Tag Archives: syslog

Automatic Server Status Page Creation Update

Linux, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Server, Server, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In January 2015 I created a post about automatically creating a status page for a Linux server that I have. Typically this is put under a restricted directory and allows you to see a snapshot of what is happening with the server. I run it by putting the scripts in the /etc/cron.hourly directory on a Linux PC and a Raspberry Pi running Linux.

It serves as a simple way to check up on the server without having to use a tool such as Webmin that requires a login. It also keeps a trail of log files that get rotated on a monthly basis, so there is always a few old ones around to track down any problems and patterns in the operation.

I have found this information useful when I have traced down malfunctions that can occur when setting up a server and also when I was trying to get a webcam up and running and had the USB bus hang up a few times when the cam was overloaded with too much light.

In the new script file I fixed a bug by adding parenthesis around a line that I was trying to echo and I added code to run the w command to show a quick picture on who is logged in, how long the server has been up and running and the values for the average load on the server at the 1, 5 and 15 minute marks.

Logcreate Script

#!/bin/dash
# Remove old log
rm /var/www/status/log.txt
# Print logged outputs into new log.txt
date >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
tail /var/log/syslog >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
free >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
df -h >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Top memory using processes http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3/display-the-top-ten-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage
#ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail >> log.txt
echo "USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND" >> /var/www/status/log.txt
ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Logged in User info using w command
w >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Copy log.txt into the full log that is collected
cat /var/www/status/log.txt >> /var/www/status/fulllog.txt
# Create a free standind copy of the process tree
pstree > /var/www/status/pstree.txt

Alternate Version

I also created a version of the script for a desktop Linux PC that does not have Apache installed.  In it I use a DIR variable to contain the directory that I want the log.txt file stored.

 #!/bin/dash

# User defined variables
# No trailing / on DIR!
DIR=/home/erick/status

# Remove old log
rm $DIR/log.txt
# Print logged outputs into new log.txt
date >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
tail /var/log/syslog >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
free >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
df -h >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Top memory using processes http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3/display-the-top-ten-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage
#ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail >> log.txt
echo "USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND" >> $DIR/log.txt
ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Logged in User info using w command
w >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Copy log.txt into the full log that is collected
cat $DIR/log.txt >> $DIR/fulllog.txt
# Create a free standing copy of the process tree
pstree > $DIR/pstree.txt

Rotation of Log

In the /etc/cron.monthly directory I have created a file that is called status-log-rotate and it will save backup copies of 2 months worth of the full concatenated server status logs.

#! /bin/bash
DIR=/home/erick/status
mv $DIR/fulllog.txt.1 $DIR/fulllog.txt.2
mv $DIR/fulllog.txt $DIR/fulllog.txt.1

Tweaks for Raspberry Pi

For the Raspberry Pi which has an SD card that I am trying to be conscious of writing to often. I have recently made some modifications to put the /tmp folder onto RAM using tmpfs. I create the hourly log underneath a folder there. Daily via a script it cron.hourly it gets concatenated into a daily log which is under a status folder that has restricted access. This gets appended once per day to the fulllog which actually lives on the SD card. The end result, no multiple hourly writes to the log file, just one append to the full log per day. The only downside is if the power drops and then some log entries will be lost for the day.

Logcreate runs from /etc/cron.hourly for Raspberry Pi

#!/bin/dash
# Set DIR, on Pi this is a temp location for log
DIR=/tmp/web

# Set fixed DIR FIXDIR for files that have to be stored on SD card
# Nevermind, just make a daily log and then copy that to the full log daily.
#FIXDIR=/var/www/status

# Remove old log

rm $DIR/log.txt
# Print logged outputs into new log.txt
date >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
tail /var/log/syslog >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
free >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
df -h >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Top memory using processes http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3/display-the-top-ten-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage
echo "USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND" >> $DIR/log.txt

ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Logged in User info using w command
w >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
echo >> $DIR/log.txt
# Copy log.txt into the full log that is collected
cat $DIR/log.txt >> $DIR/dailylog.txt
# Create a free standing copy of the process tree
pstree > $DIR/pstree.txt

dailylog-to-fulllog script, runs from /etc/cron.daily

#! /bin/bash

DIR=/tmp/web
FIXDIR=/var/www/status

echo "----------------------------------------------" >> $DIR/dailylog.txt
date >> $DIR/dailylog.txt
echo "----------------------------------------------" >> $DIR/dailylog.txt
cat $DIR/dailylog.txt >> $FIXDIR/fulllog.txt
rm $DIR/dailylog.txt

Logcreate Output from Raspberry Pi

Below is what the logcreate script will output to the log.txt file on a Raspberry Pi that I have running as a web server.

