1. Handy Solaris commands HW config, swap, patches etc.
2. Real-time performance monitoring vmstat, iostat, mpstat etc.
3. Unix Commands find, awk, sed, grep etc.
4. vi editor commands the 22 most useful vi commands
5. Unix file permissions explained sounds basic, but you may learn something new here!
6. The Solaris Name Service explained how hostname and username lookups work
1. Handy Solaris commands
show hardware config (memory, CPUs etc) :
/usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag -v |more
/usr/sbin/psrinfo
show kernel settings:
/usr/sbin/sysdef |more
more /etc/system
show list of Solaris patches:
showrev -p |more
show software installed:
pkginfo |more
check swap space:
/usr/sbin/swap -s
check system load average: an uptime more than double the number of CPUs is getting a bit busy
uptime
top CPU users:
/usr/ucb/ps uax |head
top memory users:
/usr/ucb/ps vax |head
check disk space:
df -k (shows all mounted filesystems -including NFS etc)
df -lk (shows only local filesystems)
df -k -Fufs (shows only local Sun UFS filesystems (normal hard disks)
df -k . (show just the filesystem you are currently in)
2. Real-time performance monitoring:
memory usage :
vmstat 5 -look at memory/free field and page/sr field. Ignore the first line output as it’s historical
procs memory page disk faults cpu
r b w swap free re mf pi po fr de sr s0 s1 s6 s3 in sy cs us sy id
0 0 83 4456 456 1 431 266 70 167 0 35 6 6 0 2 523 567 31 14 9 76
0 0 62 3588464 46824 0 196 64 0 0 0 0 5 4 0 0 606 9743 882 86 7 7
0 0 62 3587960 42672 1 552 41 1 1 0 0 2 2 0 0 789 5488 1040 84 7 9
0 1 62 3584704 38848 0 471 3 38 38 0 0 5 5 0 1 1426 5270 968 64 9 27
0 0 62 3586464 38456 0 451 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 929 6039 1265 70 6 24
Also make sure that cpu/us is at least double cpu/sy
disk busy-ness
mpstat 5 (or iostat -c 5 )
CPU minf mjf xcal intr ithr csw icsw migr smtx srw syscl usr sys wt idl
0 221 3 544 227 75 582 61 31 28 7 267 18 12 2 68
2 209 2 446 395 178 328 37 31 32 6 299 11 7 2 80
-look at the wt field, this is wait-for-I/O which can be network or disk I/O, and should not be more than 30-40 (percent)
To see individual disk performance and find slow ('hot') disks :
iostat -d 5
sd0 sd1 sd6 sd37
kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv
123 6 44 123 6 42 0 0 42 66 2 8
33 1 3 37 1 1 0 0 0 3 0 5
-check the serv column for each disk: this is the disk service time in milliseconds.
However iostat by default shows only the first four disks: if you have more use -x and/or -l options :
iostat -xdnl 7 5 (e.g. if you have seven hard disks)
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
0.4 1.6 3.2 70.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.7 0 1 c0t0d0
0.2 1.6 1.6 70.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.0 0 1 c0t1d0
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 c0t6d0
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 c1t8d0
88.8 19.8 1276.8 158.4 0.0 0.6 0.0 5.7 0 51 c1t9d0
0.0 0.4 0.0 100.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 17.4 0 1 c1t10d0
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 c1t11d0
3. Unix Commands
at - run a command or script once in the future
bash$ at 0815 tomorrow
at> rm $HOME/zxc
at> (type Control-D)
commands will be executed using /usr/bin/bash
job 984032100.a at Thu Mar 8 06:15:00 2001
awk
cron
crontab -l to see your crontab
crontab -e to edit it (NB but first do EDITOR=vi (or EDITOR=emacs) ; export EDITOR )
Remember fields are : minute hour day month day_of_week (0=Sun)
0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-6
e.g. run a script only on Tuesdays to Fridays, at 10:12 am, 3:12pm, 4:12pm and 5:12pm
12 10,15-17 * * 2-5/home/oracle/bin/script
du -show disk space usage
du -k -show disk usage in kB in all subdirectories below the current one
du -sk -show just the total of everything below the current dir
du -sk * -show individual totals for each file or directory in the current dir
find
find things you can’t remember the exact name of :
find /usr/lib -name "*socket*"
find big files (more than 20000 blocks, ie about 10MB )
find . -size +20000
find files or directories modified in last day
find . -mtime -1
find files not accessed (read) in 45 days
find /tmp -atime +45
Add -ls to the end of any of the above commands to see a full ls -l listing of the files found.
