Unix/Linux Servers

Spotlight can monitor the following operating systems:

  • Red Hat Enterprise 7.3
  • Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server V12 SP2

Unix/Linux Server Software

Ensure the following programs are accessible to the user logged on to the Unix/Linux machine.

  • Perl 5.x
  • awk
  • cat
  • date
  • df
  • grep
  • ifconfig
  • iostat
  • netstat
  • ps
  • sar
  • sed
  • tr
  • uname
  • uptime
  • vmstat
  • wc
  • who

Additional Server Software

Install the sysstat package. On Ubuntu and SUSE the sysstat package is not installed by default. If this package is not installed the Spotlight Overview page Storage panel Disk Activity metrics and Disk Writes/Reads flows will show no data.

Install on Ubuntu

Install the sysstat package on Ubuntu by command:

apt-get install sysstat

or

sudo apt-get install sysstat

If sysstat is installed after the Spotlight Connection is created then to show data you must disable then reneable the Spotlight Connetion. From the Connections pane, right click on the Spotlight Connection and select Disable Monitoring. Right click on the Spotlight Connection again and select the option to enable monitoring.

Install on SUSE

Install sysstat from: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=server%3Amonitoring&package=sysstat

Enter commands:

systemctl start sysstat
systemctl enable sysstat
systemctl status sysstat

If all commands are successful then the status of sysstat will be “active”.

User Permissions

  • The Unix/Linux user should have no special processing on log-on. In particular there must be no input required from the user, and nor should any special login banners be displayed.
  • The sysstat package must be installed to enable the user to get detailed disk I/O information.
  • The /proc filesystem must be present.
  • The sshd daemon must be installed and running and configured to receive remote connections.
  • The Unix/Linux user must have read/write access to /tmp

Remote Connectivity: SSH

  • The connection type SSH is supported.

  • Commands to observe system activity (for example, netstat, vmstat, iostat, sar) must be accessible to SSH sessions for Spotlight to observe Unix activity. Ensure these commands are located in the search path for SSH sessions. If not, Spotlight will display an error.

  • Spotlight supports both SSH1 and SSH2 protocols.

  • To allow Spotlight to make SSH connections to any Unix or Linux hosts that permit SSH connections, you may need to alter the PasswordAuthentication configuration item in the sshd_config file. Set the value of PasswordAuthentication to yes. Once you have modified the sshd_config file you must restart the sshd process to apply the new setting.

Network Ports

Spotlight requires the port for SSH (secure shell) connection to the Unix/Linux server to be open. The port is open by default. The port number is 22 by default