How to use Shell 2 (server check)

Target:

This howto is intended for beginners.
From linux shell you can make various checks on a server. There are simple commands (but very powerful) that allow an efficient analysis of a server to test problems or performance.
I will list some of the many existing commands (for each one would need a howto…).
It would be interesting to integrate it with the ideas of all.

Premise:

For many of the following commands must be enabled rpmforge and EPEL repository (disable it at the end!)

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
rpm --import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

Process Control:

top
Install:
No need to install
Command:

top

Standard program to check processor activity in real time. Lists the use of ram and cpu for every user processes.

htop
Installation:

yum install htop

Command:

htop

As top but more user friendly. Permit filter by process, user…

ps
Installation:
No need to install
Command:

ps aux
ps -fp $(pgrep -d, http)

It lists the active processes. With the appropriate parameters it allows to monitor specific processes.

kill, killall
Installation:
No need to install
Command:

kill -9 1234
killall -9 clamd

This command is used to terminate one or more processes.
Kill requires one or more pid (separated by space); killall terminates the process by name

Network Control:

iftop
installation:

yum install iftop

Command:

iftop

Very intuitive utility to verify the use of server’s bandwidth. It identifies source and destination IP

tcptrack
Installation:

yum install tcptrack

Command:

tcptrack -i eth0

Captures network packets and determines the use of bandwidth for each IP / service

iptraf:
Installation:

yum install iptraf

Command:

iptraf

Network traffic tool. Displays for each interface tcp, udp, icmp and non IP traffic identifying source and destination.

tcpdump
Installation:
No need to install
Command:

tcpdump -i eth0
tcpdump -i eth0 > file.txt

Useful program to capture the real-time network traffic

netstat
Installation:
No need to install
Command:

netstat -r
netstat -lnp
netstat -a |grep ssh

Very useful network tool. Depending on the switch, you can check the settings or analyze the listening processes.

trafshow
Installation:

yum install trafshow

Command:

trafshow -i eth0
trafshow -n -i eth0 tcp

Monitoring network traffic in real time

File control:

lsof
Installation:
No need to install
Command:

lsof 
lsof |grep "stringa" 
lsof +D /var/log/

Command line utility used to list information about the files that are opened.

iotop
Installation:

yum install iotop

Command:

iotop
iotop -o

Program to monitor in real time the disk activity. It identify the processes that cause it.
With -o parameter displays only the processes that generate traffic, hiding inactive.

smbstatus
Installation:
No need to install if samba is installed
Command:

sbmstatus

Command that lists the files opened by samba share

11 Likes

Thank you @enzoturri.
This are great tools I don’t know and I will check it out.
Will you add it at your HowTo?

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I see that many people here appreciate Linux Basic Guides and Tricks, what do you think about open more discussions?

1 Like