NimonLinuxManualPage

nimon(1) General Commands Manual nimon(1)

NAME

       nimon  -  capture  Linux Performance stats in InfluxDB Line Protocol format by default the output goes to
       stdout

SYNOPSIS

       Output nimon version and stop:

       nimon -@

       Output this help information and stop:

       nimon -h

       The nimon command line options are in the named file:

       nimon -a file

       Collect performance statistics to a file hostname_<datetime>.influxlp:

       nimon -s seconds -c count -f
              [-m dir] [-k | -K pidfile] [-P [-t percent]] [-b] [-d] [-n] [-r] [-R] [-F] [-v] [-W]

       Collect performance statistics for a central nimon.py service:

       nimon -s seconds -c count -i hostname -p port -x dbname -y user -z password
              [-m dir] [-k] [-P [-t percent]] [-b] [-d] [-n] [-r] [-R] [-F] [-v] [-W]

       Collect performance statistics for a central Telegraf server for Prometheus service:

       nimon -s seconds -c count -i hostname -p port -w
              [-m dir] [-k] [-P [-t percent]] [-b] [-d] [-n] [-r] [-R] [-F] [-v] [-W]

OPTIONS

-h OUtput help informtion and stop. -a file Command line arguments are in the file (usefu to
hides passwords on the command line and ps command listings). Use the same arguments as
you would on the commandline, all on the first line, space separated. Only have the -a
option on the actual command line or it will get very confusing as options after the -a are
ignored.

-s seconds
The number of seconds between snapshots of statistics (default 60 seconds).

-c count
The number of snapshots (default forever).

-m directory
The program will change to the directory before output or creating a file.

-f Output the statistics to following files (instead of stdout), "lp" for line protocal:
Data: hostname_<year><month><day>_<hour><minutes>.influxlp
Error: hostname_<year><month><day>_<hour><minutes>.err
Note: problems can occur if using this option and the -i option as the data can't go both
to a file and to a socket.

-ff or -f -f
A second "f" option switches on writing the epoch nanosecond timestamp at the end of every
measure in the .influxlp output file. This makes it possible to insert the data in to
InfluxDB or use with other tools for other time-series databases, perhaps via telegraf.

-i IP address or hostname
The network IP address or hostname of the central InfluxDB database.

-H This option makes nimon send to InfluxDB the full hostname (as the host tag) instead of the
short hostname. This is important if many servers have the same shortname in different
domains. For example, myserver.achme.com normally has host=myserver. With the -H option
the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) s used host=myserver.achme.com.

-k If the file /tmp/nimon.pid is not found this nimon continues running. If the file is
found, the process PID is read from it & if it is found that the process is running then
this nimon exits. If no process is found running then this nimon continues running. This
allows you to try starting nimon say once an hour from crontab. This will restart the
nimon only if the previous one stopped. nimon will remove the nimon.pid, file when it
stops normally.
If the /tmp/nimon.pid is found but can't be accessed, nimon will print a warning and stop.
The file could be owned by a different user or no read permission.

-K pidfile
This is same as the -k option but the user decides the directory and filename for the file
containing the Process ID(PID_. Plus you can run multiple nimon processes, using different
PID files. Some users prefer to use a file in, for example, /var/logs but that requires
root access. Others prefer to avoid /tmp.
Alternative, if you need to use a different filename then set the shell environemnt NJI\u2010
MON_PID_FILE, before starting njmon.
If the .pid file is found but can't be accessed, nimon will print a warning and stop. The
file could be owned by a different user or no read permission.

-P Add individual process stats. If the systems has hudored or more processes this option cat
drastically increase nimon CPU time and drastically increase the number of stats. This has
implications on database sizes.

-t percent
Set ignore process threshold for CPU percent (default 0.01%). This is used to not record
statistics for processes not using CPU time i.e. not actually running. Linux, in particu\u2010
lar, can have 100's of such kernel processes.

-b Switch off adding pid to the process names. For example: "ksh_76927" becomes "ksh".

