Hi
I’m proud to announce a new release of the Monitoring and
Administration Tool (MAT). New to version 0.20 is the replication
module. This allows replication between UNIX hosts. A HPUX agent is
now included, as well as a GNU libc build. There are several bug
fixes in the backup module, as well as some fixes to the system
monitoring module.
The MAT web site is at: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~sblack/mat
It contains screen-shots, as well as descriptions of MAT’s
functions.
Below is a description of this release of MAT.
Monitoring & Administration Tool (MAT)
————————————–
MAT is an enterprise monitoring and administration tool. It
allows you as an administrator, or authorized individual, to manage
a hetrogeneous UNIX network. It hides most of the complexity of the
standard configuration files making it easier administer. The
monitoring daemon provides historical information about a hosts
status. Several monitored parameters can be graphed to aid capacity
planning. The monitored parameters can trigger events when a
threshold is exceeded, alerting administrators to problems.
Some of the advanced features include the ability to upgrade
it’s self as new versions, or upgrades become available, the
ability to allow other users to control some or all of the
administrative functions. The ability to see the “health” of a
host.
MAT is in three parts, the MAT agent, the MAT daemon, and the
MAT console. The MAT agent does the actual work of modifing files,
running commands, and inspecting the system. The MAT daemon MATd
periodically monitors system parameters, and can send alarms. The
MAT console provides an easy to use GUI which sends commands to the
MAT agent to manipulate and query standard UNIX configuration
files. It also provides an easy to use GUI for graphing the MATd
results and controlling the parameters monitored by MATd.
MAT is available for Linux, SunOS 4.1.x, and Solaris. An alpha
port to IRIX 6.x is included. Currently MAT allows you to add,
modify and delete the following:
- Users (Site specific user defaults are supported)
- Groups
- Hosts
- Email Aliases
- Mounted filesystems
- Crontab entries
- DNS client configuration
- Login message (motd)
- Services
- Exported (shared) filesystems
- DNS domains & records
- Most NIS records
- Syslogd entries
MAT allows you inspect many of the common system parameters
including:
- All syslog files (TK 8.0 recommended for this)
- Routes
- Processes
- Lastlog
- Diskspace
- Exports
The monitoring deamon MATd runs scripts for monitoring of:
- Network Connectivity (through ICMP)
- Required Processes
- Disk usage
- CPU use
- Run queue
- User logins
- FTP server status
- SMTP server status
- Network Interface Activity
SWAP, and Memory use are monitored in the Linux version. A
simple plotting tool allows you to graph the various monitored
parameters. The monitoring scripts are written in Perl, and should
be easy to customize and expand. The MAT probe has been updated to
display it’s current status.
Requirements:
————–
For the MAT agent you need a UNIX machine running:
- Linux 2.x
- SunOS 4.1.4
- Solaris 5.x
- IRIX 6.x
- HPUX 10.10 or 10.20
Perl 5.x is needed for the monitored parameters and alarms. The
Console requires Tcl/TK on at least one host.