www.LinuxHowtos.org howtos, tips&tricks and tutorials for linux

from small one page howto to huge articles all in one place

Other .linuxhowtos.org sites:gentoo.linuxhowtos.org

Last additions:

using iotop to find disk usage hogs

words:

887

views:

215299

userrating:

May 25th. 2007:

Words

486

Views

261809

why adblockers are bad

Workaround and fixes for the current Core Dump Handling vulnerability affected kernels

words:

161

views:

154032

userrating:

April, 26th. 2006:

Words

Views

110067

New subdomain: toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org

You are here: manpages

WATC-MIMEDEFANG

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 24 October 2002
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

watc-mimedefang - Keep an eye on mimedefan-multiplexor

SYNOPSIS

watc-mimedefang [options]

DESCRIPTION

watc-mimedefang is a Tk script which graphically displays the status of mimedefan-multiplexor(8). Note that Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher is required to run watc-mimedefang.

DISPLAY

watc-mimedefang's display is divided into three main areas, from top to bottom:

o

The graph display shows six graphs representing various statistics about the multiplexor.

o

The control area shows the maximum number of workers, number of busy workers, and number of idle workers. The "Control Command" text entry lets you monitor remote MIMEDefang servers; see "REMOTE MONITORING" for details.

The "10s", "1m", "5m" and "10m" checkboxes allow you to enable or disable the graphing of statistics averaged over the last 10 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 10 minutes.

The "Reread Filters" button forces the multiplexor to reread filter rules. The "Quit" button terminates watc-mimedefang.

o

The scale at the bottom lets you change the update interval (default 500ms). Be aware that frequent updating may make watc-mimedefang consume a significant fraction of CPU time.

THE GRAPH AREA

The graph area contains six graphs:

o Busy Workers

This graph shows the number of busy workers each time the statistics are sampled.

o Workers/scan

This graph shows the average number of busy workers each time a message was scanned. The red plot shows the average over the last ten seconds, the blue plot shows the average over the last minute, and the green and yellow plots show the average over the last five and ten minutes, respectively.

o Latency (ms)

This graph shows the average time taken by each SCAN command over the last ten seconds, one minute, five minutes and ten minutes.

o Messages/s

This graph shows the average number of messages per second that were scanned.

o Activations/s

This graph shows the average number of new workers activated per second.

o Reaps/s

This graph shows the average number of workers that have terminated per second.

If the Activations and Reaps increase significantly, it could indicate heavy load, or an error causing filters to terminate abnormally.

If only Activations increase, then it probably indicates a sudden increase in -mail volume.

If only Reaps increase, then it probably indicates a quiet time just after a period of heavy mail volume.

You can enable or disable the ten second, one minute, five minute or ten minute plots by clicking on the "10s", "1m", "5m" or "10m" checkbox.

REMOTE MONITORING

Running watc-mimedefang on your actual mail server poses two problems: You need Tcl/Tk and the X client libraries installed, and the CPU consumption of watc-mimedefang can be considerable.

A better method is to run watc-mimedefang on a desktop machine, but have it monitor the mail server with a remote session.

The best way to establish a remote session is via SSH. For example, if you are running MIMEDefang on "mail.mydomain.net", you can type the following into the Control Command entry box and press enter:

        ssh root@mail.mydomain.net m-m-ctrl

You must have a public/private key for the target machine and you must be running ss-agent or equivalent; you cannot use an ssh command that requires entry of a password or passphrase.

Assuming your SSH setup is correct, watc-mimedefang will open an SSH connection to mail.mydomain.net and exchange lo-bandwith information over that session for monitoring purposes.

COMMAN-LINE OPTIONS

watc-mimedefang accepts the following comman-line options:

-command cmd: Use cmd as the control command. You may need to quote cmd
-interval msec: Set the update interval to msec milliseconds.
-10s flag: Enable the "10s" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag is 0.
-1m flag: Enable the "1m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag is 0.
-5m flag: Enable the "5m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag is 0.
-10m flag: Enable the "10m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag is 0.
-title string: Add string to the title of the main window.
-help: Print usage information.

EXAMPLE

As an example, to monitor MIMEDefang on the machine "mail.mydomain.net" updating once a second, with the 5m and 10m plots turned off, use:

    watc-mimedefang-command 'ssh root@mail.mydomain.net m-m-ctrl' 
                    -interval 1000-5m 0-10m 0-title "mail"

AUTHOR

watc-mimedefang was written by Dianne Skoll <dfs@roaringpenguin.com>. The mimedefang home page is http://www.mimedefang.org/.

PERMISSIONS

watc-mimedefang uses m-m-ctrl; therefore, it probably needs to be run as root or the same user as mimedefan-multiplexor, or (if you are monitoring a remote machine), the SSH connection must be done as root or the MIMEDefang user.