sysAdmin was originally written by somebody who would rather remain nameless (He's written other software for the net before, and doesn't want to support yet another package) It was released to me to release to the net, and to maintain it.
sysAdmin is a set of programs that runs on your U_IX computers and looks for things that are wrong. It then bundles this information together from all the machines that it was run on and sends it to you as an email report.
Machines Supported are
| OS | Rev Level | Support Level |
|---|---|---|
| HP-UX | 9.05 | High/Current |
| HP-UX | 9.07 | High/Current |
| HP-UX | 10.20 | High/Current |
| Solaris | 5.4 | High/Current |
| Solaris | 5.5 | High/Current |
| Solaris | 5.6 | High/Current |
| SunOS | 4.3 | Low/out of date |
| AIX | ??? | Low/out of date |
| IRIX | ??? | Low/out of date |
| Ultrix | ??? | Low/out of date |
| OSF1 | ??? | Low/out of date |
Bug fixes to bring sysAdmin up to date on the current revisions of OSF1, Ultrix, IRIX, and AIX are appreciated.
sysAdmin checks a variety of things that could go wrong with a typical U_IX computer, and then reports them back to you. These checks can be run on either a daily, or a weekly basis. This same script can perform two kinds of checks, depend on how it is invoked.
Usage: ./sysAdmin [-u|-usage] [-daily|-weekly] [-server|-client] hosts
A -daily invocation will run only the checks that you have designated to run on a daily basis.
A -weekly invocation will run only the checks that you have designated to run on a weekly basis (Like on a Friday or Saturday night).
A -server invocation will run the checks from the central server to ALL machines that you have listed in the hosts.machinename file.
A -client invocation will run the checks only on the machine
that you invoked sysAdmin on. This option is typically only used
from within the runSysAdmin script, or by hand to debug problems.
| Checking procedure name | Check performed | Typically run |
|---|---|---|
| checkNetGroup | Checks Netgroup for hosts that do not exist | Daily |
| reportEeprom | Checks the serial number in eeprom on Sun boxes | Daily |
| reportNightlyDist | Checks for the existence of a /tmp/.everynight file. This file is created by a NightlyDist program which copies system files to different machines. This could be modified to check for the existence of any file which should be created nightly. | Daily |
| checkPrintQueues | Checks the local print spooler for large unprinted files | Daily |
| reportDiskSpace | Checks to see which disks are filling up | Daily |
| reportErrorMessages | Discontinued. | Daily |
| reportLoadAverage | Checks for high load averages | Daily |
| reportMailQueue | Checks mail queue for unsent email | Daily |
| reportMail | Checks mail spool for unread mail | Daily |
| reportClutter | Checks / and /usr for trash files | Daily |
| reportMounts | Checks for weird mount points | Daily |
| reportDumps | Checks /etc/dumpdates to make sure backups are working | Daily |
| reportRC | Checks rc.local file to see if rc.local.all.machines is being invoked. This could be modified to check for any command line in any of the startup scripts. | Daily |
| reportTmp | Checks /tmp to see if it is filling up | Daily |
| reportMisc | Discontinued | Daily |
| formattAliases | Checks for bogus mail aliases | Daily |
| formattPasswd | Checks for bogus password entres | Daily |
| formattGroup | Checks unknown users in the group file | Daily |
| formattRwho | Checks to see if a machine is has rwho enabled | Daily |
| formattRcs | Checks for checked out RCS files in /, /etc, and /var/ypmaps | Daily |
| reportTime | Checks machine's time against the server | Daily |
| reportPasswds | Checks to make sure root's password is the same as on the master machine | Daily |
| reportForwards | Checks users with .forwardsin their home directory | Daily |
| reportUnownedFiles | Checks all local filesystems for files without an owner or group | weekly |
| reportLostFound | Checks lost+found directories for entries | weekly |
| reportDiskUsage | Checks how much disk space each user is using in their home directory | weekly |
# crontab -l |grep sysA 1 5 * * 1-5 /cadappl/packages/sysAdmin/1.1/bin/sysAdmin -daily -server |mailx -s"sysAdmin Output" ericw 1 5 * * 6 /cadappl/packages/sysAdmin/1.1/bin/sysAdmin -weekly -server |mailx -s"sysAdmin Output" ericw
This is run from a machine that can rsh to the machines you want checked. Yes, I know that being able to rsh to machines to execute a command is a security hole. If you don't like it, then add the following line to cron on each of the machines where you want it to run.
/usr/local/etc/sysAdmin -daily -client -standalone
Edit the configure program for the right paths to the system files. Please note that as sysAdmin is currently written, it requires a filepath to the system files. (NOT from NIS or NIS+) If your only access to these files is through NIS or some other mechanism, then you should run the included getNISfiles program on the server just before running sysAdmin.
cd to the sysAdmin source directory (Where the configure script is!)
run configure as
./configure
run make as
make install
Create a file in the sysAdmin lib directory (Just created from the make install) to create a file called my_hosts.machinename where machinename is the name of the host where sysAdmin will be run from. The machines listed in this file will be scanned when sysAdmin is run on host machinename. This way you can have several master sysAdmin server hosts checking multiple machines at the same time.
my_hosts.machinename will look something like this:
abqh28 abqh30 abqh38 abqh39 abqh172 abqh174 abqh237
There are a few things that still need to be done to improve sysAdmin. The more people complain/request them, the faster they will be added to the code. (Hey, it works ok for me. If you use it, and let me know that you want/need these changes, then I will add them. If nobody asks, then I won't waste my time.)
UNUSUAL ERROR MESSAGES:
Scalar found where operator expected at (eval 9) line 1, near "&formatt($tag" (Missing operator before $tag?)This means you found a bug in Perl 5.003. Please upgrade to perl 5.004_04
sysAdmin Version 1.2 tar file
Sample output report
This page last updated June 12, 1999 by Eric Wedaa