SUMMARY: Troubleshooting tips?

My original question was about what tools you can use to troubleshoot OS
problems and possibly track down performance problems.  I originally listed
the following utilities that are useful to use and files that are useful to
look at:

dmesg
/usr/platform/sbin/`uname -m`/prtdiag -v
/var/adm/messages
/var/log/syslog
/var/crash

I got two responses to my query.  The first suggested using 'sar', 'vmstat'
and 'iostat' to help diagnose performance issues (though I'll note that the
use of sar is only useful for when you know a problem is going to happen and
not so useful in an investigation of a previous event. . . and generally you
don't want to run sar on your boxes unless you're specifically looking at
it's performance)

The second response suggested using 'df', 'mount' and investigating
/etc/mnttab to make sure the right filesystems are being mounted.  Also,
'top' can be used to identify runaway processes and 'swap -s' can be used to
identify swap space usage.

These are all good suggestions and things I had not mentioned (but knew
about).  I guess there are only so many things you can do ex post facto to
determine why a machine rebooted/crashed if no useful information was
written to an appropriate log file.

Included below is my original message.

On Mon, 8 Oct 2001, Dylan Northrup wrote:

:=I'm wondering what useful tools people use to troubleshoot problems at a
:=system level (preferrably those that are in the default Solaris install, but
:=third party utils are useful as well).  Some of the first things I'll check
:=are any suspicious entries in /var/adm/messages, /var/log/syslog,
:=/usr/platform/sbin/`uname -m`/prtdiag -v, looking in /var/crash, etc.
:=
:=I'm wondering what are the other things you'd do on a generic Solaris
:=2.{6,7,8} box to look for causes of reboots, poor performance, etc.
:=
:=--
:=Dylan Northrup <*> northrup@loudcloud.com <*> Evil Dylan, the Unix Dylan
:="Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's
:= really worth it if you give it a try." - Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'
:=
:=

--
Dylan Northrup <*> northrup@loudcloud.com <*> Evil Dylan, the Unix Dylan
"Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's
 really worth it if you give it a try." - Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'