[nycbug-talk] Advanced UNIX Basics Management

[Isaac Levy]

Hi Marc,

On Sep 24, 2009, at 1:15 AM, Marc Spitzer wrote:

> Ike,
>
> I would also add the differences between standard tools, if you did
> not plan on it already.
> ps for example:
> 1: on centos it is system 5/posix flags and output, ie ps -ef
> 2: on the bsd's its well bsd output, ps wwauxx
> Different calling conventions, output format and information available
> but the same command

Yep- good point, I planned to cover the basic differences, (and  
perhaps post some simple bash snippets so developers can use it in  
their one-off scripts easier?  Not sure if that's too much of a  
tangent for one talk).

>
> Also I would add truss/strace and friends, developer centered  
> goodness.

Indeed, except:
truss is available on the FreeBSD boxes.
Strace is an additional yum package on our stock CentOS machines,  
(which we may choose to add to our stock company-default installs).

However, being primarily a Java shop, I'm not sure of the developer  
interest in these tools.

Regardless, I'm adding them to the outline below.


>
> tcpdump should be limited to two cases:
> 1: very simple usage of bpf, ie capture stiff from ip address 1.2.3.4
> 2: as a means of getting things to wire shark

Indeed- just the basics of using tcpdump is very handy.

>
> and at the end give them a short version of your jails talk ;)

:P

Rocket-
.ike


>
> marc
>

##############################
- Userland/Kernel Structure Basics (2 minute spiel)
- man(1) is your friend, so is dmesg(8)

- Processes
   - stats/info facilities
     + using procfs(5)
     + ps(1) (flags and some handy awk(1) parsing)
     + top(1) (briefly, everyone knows top...)
     + systat(1)
   - management tools
     + kill(1), killall(1) (flags!)
     + nice(1), renice(8)

- Memory
   - stats/info facilities
     + ps(1) (flags and some handy awk parsing)
     + top(1) (briefly, everyone knows top...)
     + swapinfo(8)
   - management tools
     - swapon(8), swapoff(8)


- Disk
   - stats/info facilities
     + iostat(8)
     + df(1) and du(1)
     + lsof(8) (non-stock on many UNIX systems, but worth mention?)
     + top(1) disk i/o tricks
   - management tools
     + disk mount(8) basics
     + nfs, living with it basics
   - advanced but very useful for developers:
     + memory filesystems (creating, using)
       - disk-backed memory filesystems

--
Bonus Networking section, perhaps,

- Network
   - UNIX stats/info facilities
     + ifconfig(8)
     + netstat(1)
     + tcpdump(1)
   - UNIX management tools
     + ifconfig(8)
     + netstat(1)

- Kernel Based Advanced Profiling Tools
   - dtrace(1m), (FreeBSD, Solaris, MacOSX)
   - oprofile(1), valgrind(1) (Linux, not part of stock CentOS/Ubuntu
Install!)
   - truss(1)/strace(1) and friends


##############################