Sun Jul 12 14:17:01 EDT 2015

Jul 12 13:47:51 raspberrypi dhclient: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Jul 12 13:47:52 raspberrypi dhclient: bound to 192.168.1.17 -- renewal in 40673 seconds.
Jul 12 13:59:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28010]: (erick) CMD (aplay /opt/sonic-pi/etc/samples/guit_e_fifths.wav)
Jul 12 13:59:07 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28009]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
Jul 12 14:00:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28013]: (erick) CMD (/home/erick/fswebcam/cron-timelapse.sh >> timelapse.log)
Jul 12 14:00:23 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28012]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
Jul 12 14:01:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28022]: (root) CMD (/home/erick/bin/usbreset /dev/bus/usb/001/004)
Jul 12 14:01:02 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28021]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
Jul 12 14:09:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28053]: (root) CMD (  [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -x /usr/lib/php5/sessionclean ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && /usr/lib/php5/sessionclean /var/lib/php5 $(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime))
Jul 12 14:17:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[28064]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        445804     424488      21316          0     106768     260516
-/+ buffers/cache:      57204     388600
Swap:       102396          0     102396

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs          6.3G  3.1G  3.0G  51% /
/dev/root       6.3G  3.1G  3.0G  51% /
devtmpfs        214M     0  214M   0% /dev
tmpfs            44M  240K   44M   1% /run
tmpfs           5.0M  8.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            88M     0   88M   0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p5   60M   19M   41M  32% /boot

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      2071  0.0  3.0  24896 13652 ?        Ss   Jun28   2:24 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27745  0.0  1.5  25412  7084 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27744  0.0  1.5  24960  6760 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27743  0.0  1.5  25428  7116 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27742  0.0  1.5  25396  7036 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27538  0.0  1.5  25396  7032 ?        S    06:25   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27502  0.0  1.5  25404  7036 ?        S    06:25   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27501  0.0  1.5  25396  7044 ?        S    06:25   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27747  0.0  1.3  24936  6188 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 27746  0.0  1.3  24936  6188 ?        S    09:58   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

 14:17:02 up 14 days, 12:56,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
erick    pts/0    192.168.1.5      14:04   10:39   1.70s  1.70s -bash

Automatic Server Status Page Creation

Linux, Server, , , , , , , , , , ,

On one of the servers I ran in 2013-14, I used Webmin to keep track of what was going on with the server, memory usage, drive space and so on. It was a bit overkill, I thought I would need it more than I really did.

The server I am trying this out on is resource limited, low RAM mostly, only 512MB. So I was concerned about too many processes weighing it down and was trimming RAM use for Apache, mySql and PHP. I wanted an easy way to look at what is going on with the server, web based, so putting the info on a dynamically created page seemed like the way to go.

Restricting Directory Access with Apache

I don’t want just anyone to have access to the status directory. Clever folks might gain too much insight from what is shown there, a potential hack risk. On the server the location /var/www/status is restricted. What I mean by this is that I have edited the Apache default file to restrict access by IP, as I am only accessing this from a few IP’s. Below is an example of the mod to the Apache default file. Obviously I want to allow from my local net, so that is 192.168.1 ranging from 0-255. In the default file you don’t have to list the entire IP if you want to cover a range. Additionally at the time, there were a few IP’s in the 74.67.XX.XX range so I opened that range up for testing access to. Basically you can add as many as you want. Another option would be to password protect the directory, but for now this is all I need.

To edit the Apache default file, make a backup copy first, then on Ubuntu at least…

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
Example code from Apache default file to allow certain IP’s access to a directory and deny all others
<Directory /var/www/status/>
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from 192.168.1
                Allow from 74.67
    
        Deny from all
</Directory>

Logcreate

With this server instead of using Webmin to look at the status of the server,  I made a simple file called logcreate, ran by putting it in the cron.hourly folder and chmodding it +x! It makes a status page at /var/www/status/log.txt. Also generated is /var/www/status/fulllog.txt a concatenated version of the log.txt added to on an hourly basis. I used dash instead of bash, it’s a slight improvement in memory use when called. Don’t use an extension, cron won’t run files such as logcreate.sh.

Logcreate basically it gives you a synopsis of the servers state in text form…

  • Date and time stamp on top ( date )
  • Tail of the syslog ( tail /var/log/syslog )
  • Memory usage ( free )
  • Drive space usage ( df -h )
  • Processes sorted by RAM usage ( ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head )
  • Free standing copy of the process tree ( pstree )

 

The code for logcreate, the file to be placed in /etc/cron.hourly
#!/bin/dash
# Remove old log
rm /var/www/status/log.txt
# Print logged outputs into new log.txt 
# Starting with date stamp
date >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Grab the tail of the syslog file
tail /var/log/syslog >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Log RAM usage
free >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Disk Usage
df -h >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Top memory using processes http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3/display-the-top-ten-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage
#ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail >> log.txt
#echo 'USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND ' >> log.txt
ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
echo >> /var/www/status/log.txt
# Copy log.txt into the full log that is collected from the hourly updates.
cat /var/www/status/log.txt >> /var/www/status/fulllog.txt
# Create a free standing copy of the process tree
pstree > /var/www/status/pstree.txt

 

Resources

Figuring out a good command to list the running processes sorted by RAM use was something I needed some help figuring out as far as the best way to do it. The link below was where I got my info from.

