2.6.1. Installed Documentation

The following resources are installed in the course of a typical Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation.

• free(1) man page — Learn how to display free and used memory statistics.

• top(1) man page — Learn how to display CPU utilization and process-level statistics.

• watch(1) man page — Learn how to periodically execute a user-specified program, displaying fullscreen output.

• GNOME System Monitor Help menu entry — Learn how to graphically display process, CPU, memory, and disk space utilization statistics.

• vmstat(8) man page — Learn how to display a concise overview of process, memory, swap, I/O, system, and CPU utilization.

• iostat(1) man page — Learn how to display CPU and I/O statistics.

• mpstat(1) man page — Learn how to display individual CPU statistics on multiprocessor systems.

• sadc(8) man page — Learn how to collects system utilization data.

• sa1(8) man page — Learn about a script that runs sadc periodically.

• sar(1) man page — Learn how to produce system resource utilization reports.

• sa2(8) man page — Learn how to produce daily system resource utilization report files.

• nice(1) man page — Learn how to change process scheduling priority.

• oprofile(1) man page — Learn how to profile system performance.

• op_visualise(1) man page — Learn how to graphically display OProfile data.

2.6.2. Useful Websites

• http://people.redhat.com/alikins/system_tuning.html — System Tuning Info for Linux Servers. A stream-of-consciousness approach to performance tuning and resource monitoring for servers.

• http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2396 — Performance Monitoring Tools for Linux. This Linux Journal page is geared more toward the administrator interested in writing a customized performance graphing solution. Written several years ago, some of the details may no longer apply, but the overall concept and execution are sound.

• http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/ — OProfile project website. Includes valuable OProfile resources, including pointers to mailing lists and the #oprofile IRC channel.

2.6.3. Related Books

The following books discuss various issues related to resource monitoring and are good resources for Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators:

• The Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide; Red Hat, Inc. — Includes information on many of the resource monitoring tools described here, including OProfile.

• Linux Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning by Jason R. Fink and Matthew D. Sherer; Sams — Provides more in-depth overviews of the resource monitoring tools presented here and includes others that might be appropriate for more specific resource monitoring needs.

• Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization by Mohammed J. Kabir; Red Hat Press — Approximately the first 150 pages of this book discuss performance-related issues. This includes chapters dedicated to performance issues specific to network, Web, email, and file servers.

• Linux Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, and Trent R. Hein; Prentice Hall — Provides a short chapter similar in scope to this book, but includes an interesting section on diagnosing a system that has suddenly slowed down.

• Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne; Addison Wesley Professional — Contains a small chapter on performance monitoring and tuning.