NAME
watch-mimedefang - Keep an eye on mimedefang-multiplexor
SYNOPSIS
watch-mimedefang [options]
DESCRIPTION
watch-mimedefang is a Tk script which graphically displays the status
of mimedefang-multiplexor(8). Note that Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher is
required to run watch-mimedefang.
DISPLAY
watch-mimedefang’s display is divided into three main areas, from top
to bottom:
o The graph display shows six graphs representing various
statistics about the multiplexor.
o The control area shows the maximum number of slaves, number of
busy slaves, and number of idle slaves. The "Control Command"
text entry lets you monitor remote MIMEDefang servers; see
"REMOTE MONITORING" for details.
The "10s", "1m", "5m" and "10m" checkboxes allow you to enable
or disable the graphing of statistics averaged over the last 10
seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 10 minutes.
The "Reread Filters" button forces the multiplexor to reread
filter rules. The "Quit" button terminates watch-mimedefang.
o The scale at the bottom lets you change the update interval
(default 500ms). Be aware that frequent updating may make
watch-mimedefang consume a significant fraction of CPU time.
THE GRAPH AREA
The graph area contains six graphs:
o Busy Slaves
This graph shows the number of busy slaves each time the
statistics are sampled.
o Slaves/scan
This graph shows the average number of busy slaves each time a
message was scanned. The red plot shows the average over the
last ten seconds, the blue plot shows the average over the last
minute, and the green and yellow plots show the average over the
last five and ten minutes, respectively.
o Latency (ms)
This graph shows the average time taken by each SCAN command
over the last ten seconds, one minute, five minutes and ten
minutes.
o Messages/s
This graph shows the average number of messages per second that
were scanned.
o Activations/s
This graph shows the average number of new slaves activated per
second.
o Reaps/s
This graph shows the average number of slaves that have
terminated per second.
If the Activations and Reaps increase significantly, it could
indicate heavy load, or an error causing filters to terminate
abnormally.
If only Activations increase, then it probably indicates a
sudden increase in e-mail volume.
If only Reaps increase, then it probably indicates a quiet time
just after a period of heavy mail volume.
You can enable or disable the ten second, one minute, five minute or
ten minute plots by clicking on the "10s", "1m", "5m" or "10m"
checkbox.
REMOTE MONITORING
Running watch-mimedefang on your actual mail server poses two problems:
You need Tcl/Tk and the X client libraries installed, and the CPU
consumption of watch-mimedefang can be considerable.
A better method is to run watch-mimedefang on a desktop machine, but
have it monitor the mail server with a remote session.
The best way to establish a remote session is via SSH. For example, if
you are running MIMEDefang on "mail.mydomain.net", you can type the
following into the Control Command entry box and press enter:
ssh root@mail.mydomain.net md-mx-ctrl
You must have a public/private key for the target machine and you must
be running ssh-agent or equivalent; you cannot use an ssh command that
requires entry of a password or passphrase.
Assuming your SSH setup is correct, watch-mimedefang will open an SSH
connection to mail.mydomain.net and exchange low-bandwith information
over that session for monitoring purposes.
COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
watch-mimedefang accepts the following command-line options:
-command cmd
Use cmd as the control command. You may need to quote cmd
-interval msec
Set the update interval to msec milliseconds.
-10s flag
Enable the "10s" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
is 0.
-1m flag
Enable the "1m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
is 0.
-5m flag
Enable the "5m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
is 0.
-10m flag
Enable the "10m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
is 0.
-title string
Add string to the title of the main window.
-help Print usage information.
EXAMPLE
As an example, to monitor MIMEDefang on the machine "mail.mydomain.net"
updating once a second, with the 5m and 10m plots turned off, use:
watch-mimedefang -command ’ssh root@mail.mydomain.net md-mx-ctrl’ \
-interval 1000 -5m 0 -10m 0 -title "mail"
AUTHOR
watch-mimedefang was written by David F. Skoll
<dfs@roaringpenguin.com>. The mimedefang home page is
http://www.mimedefang.org/.
PERMISSIONS
watch-mimedefang uses md-mx-ctrl; therefore, it probably needs to be
run as root or the same user as mimedefang-multiplexor, or (if you are
monitoring a remote machine), the SSH connection must be done as root
or the MIMEDefang user.
SEE ALSO
mimedefang.pl(8), mimedefang-filter(5), mimedefang(8), mimedefang-
protocol(7), md-mx-ctrl(8), watch-multiple-mimedefangs(8)