Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Lab 11 – System/Log monitoring commands and System Information/Maintenance Commands

top
 The top command has been around a long time and is very useful for viewing details of
running processes and quickly identifying issues such as memory hogs. Its default view is
shown below.

cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ top
top - 11:56:28 up 1 day, 13:37, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.04, 0.03

Tasks: 292 total, 3 running, 225 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

%Cpu(s): 0.1 us, 0.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.7 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st

KiB Mem : 16387132 total, 10854648 free, 1859036 used, 3673448 buff/cache

KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 free, 0 used. 14176540 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

17270 alan 20 0 3930764 247288 98992 R 0.7 1.5 5:58.22 gnome-shell

20496 alan 20 0 816144 45416 29844 S 0.5 0.3 0:22.16 gnome-terminal-

21110 alan 20 0 41940 3988 3188 R 0.1 0.0 0:00.17 top

1 root 20 0 225564 9416 6768 S 0.0 0.1 0:10.72 systemd

2 root 20 0 0 0 0S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd

4 root 0 -20 0 0 0I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
6 root 0 -20 0 0 0I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mm_percpu_wq
7 root 20 0 0 0 0S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 ksoftirqd/0

cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ top-p20881 -p20882 -p20895

Tasks: 4 total, 0 running, 4 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

%Cpu(s): 2.8 us, 1.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 95.9 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 16387132 total, 10856008 free, 1857648 used, 3673476 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 free, 0 used. 14177928 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
20881 alan 20 0 12016 348 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 nginx
20882 alan 20 0 12460 1644 932 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 nginx
cbkpc@ ubuntu:~$ h top
20895 alan 20 0 12016 352 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 nginx

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htop

cbkpc@ubuntu:~$ htop

df

 The df command (short for disk free), is used to display information related to file
systems about total space and available space.
 Syntax : df [OPTION]... [FILE]...
 If no file name is given, it displays the space available on all currently mounted file
systems.
Example 1: cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ df
Portion of output:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 3996816 0 3996816 0% /dev
tmpfs 804624 10020 794604 2% /run
/dev/sda9 68117056 18036160 46597712 28% /
Example 2: specify particular file, then it will show mount information of that particular file.
For example: cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ df /home/cbkpc/test/test.cpp

Output:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda10 78873504 67528220 7315640 91% /home
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iostat
 The iostat command in Linux is used for monitoring system input/output statistics for
devices and partitions.
 Note: iostat is being included in sysstat package. If user doesn’t have it, user need to
install first. (apt-get install sysstat)
 Syntax: iostat
 Options used:
o -x: This command shows more details statistics information.
o -c: This command show only the CPU statistic.
o -d: This command displays only the device report
 Example: cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ iostat –x
Linux 5.19.0-43-generic (ubuntu) 05/06/23 _x86_64_ (1 CPU)
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
5.87 0.43 1.94 13.39 0.00 78.37
Device tps kB_read/s kB_wrtn/s kB_dscd/s kB_read kB_wrtn kB_dscd
loop0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 17 0 0
loop1 0.01 0.08 0.00 0.00 349 0 0
loop10 0.01 0.08 0.00 0.00 350 0 0
loop11 0.08 1.47 0.00 0.00 6764 0 0
free
 free command is used to view memory consumption
 cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7976 6459 1517 0 865 2248
-/+ buffers/cache: 3344 4631
Swap: 1951 0 1951

 The m option displays all data in MBs.

cat /proc/cpuinfo
 The file /proc/cpuinfo displays what type of processor the user system is running
including the number of CPUs present.
 cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family 6
model 45
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 0 @ 2.20GHz
stepping 6
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microcode 1561
cpu MHz : 600.000
cache size : 20480 KB

cat /proc/meminfo
 On Linux, user can use the command cat /proc/meminfo to determine how much
memory the computer has.

• cbkpc@ubuntulinux~$ cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 8167848 kB
MemFree: 1409696 kB
Buffers: 961452 kB
Cached: 2347236 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 1998844 kB
SwapFree: 1998844 kB
...

Work on log directory:

/var/log

 It is essential that user know where the log files are located, and what is contained in
them. Such files are usually in /var/log. Logging is controlled by the associated .conf file.
cbkpc@ubuntu:~$ ls /var/log

alternatives.log cups kern.log.1

alternatives.log.1 dist-upgrade kern.log.2.gz
apport.log dmesg lastlog
apport.log.1 dmesg.0 openvpn
apport.log.2.gz dmesg.1.gz private
apt dmesg.2.gz speech-dispatcher
auth.log dmesg.3.gz syslog
auth.log.1 dmesg.4.gz syslog.1
auth.log.2.gz dpkg.log syslog.2.gz
Few log files:
 /var/log/messages – Contains global system messages, including the messages that are
logged during system startup. There are several things that are logged in
/var/log/messages including mail, cron, daemon, kern, auth, etc.
 /var/log/auth.log – Contains system authorization information, including user logins and
authentication machinsm that were used.
 /var/log/boot.log – Contains information that are logged when the system boots
 /var/log/lastlog – Displays the recent login information for all the users. This is not an
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ascii file. User should use lastlog command to view the content of this file.
 /var/log/user.log – Contains information about all user level logs
 /var/log/btmp – This file contains information about failed login attemps. Use the last
command to view the btmp file. For example, “last -f /var/log/btmp | more”
 /var/log/yum.log – Contains information that are logged when a package is installed
using yum