-d Switch on debug tracing (output will no longer be JSON or InfluxDB Line Protocol format).
This is only useful for debugging the nimon code to isolate a problem.
Used this with the -f option to save the debug output to the .err file. This can be useful
to determine why some features are getting turned off like GPFS or socket to InfluxDB
issues.

-w Switch on output suitable for Telegraf and onto Prometheus.

-W Switch off warning messages in error output stream. Use this once you are confident that
the warnings are ignorable. This includes badly behaved file systems like mounted but with\u2010
out root access.

-n No PID printed out at start up.

-r Random start pause. This stops cron started nimon processes that are synchornised by a time
protocol, all starting at exactly the same time and flooding the InfluxDB.

-R Reduced stats - skip logical CPU stats for SMT threads. Useful, it you are paying for statistics disk space.

-F Switch off filesystem stats (autofs and tmpfs can cause issues).

-p port
port number on InfluxDB or Telegraf server. New default setting of 8086. This is the
default for InfluxDB, so only use -p, if using a different port number.

-x dbname
Name of the InfluxDB database (typically njmon or nimon).

-y user
InfluxDB user name for autorisation (if needed).

-z password
InfluxDB user password for autorisation (if needed).

Notes on Spectrum Scale (GPFS)
nimon automatically collects GPFS if /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmksh and /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmpmon
are found on you systems. However, if GPFS is present but off it can get confused. Use:
export NOGPFS=1 to set a shell variable before running nimon will disable GPFS stats. You
can also compile out GPFS support with -D NOGPFS

EXAMPLES

       Assuming nijmon is found at /usr/local/bin and in our $PATH


       1      Collect stats every 3 seconds for 4 snapshots and place the data file in /home/perf.   This
              is  useful  to  find  the  measure  and  statistics names.  The output file: will be <host\u2010
              name>_<date>_<time>.influxlp Without the -m flag and directory, the file is created in  the
              current working directory.

              nimon -s 3 -c 4 -f -m /home/perf

       2      Run  the nimon command capturing stats every 30 seconds for one day. where influxbox if the
              server hostname of the server running InfluxDB and 8086 is the port  number  (this  is  the
              default  port),  njimon  is  the InfluxDB atbase name and the login is user=Nigel and pass\u2010
              word=passw0rd.  The number of seconds in a day is 30 x 2880.

              nimon -s 30 -c 2880 -i influxbox -p 8086 -x njmon -y Nigel -z passw0rd

       3      The same as example 2 but using the IP Address and adding process statistics (-P).

              nimon -s 30 -c 2880 -P -i 9.137.62.3 -p 8086 -x njmon -y Nigel -z passw0rd

       4      The same as example 2 but checking it nimon is still running. If yes, quietly stop.

              nimon -k -c 2880 -i influxbox -p 8086 -x njmon -y Nigel -z passw0rd

       5      Run nimon and send the data to Telegraf (-w and with port 9090) and then to Prometheus

              nimon -s 30 -c 2880 -w -i influxbox -p 9090

       6      Crontab entry to run 1 day - start 1 minute after midnight, save local data every  60  sec\u2010
              onds

              1 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/nimon -s 60 -c 1440 -i influxbox -p 8086 -x nimon -y fred -z Bl0ggs

       7      Crontab entry to hourly check/restart nimon (if nimon is not running = -k)

              0 * * * * /usr/lbin/nimon -k -s 60 -i influxbox -p 8086 -x nimon -y jane -z d0e

       8      Crontab  entry  to  as  above  but  output  going  to Telegraf (with port 9090) and then to
              Prometheus

              0 * * * * /usr/lbin/nimon -w -k -s 60 -i influxbox -p 9090

VERSIONS

       Version 70 - New support for Mainframe / IBM Z platform.
              Include -D MAINFRAME in the compile line of the Makefile.
              Tested only of RHEL, so far.

AUTHOR

       Developer Nigel Griffiths (nigelargriffiths@hotmail.com)

       License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3