From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Sep 14 12:45:15 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D7811065679 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:45:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david@catwhisker.org) Received: from bunrab.catwhisker.org (adsl-63-193-123-122.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.193.123.122]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9DC008FC17 for ; Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:45:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david@catwhisker.org) Received: from bunrab.catwhisker.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bunrab.catwhisker.org (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id m8EC7n6F052498; Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:07:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from david@bunrab.catwhisker.org) Received: (from david@localhost) by bunrab.catwhisker.org (8.13.3/8.13.1/Submit) id m8EC7nNK052497; Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:07:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from david) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:07:49 -0700 From: David Wolfskill To: Norberto Meijome Message-ID: <20080914120749.GN11991@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <20080912234822.GK11991@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20080914211136.1be3550d@ayiin> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="Gx528pKVMenWl2Sw" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080914211136.1be3550d@ayiin> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Cc: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using sysctl(1) to gather resource consumption data X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:45:15 -0000 --Gx528pKVMenWl2Sw Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 09:11:36PM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote: > ... > Out of curiosity, how does bsnmpd compare to your approach with regards to > impact on the system. It is part of 7.0 , not sure about previous version= s, and > it is definitely a more standard and cross platform approach , with suppo= rt @ > NOC / alerting side of things.=20 >=20 > (for what is worth, i've only used net-snmpd , not bsnmpd )... Understood. As I understand it, an SNMP daemon (whether bsnmpd or net-snmpd) would require some configuration on the remote host, and I wasn't willing to require that. Also, the only times I have used SNMP, it has been using a version that did not support encryption in any form (as for as I know), and since some of the transit was over facilities we don't control, I thought it would be a bit more sensible to use SSH for the transport. There is a moderate amount of work in setting up the SSH connection in the first place: the first version of my script actually had the "shepherd" script establish a new SSH connection to each remote host every 5 minutes; examing a ktrace of that convinced me that SSH session creation was not something I wanted to do on a frequent basis for a mechanism that was intended to be low impact. But keeping that SSH session around and "squirting" a little over 800 bytes of payload down the pipe every 5 minutes -- or even every 10 seconds -- shouldn't be too much impact. (As a colleague pointed out, that's probably less impact than running top(1) has.) Granted, this isn't intended for the one "shepherd" script to deal with thousands of remote hosts -- but I believe that "hundreds" is feasible. Mind, I'm not especially keen on re-inventing stuff that already works (or can be reasonably persuaded to work). But in this case, running an SNMP daemon seemed to fail to meet my (admittedly, somewhat self- imposed) requirements. Peace, david --=20 David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. --Gx528pKVMenWl2Sw Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkjM/pMACgkQmprOCmdXAD2NiQCeLVa6vWb1gwpqDs69onZ2ZT5N Yt8AnjcaG7vcX9OtHUjSQcprxnl6W/nG =0ZIF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Gx528pKVMenWl2Sw--