graphing an AIX 5.1 server????

jonleamon · Post by **jonleamon** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 11:51 am

Has anyone been able to get useful graphs from an AIX 5.1 server????

We have setup cacti and have began adding a number of servers with different operating systems.

For Solaris servers, we've been installing net-snmp, and for AIX 5.2 servers, we've just been making minor modifications to /etc/snmpdv3.conf.

But neither of these methods has allowed us to get snmpd working very well on AIX 5.1. We can get very little info to graph - no file system statistics, no memory stats, no cpu load.

Has anyone been able to do this in the past? I've read through a bunch of posts, but they seem like dead ends.

Thanks!

Post by **rony** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:54 pm

Check out my AIX template in the Scripts and Addons section.

As for memory usage, well, it doesn't work. Personally, I have used a utiltity written by a IBM employee called NMON. It allows me to export memory stats, which I then parse and graph in cacti.

CPU load for hostmib, per CPU, is broken on 64 bit kernels. I have repeatly bugged IBM concerning this issue. The alternate is to use the Summarized CPU graph in the AIX mib, available in the template.

File system stats, well usage and volume groups, that is covered in the templates, but transfers and such are not.

jonleamon · Post by **jonleamon** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:51 pm

We imported the AIX template some time ago -- that's what we're using for the AIX 5.2 servers. However, applying that template to a 5.1 server doesn't give us much. I suspect we're missing something on the server side of things.

As an example, if I do a verbose query of "Get File Systems", we simply don't get any answer.

+ Running data query [13].
+ Found type = '3' [snmp query].
+ Found data query XML file at '/usr/local/cacti-0.8.6e/resource/snmp_queries/aix_fs.xml'
+ XML file parsed ok.
+ Executing SNMP walk for list of indexes @ '.1.3.6.1.4.1.2.6.191.6.2.1.1'
+ No SNMP data returned
+ Found data query XML file at '/usr/local/cacti-0.8.6e/resource/snmp_queries/aix_fs.xml'
+ Found data query XML file at '/usr/local/cacti-0.8.6e/resource/snmp_queries/aix_fs.xml'
+ Found data query XML file at '/usr/local/cacti-0.8.6e/resource/snmp_queries/aix_fs.xml'

Post by **rony** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:13 pm

Ah, the fun of AIX snmp agent... I hate it btw...

There are 5 parts to the SNMP agent:

snmpd - which there are 2 version, snmpd and snmpdv3, snmpd is usually linked to it.
dpid2 - Sub agent for commnications
hostmibd - Host mib related snmp objects
aixmibd - AIX mib related snmp objects
snmpmibd - SNMP related snmp objects

Always start snmpd then the other sub agents. If you alter the snmp community, you will need to allow public from the Network interfaces of the server. As for some crazy reason, the sub agents don't use localhost. Trust me on this one, I had many heated discussions with IBM concerning this mess.

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:07 pm

Couldn't someone create and then export a template for looking at nmon rrd files?

Perhaps I should request an nmon add-on?

Post by **gandalf** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:51 pm

You may "include" those rrd files as described via the links of my signature. And perhaps you may write some plugin

Reinhard

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:52 pm

I don't know that I'd want to go so far as a plugin - yet another tab in Cacti.

It would be nice if you could just devide the device trees - or what can be seen on them - by users though.

Obviously I want this data for the AIX admins - the helpdesk and my fellow network guys, however, don't need to see it. Some of this I think I remember hearing would be in the next release of Cacti - so simply getting these rrd files moved in under the Cacti umbrella will be sufficient. Reading your how-to now...

When is that next release due, btw?

**added export data that you get from nmon - perhaps there's a way to script either adding the rrds to cacti or...whatever...

Post by **rony** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:42 pm

Personally, I just created a script that gathers the nmon data. Then when the Cacti poller executes, it uses those files to create nmon graphs.

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:51 am

Can you share those scripts?

Post by **rony** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:22 pm

Well, I will have to check.

I wrote them at work for work computers. I don't think it will be an issue, but I'm not promising anything.

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:01 pm

If you can wash them (or change the code enough to make it "transferable"), it would be greatly appreciated!

If not, maybe some loose templates for non-programming, script language hacks to follow...or connect the dots of.

knobdy · Post by **knobdy** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:47 am

So, anyone else been able to manipulate nmon files sufficiently for use with Cacti? I would be interested in any and all solutions for getting AIX monitoring data into Cacti - scripts, templates, whatever!

SNMP is running on one of the dev AIX boxes we have, but the information retrieved isn't as detailed as they'd like - and currently get via nmon. Further, SNMP isn't allowed on the production boxen.

throck · Post by **throck** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:46 pm

[quote="rony"]Well, I will have to check.

I wrote them at work for work computers. I don't think it will be an issue, but I'm not promising anything.[/quote]

rony, were you able to get clearance on releasing these scripts? And in what mode are you running nmon on the target systems?

I've found another example of someone doing the nmon->cacti thing here:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/f ... 9#13778339

...but want to see what others have done before i implement anything.

Post by **rony** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:39 pm

Attached are the following:

cacti_nmon_push.sh - Bash shell script that extracts nmon data and pushes the file to the Cacti server. This should be run as root every 5 minutes on the target server.
nmon_mem_stats.pl - Perl script used by Cacti to get the Memory data from the Nmon file. Used by the template.
cacti_graph_template_nmon_memory_stats.xml - NMON Memory Template.

This script is designed to use nmon to gather information on the target server, then that server uses scp (with public private keys) to copy the resulting file to the Cacti server. This was done in my enviroment for security reasons.

This scripts and templates are provided without warrenties. I will do my best to help you implement them, but I really never intended them to be in the wild.

throck · Post by **throck** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 3:49 pm

Excellent! I'd much rather be doing the collection w/ keys than NFS.

I'll give them a try. I'm after some disk stats, so if I can use/extend these i'll contrib back the scripts and templates.

Thanks again!

graphing an AIX 5.1 server????

graphing an AIX 5.1 server????

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