{"id":6972,"date":"2023-01-08T10:55:48","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T10:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/?p=6972"},"modified":"2025-11-02T12:39:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:39:57","slug":"linux-performance-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/linux-performance-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Linux Performance Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today, sar<\/code>, it seems is not part of the Debian distros, one needs to install the package sysstat<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Actually Raspbian has it installed and the CLI commands work, the question is how to set up the collector. NB<\/strong> the Debian file locations have been hard to find and the documentation suggests it runs through cron<\/code> and not a specific daemon, so no systemd<\/code>. Later reading suggests that systemd<\/code> is used on Ubuntu 22.04<\/em> and that cron<\/code> silent fails, which is what I discovered. For more about cron see cron jobs and crontab<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Raspbian and Ubuntu implementations may be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAR & sysstat<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Until sometime in 2022, the advice was to install the package, enable by editing its conf file, upload the crontab to the cron daemon. However at some point in 2022, it became  necessary to use dpkg-reconfigure<\/a> and systemd<\/code> and not the cron files, which don’t fucking work on Ubuntu<\/strong>. Here is the Ubuntu documentation<\/a> page from serverworld, and here is ubuntu’s man sadc<\/a> and man sar<\/a>. The database is held in \/var\/log\/sysstat<\/code>. I wrote a blog snip with step-by-step instructions on installing `<\/span>#sar<\/span>` on <\/span>#Raspbian<\/span> buster & <\/span>#Ubuntu22<\/span>.04 LTS to run with `<\/span>#systemd<\/span>`. <\/span>https:\/\/wp.me\/pauVx4-1Oz<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphing & Charting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, I found, https:\/\/uptrace.dev\/blog\/open-source-log-management<\/a> by uptrace, which is missing the venerable Nagios<\/a>, I found this https:\/\/opensource.com\/article\/19\/4\/log-analysis-tools<\/a>, which includes it. One problem is that these are enterprise tools and I don’t need that complexity or bloat. See also https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/event-monitoring\/<\/a> which talks about some tools including Zabbix<\/a> which has the advantage that I have been trained in, and the disadvantage that it needs a database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late 2022, I found two web charting solutions.<\/a>\u00a0 Check out Ksar<\/a>, a Java charting app, which I now have working, it’s rather cool,\u00a0need to remember we are looking for bad events. For ksar, you need Java, I found this, Installing Java on Ubuntu<\/a>. KSAR requires write access to its log directory and is likely to be run as non-root. It is best invoked via its command line request. I wrote a script for Raspbian<\/a> as I had a problem chasing down the value of the DISPLAY variable. In 2025, I found https:\/\/www.linux.com\/news\/visualize-sar-data-ksar\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am also exploring an alternative chart writer, see GNUplot<\/a> on this wiki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Cron<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While checking all this out, I came across this,how to view and read cron logs on ubuntu, debian and centos<\/a> at betterstack. Cron logs itself<\/a> in the syslog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, sar, it seems is not part of the Debian distros, one needs to install the package sysstat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[1287,1886,916,1286,1882,1879,911,343],"class_list":["post-6972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","category-technology","tag-debian","tag-ksar","tag-linux","tag-raspbian","tag-sysstat","tag-system-monitoring","tag-technology","tag-ubuntu"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/dashboard-unsplash-LaundeMorel-w1024-cropped.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6972"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13362,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions\/13362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}