Top memory using processes:  http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3/display-the-top-ten-running-processes-sorted-by-memory-usage

Auto-shutdown and Auto-suspending a Linux Server

Server, , , , , , , , , ,

The article below talks about auto-suspending…

http://rolandtapken.de/blog/2013-07/suspend-nas-when-idle

A Simpler Idea

I found another article on auto-suspending that requires only a simple bash script that I have placed in /etc/cron.hourly.

WordPress did not like me uploading autosuspend.sh, for security reasons, it will give an error, so I have the script autosuspend.sh , named autosuspend.sh.txt  here->  autosuspend.sh . The file goes in /etc/cron.hourly naming it just autosuspend, cron won’t run if the filename has an extension.

The file must be owned by root and executable. So you have to use the following commands before running it.

sudo chown root:root autosuspend.sh
sudo chmod u+x autosuspend.sh

I used it as autosuspend.sh and ran it a few times manually running sudo autosuspend.sh, just to see it run properly before sticking the file renamed as autosuspend and placed it into /etc/cron.hourly.

And the autosuspend.conf  named as autosuspend.conf.txt here-> autosuspend.conf  goes in the /etc/ directory.

Both are UNIX formatted files, modify them accordingly for your use.

syslog

CRON logs things when it runs autosuspend into /var/log/syslog, so you can execute…

tail /var/log/syslog

…to see if everything is OK by seeing the traces, the autosuspend script  gives good useful error messages. It also will send an email on the server to root@yourservername, every time it runs. You can use mailx from the CLI ( or some other program ) to read the local email. Mailx is very simple and good enough to quickly page through CRON emails, using return to move down through the unread ones.

Resources

The article I got the script from is…

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=157268

…it does not give you the autosuspend.conf file, but it references another article in German…

http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Skripte/AutoSuspend

…that does have the autosuspend.conf file and it seems to work, at least it runs fine so far with some mods.

Files

Once again below are the script and conf file from those sites, labeled with a txt extension. I put them here in case those sites disappear for some reason. This is good knowledge and it works so well, I’d hate to see it get lost.

The script taken from the Archlinux page, requires systemd and uses systemctl suspend to suspend the machine, named autosuspend.sh.txt. Formatted for UNIX/Linux.

autosuspend.sh

Original autosuspend.sh that uses pm-utils from the German ubuntuusers.de site, named as pm-utils_autosuspend.sh.txt and the autosuspend.conf named as autosuspend.conf.txt. Formatted for UNIX/Linux

pm-utils_autosuspend.sh
autosuspend.conf

Auto Shutdown – Mods

I decided to modify the autosuspend.sh file rather than loading the package that it needed (systemd) to execute systemctl suspend, which is what the script file from the first article uses. The other option would be to use pm-utils as the second German article has the original autosuspend.sh formatted to use. For more info on pm-utils see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pm-utils

Instead of auto suspending, I decided that since the server starts fast enough from a cold boot (17 secs. to usable), why not just replace the…

systemctl suspend

…line with…

shutdown -P +5

This will shut the server down, with a 5 minute warning and guard band. I say guard band, because it can guard against a potential loop. If I play with the script more and make a mistake, I do not want to wind up with a server that starts, jumps to the script and starts shutting down immediately. I know I put the file in /etc/cron.hourly, so it will kick off every hour, but I am just guarding against unforeseen things to be safe and it’s only 5 minutes of delay. If it goes to shut down while testing at some point, I have 5 minutes to execute a shutdown -c to cancel.

I also put the line…

ethtool eth0 -s wol g

…before the shut down line, because that same piece of code, which I tried put into rules.d. But it was not setting the wake on to g, When I ran ethtool, it was staying at d. Not sure why, but since I will be allowing this server to shutdown by itself 90%+ of the time, I opted to put it right in the shutdown script. After a second thought, I also put that line into the /etc/rc.local ( which runs at start up ) as well so it is armed even if I shutdown manually! See the post of Wake On Lan via Ubuntu Linux for more info on Wake on LAN.

Here is the modded autosuspend called autoshutdown.txt. Remove the txt extension and place into the /etc/cron.hourly folder, it is formatted for UNIX.

I forgot about the UNIX and DOS endlines being different while I was working on this. See my post on UNIX vs DOS file endlines, as I had a bit of brain fog and struggled a bit with this while working on the autoshutdown script.

