 installed pathnames 5 shared pathnames 9 directories 7 executables 674 blocks used (approx) # pkginfo -l RICHPse PKGINST: RICHPse NAME: The SymbEL Interpreter CATEGORY: application ARCH: sparc,i386 VERSION: 2.4 (02:31 PM 05/22/95) BASEDIR: /opt VENDOR: Rich Pettit, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business DESC: The SymbEL Interpreter PSTAMP: 22 May 95 INSTDATE: May 22 1995 08:37 HOTLINE: http://www.sun.com/smi/performance EMAIL: Richard.Pettit@West.Sun.COM STATUS: completely installed FILES: 87 installed pathnames 4 shared pathnames 7 directories 32 executables 2779 blocks used (approx) As of May 22 1995 the web pages at http://www.sun.com/smi/performance are not yet installed. By the time you read this you may get lucky. Please look there for updates and general FAQ before mailing us directly with questions. If you just want to say how much you like it, then send us mail, contribute rules and scripts, and pass it on.