atsadc, atsa1, atsaftp, atsahttp - counter-collection

atsadc [ t n ] [ ofile ]

atsa1 [ t n ]

atsaftp

atsahttp

System activity-data can be gathered on special request of a user [see atsar(1) ] or automatically, on a routine basis, as described here. Usually the kernel maintains statistical counters that are incremented as various system actions occur. These include counters for CPU utilization, disk utilization, memory utilization and various network statistics.

The program atsadc and the shell-script atsa1 are used to collect, save, and process these counters.

The program atsadc (the data collector) samples system data n times with an interval of t seconds between samples, and writes in binary format to ofile or (default) to standard output. The sampling interval t should be greater than 1 second. If t and n are omitted, a special reset-record is written. This facility is used when booting to a multi-user state, to mark the time at which the counters restart from zero. For example, the reset-mark can be added to the daily data by the command:

/usr/local/bin/atsadc /var/log/atsar/atsa`date +%d`

Note that this entry is written to the /etc/rc.d/init.d/atsar file.

The shell-script atsa1 is used to collect and store data in the binary file /var/log/atsar/atsadd where dd is the current day of the month. The arguments t and n cause records to be written n times at an interval of t seconds, or once if omitted. Furthermore this script takes care that log-files older than a week are removed once a day.

A file containing following entries should be added to the /etc/cron.d directory to produce records every 20 minutes during working hours and hourly otherwise:

0 * * * 0-6 root /usr/local/bin/atsa1

20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 root /usr/local/bin/atsa1

See crontab(1) for details.

The shell-script atsaftp counts the new transfers registered in the FTP-logfile(s) since the previous time this script was activated; the new counters are stored in the /var/log/atsar/ftpstat file in ASCII-format. The names of the FTP-logfiles to be watched are specified in the /etc/atsar.conf configuration-file.

The shell-script atsahttp counts the new transfers registered in the HTTP-logfile(s) since the previous time this script was activated; the new counters are stored in the /var/log/atsar/httpstat file in ASCII-format. The names of the HTTP-logfiles to be watched are specified in the /etc/atsar.conf configuration-file.

Both scripts must be activated just before the program atsadc is started, which also collects these counters.

/var/log/atsar/atsadd

Daily data file, where dd are digits representing the day of the month.

atsar(1), crontab(1)

Gerlof Langeveld, AT Computing (gerlof@ATComputing.nl)