 /var/log/cron – Whenever cron daemon (or anacron) starts a cron job, it logs the
information about the cron job in this file
Example: sudo cat /var/log/auth.lo

cbkpc@ubuntu:~$ sudo tail -5 /var/log/auth.log

Jun 5 12:42:01 ubuntu CRON[8049]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user cbkpc

Jun 5 12:43:01 ubuntu CRON[8066]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user

cbkpc(uid=1000) by (uid=0)

Jun 5 12:43:01 ubuntu CRON[8066]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user cbkpc

Jun 5 12:43:40 ubuntu sudo: cbkpc : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/cbkpc ; USER=root ;

COMMAND=/usr/bin/tail -10 /var/log/auth.log

Jun 5 12:43:40 ubuntu sudo: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by
(uid=1000)

cbkpc@ubuntu:~$ sudo tail -5 /var/log/boot.log

[ OK ] Started Authorization Manager.

Starting Modem Manager...

[ OK ] Started Power Profiles daemon.

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System maintenance commands:

Shutdown

 “Shutdown” refers to the process of stopping and shutting down a computer or server.
 Standard command for shutting down Linux
o shutdown –h
 Linux will shut down in under a minute. The “-h” option explicitly stands
for the shutting down or powering off of a system.
o shutdown
 User can usually produce the same results by just entering the shutdown
command on its own.
 Standard command for restarting Linux
o shutdown -r
 Linux will be restarted in under a minute.
 The “-r” option stands for reboot or restart.
 Command for shutting down Linux immediately
o shutdown -h 0 // time Specification 0
o shutdown now
 Another common command for shutting down Linux immediately:
 Command for restarting Linux immediately
o shutdown -r 0 // time Specification 0
o shutdown -r now
 Command for Shutting Down/Restart Linux after 20 minutes
o shutdown -h 20
o shutdown +20
o shutdown -r 20
o shutdown –r +20
o shutdown -h 17:30 // Shutting down at 5.30pm
o shutdown -r 17:30 // Restarting at 5.30pm

Rebooting
 Booting is starting a computer's operating system, so rebooting is to start it for a
second or third time.
 sudo reboot
 sudo systemctl reboot
 sudo shutdown -r
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halt
 This command in Linux is used to instruct the hardware to stop all the CPU
functions.
 Basically, it reboots or stops the system.
 halt [OPTION]
 Options used:
o -f, –force It does not invoke shutdown
o -w, –wtmp-only It will not call shutdown or the reboot system call but writes the
shutdown record to /var/log/wtmp file.
o -p, –poweroff To behave as poweroff
init

 init is parent of all Linux processes with PID or process ID of 1.

 It is the first process to start when a computer boots up and runs until the system shuts
down.

 init stands for initialization.The role of init is to create processes from script stored in
the file /etc/inittab which is aconfiguration file which is to be used by initialization
system.
 Run Levels is the state of init where a group of processes are defined to start at the
startupof OS.Each runlevel has a certain number of services stopped or started.
Conventionally sevenrunlevel exist numbers from zero to six.

Run Level Mode Action

0 Halt Shuts down system
Does not configure network interfaces,
1 Single-User Mode
start daemons, or allow non-root logins
Does not configure network interfaces or
2 Multi-User Mode
start daemons.
Multi-User Mode
3 Starts the system normally.
with Networking
4 Undefined Not used/User-definable
5 X11 As runlevel 3 + display manager(X)
6 Reboot Reboots the system

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System update & repositories

Update the Repositories

 sudo apt-get update
 This command refreshes local list of software, making a note of any newer
revisions andupdates.

Run the upgrade

 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
 The “dist-upgrade” switch asks Ubuntu to handle any dependencies intelligently.

Packaging Manager
 Packaging manager is the software used for managing, installing, updating,
upgrading
etc. of the packages of a system.
 Linux based systems or Linux systems have a lot of such packaging managers in
whichtwo are: yum and rpm.

yum
 Yum and RPM are both package managers for Linux systems.
 Yum stands for Yellowdog Updater Modified. They are packaging managers for
RPM-based Linux systems.

 Yum can only install the packages available in its repository.

 Yum can also scan and upgrade the packages to the latest versions. It also
entirely relieson online repositories.
rpm
 RPM stands for Redhat Packaging Manager.
 It can be considered one of the oldest packaging managers that do basic
functions likeuninstalling, updating, archiving the packages received by the Linux
systems.

 It can install multiple packages with the condition that we give the correct file
name withthe .rpm extension.

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