You can combine multiple options , e.g look for which big files have filled up a filesystem recently
find . -size +20000 -mtime -1 -ls
Or combine options using an "OR" syntax, e.g. find files which were modified either less than 1 week ago or more than 2 weeks ago
find . \( -mtime +14 -o -mtime -7 \) -ls
You can send the ouput of find to another command : the xargs command is ideal for this: e.g. interactively delete all core files under your $HOME
find ~ -type f -name core |xargs rm -i
or look for a particular word in all your .c files:
find . -name "*.c" |xargs grep -l libsocket
grep and its more flexible and faster cousins egrep and fgrep
Search for either of two strings in all log files:
egrep "error|PROBLEM" *log
case-insensitive search
fgrep -i error *log (will find Error, ERROR, etc.)
just see the filenames where the search text was found
grep -l error *log
sort
-n sorts by number instead of alphabetically
e.g. cd /export/home; du -sk * | sort -nr lists who is using most space in their home directory
tar
e.g. to copy a directory tree, preserving symlinks:
cd fromdir; tar cf - . | (cd todir; tar xpf -)
tr translate characters
convert lower-case to upper:
cat myfile | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
change colons to newlines:
tr : "\n" < myfile > newfile
who show who is currently logged on and where from
w show what people are doing
other useful Unix commands for you to check out:
cut, paste , split
diff, sdiff, cmp, dircmp
head, tail, tail -f
id, groups
4. vi commands
The basic vi commands:
i insert before current character a append after current char
I insert at beginning of line A append after end of line
x delete current character X backspace-delete (deletes char to left)
dd delete current line
22dd delete 22 lines u undo the last thing you did
p paste those 22 lines below the current line
12yy copy 12 lines into the ‘clipboard’ for later pasting
:wq to save ('write') and quit (:q! to quit without writing)
vi moving-around Timesavers:
using h,j,k,l to move left,down,up and right is quicker than using the arrow keys (once you get used to it!). w move one word forward b move back a word e go to end of word
Ctl-F move Forward a whole page Ctl-B move Back a page
0 (zero) go to beginning of line $ go to end of line
:242 go to line 242 Ctl-G see what line you are on
vi modifying things:
cw change word 3cw change 3 words C change to end-of-line
dw delete word D delete to end-of-line
cc replace current line with what you type next
r replace one character R endless replace (like over-typing)
o open/add a new line below the current one O open new line above current one
xp swap two characters (e.g. when you make a typo)
/bob search forward for 'bob' n repeat previous search ? search backwards
Probably the handiest vi command:
. (dot) -repeat your last command
useful extra vi commands:
~ swap case of current character (capitalize or lower-case)
Ctl-L re-draw the screen (e.g when something from a background process writes to your screen and messes up your vi window)
:set nu show line numbers (:set nonu to remove line numbers)
:set list show hidden characters, line endings etc. (: set nolist)
Global replace:
:%s/old/new/g (% means all lines)
or :g/old/s//new/g
or :%s/old/new/gc (c is to confirm each replacement, type ‘y’ to accept)
5. Unix file permissions
You probably already know the basics:
Each user in Unix belongs to at least one group, each file or directory on the system belongs to one user and one group. When you do an ls -l on a file you see what permissions the file owner, group owner and everyone else (‘world’ or ‘others’) have on it
-rwxr-xr-- 1 robins devteam 180 Mar 8 13:50 instbb
so on the file instbb there is full access (rwx- read,write,execute) for the owner (robins), read and execute for the group devteam and read-only for everyone else.
What you may not know is that whether someone can delete that file is not determined by the file permissions, but by the permissions of the directory the file is in :
bash$ ls -al
total 598
drwxrwxr-x 3 robins devteam 512 Mar 8 12:02 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root wheel 1024 Mar 8 12:02 ..
-rwxr-xr-- 1 robins devteam 180 Mar 8 13:50 instbb
In this case the directory (.) is group writeable, which means anyone in the group devteam can delete the file instbb. Although they can’t modify it, they could copy it to a new file in that directory, modify it, then delete the original and rename the new file as instbb. So the file isn’t as secure as it may appear..
6. Solaris Name services
Solaris provides a mechanism for getting hostnames and usernames etc from several sources (e.g DNS, NIS, or the traditional /etc/hosts file) : the file /etc/nsswitch.conf , which may contain
hosts: files dns
this means that when you try to access a remote host by name (e.g. ping neptune) it will look for neptune first in /etc/hosts, then do an lookup in DNS (nslookup using the server specified in /etc/resolv.conf)
Similarly for usernames, you may have
passwd: files nis
So when you run a command which refers to a username (e.g. cd ~oracle ) , it first looks in /etc/passwd then does a lookup in NIS (ypmatch oracle passwd).
However you can look up hosts and users without worrying about where they are stored, using the getent command :
bash$ getent passwd oracle
oracle:##oracle:3008:5001:Oracle DBA:/export/home/oracle:/usr/local/bin/bash
bash$ getent hosts www.inkq.com
192.168.245.12 www.inkq.com
bash$ getent hosts 10.0.0.91
10.0.0.91 plop.inkq.com plop mailhost
HAPPY LEARNING!