Winbind

Once I got the autoshutdown running. I realized that the Linux machine was not able to resolve the names the Windows machines on the network. The server could only ping the Windows machines by IP address and not their names! I saw this when I was logged out of the server and logged in a while later and the shutdown script had recorded failed pings into syslog, when checking to see if the server was idle. The script correctly saw that no one is logged it by executing, who | wc -l yielding a zero and next it was testing for attached clients ( the Windows machines named in the autosuspend.conf file) using ping $i -c1. And ping was failing as the names were unreachable.

  • arp -a could see all the machines by IP address from both Linux and Windows.
  • net view on the Windows machine could see all the machines by name.
  • smbstatus can see every computer by name fine from my Linux server machine. Particularly since I had installed Samba, the servers name is visible from Windows PC’s due to Samba.
    Samba must send out net-bios information about itself, I see in the config file for Samba where it can act as a wins server as well.

In order for the autosuspend/shutdown script to work pinging by name is a must. To fix, install winbind and configure /etc/nsswitch.conf.

sudo apt-get install winbind

In /etc/nsswitch.conf add wins to the end of the line that starts with
hosts: Mine now reads…

hosts: files dns wins

I got the info from…
http://www.serenux.com/2009/09/howto-configure-ubuntu-to-be-able-to-use-and-respond-to-netbios-hostname-queries-like-windows-does/

Samba Connected test in shutdown script

The autosuspend script does a test to see if anyone is accessing files using Samba via smbstatus. Smbstatus is great to see what is going on, it is good to troubleshoot Samba when you can make connections. It is interesting once you play with it when various computers are accessing the server to understand what it is telling you.
But the script is just looking to see if computers are accessing Samba
shares. The autosuspend.conf shows an IP address for the test using
$SAMBANETWORK as that value and grepping on it. I am not sure how this works as I don’t see any IP numbers when I run smbstatus. So for now I decided that I will use the word Public in the autosuspend.conf instead of 192.168.1. Most likely if a computer is accessing Samba shares on my network and the computers name is not one of the “clients” ( my own machines at home, that have listed names) it is going to be only accessing the Public Samba share. For now this seems to work!

Test used in autosuspend script to look for machines accessing Samba…

/usr/bin/smbstatus | grep $SAMBANETWORK | wc -l
Other conditions for shutdown

The other two tests that autosuspend does (IsRunning() and
IsDaemonActive() ), I have not validated them.

That is a TBD. So far, so good, the server has not shutdown unexpectedly and I have not seen it held up by IsRunning() yet, based on it’s tests. If something is running and a shutdown occurs, a sigterm is generated as the system is going down, so anything in process should terminate cleanly in theory. I’d like to test for OwnCloud activity at some point, I have shut the machine down and restarted a few minutes later on purpose with an OwnCloud file transfer in progress and it picks back up. I have to figure out a test for this, TBD.

IsRunning() tests for the following applications…

 APPLICATIONS='"^nxagent$" "^rsnapshot$" "^wsus$" "^wget$" "^screen$" "^mlnetp$" "^apt-get$" "^aptitude$" "^dpkg$" "^cp$"'

The following features were not copied from the autosuspend.sh on the German site to the one on https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=157268 that I used…

# Turning suspend by day (8 a.m. to 3 a.m.) off
 DONT_SUSPEND_BY_DAY='no'
# Automatically reboot once a week when the system isn't in use
 REBOOT_ONCE_PER_WEEK='yes'
  • DONT_SUSPEND_BY_DAY seems to control suspending by blocking it out during the day between 8AM and 3PM, it uses /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm. I wasn’t interested in this so I was fine with it being carved out.
  • REBOOT_ONCE_PER_WEEK uses cat /proc/uptime | cut -d’ ‘ -f1-1\` / 3600 / 24 )>= 7\ as a test to see if the machine has been running for more that one week and then it reboots the next time it is idle. This is not of interest to me as my machine will shutdown rather than suspend, so this is not needed either.

Interestingly, I do see a test to see if power management is supported in the original autosuspend.sh that relies on pm-utils. This does not exist in the modified script that uses systemctl, perhaps it is not neccessary as calling systemctl is fine without or it was omitted, because such a test does not exist when using systemctl.

  /usr/bin/pm-is-supported

Basically I am fine with the simpler script, if I need to add features back in, so be it!

I have been using the shutdown script for over a month with no issues so far.

Follow Up

I have been using this code on two servers, one for almost three years and one for a year. The older one does not suspend and it requires a shutdown and the newer one suspends nicely via systemctl suspend.

I decided to modify the code a bit to allow a hybrid-sleep and also allow for restarts when the system requires them. Read more about this here….

Autoshutdown Code Modded to hybrid-sleep and allow required restarts