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Scripts
Introduction
In this section the various scripts which are contained in this package are
described. For the ease of the reader they are classified in the following
categories:
- Test scripts
- The main scripts which are executing the network performance tests at the
control host and at the test hosts.
- Test help scripts
- There are help scripts which are invoked by the main measurement
scripts.
- Server / client scripts
- These scripts may be used for the remote invocation from the net performance
scripts at the test client hosts. They may form a replacement for the remote
or secure shell.
- User scripts
- These scripts can be invoked by the user for some additional tasks.
More information about the scripts described in this section can be obtained
from:
- The hyperlinks from the measurement script names. These are referring to the
HTML versions of the manual pages of the RTPL
package.
- The installed manual pages of the RTPL package by
using the
man
program. To be able to do this, it is required
that the installed manual package directory will be recognised by the
man
program. Please consult your system documentation for more
information.
Test scripts
These scripts are the main scripts which are performing the network tests
at the control and test hosts. There
are the following measurement scripts:
net_test_hosts_ext
- This script executes the network performance measurements at the control
host for a hosts set with a particular hosts extension. Please note that the
hosts extension hosts_ext will be defined during the installation
of the corresponding hosts set. See
install.html
for more
information. This script contains the parameters, specified during the
installation procedure, that are specific for this hosts set. It invokes the
script net_test
, specifying these
parameters with the script arguments, to perform the real network
performance tests. Besides these tests also some extra tasks are dome by
this script such as truncation of the log files.
net_test
- This script actually performs the network performance measurements conform
to the scheme which is displayed in the
measurement procedure figure. For
all tests hosts from this figure,
the following scripts are executed in two successive loops:
- Check if the net performance servers, listed below, are properly
running. They are (re)started when this is not the case.
- The script
start_netserver
is used to check the netserver
daemons that are needed
for the throughput measurements.
- When UDP bandwidth measurements from the
UDPmon package are selected in the hosts setup, the
start_udpmon_resp
script will check the udpmon_resp
server that is used for
these tests.
- The script
host_net_test
is
invoked with a remote shell to process the measurements at that
host i. The test parameters (a.o. the destination hosts
of the tests) are also specified with the script arguments. It stores
the measurement values, obtained from the Standard Input of
host_net_test
, in the
appropriate data structures.
start_netserver
- This script checks if the
netserver
daemon from the
Netperf package is running at the local host. It is started when this
is not the case. Also multiple instances from a running
netserver
are killed. They are often introduced by a network
failure. In general these processes do not disappear anymore without
intervention.
start_udpmon_resp
- This script checks if the
start_udpmon_resp
daemon from the
UDPmon package is running at the local host. It is started when this
is not the case. Also multiple instances from a running
udpmon_resp
server are killed.
host_net_test
- This script performs the network performance measurements from the local
host to the specified destination hosts specified in the arguments. Also the
test parameters are specified with the argument vector. The results are
listed to the Standard Output.
Test help scripts
These scripts are used by the main measurement scripts for auxiliary tasks. They
are less important. Therefore, they are described briefly here. More information
can be found in the (HTML) manual pages.
get_user_pids
- This script is used by
net_test_hosts_ext
if another instance of the performance measurements is already running.
timeout_command
- This script is used by
net_test_hosts_ext
to set a timeout for various remote commands started by this script.
redir_file
- This script is used by
net_test_hosts_ext
in the exceptional situation that the test data files must be copied to
another host. A reason may be that there is no Web server at the control
host, while, due to a firewall, there is not other host available to do the
tests.
- See the comment headers in the configuration template
InstallRoot/config/config.mk
for more information. The directory InstallRoot is the directory
you used to install this package.
untar_dir
- This script is also used for the copying of the test data from the control
host to another host. It is used for the copying of the
data directories, while
redir_file
, listed above, is used for
the copying of the data files.
Server / client scripts
These scripts may be used for the remote invocation from the net performance
scripts at the
test client hosts invoked by the control host. The following scripts are
available:
net_test_com_server
- This server script is used at the test client hosts to start the net
performance tests at that host and report the results to the control
host.
start_net_test_com_server
- This script is used to start the
net_test_com_server
server at
the test client host when it does not yet run.
rem_net_test_com
- This client script is used by the control host to start the net performance
tests at the appropriate test host and to receive the reports from the
net_test_com_server
server at
that test host.
User scripts
Besides the scripts, used to execute the network performance measurements, there
are also scripts available to offer extra functionality to the user. These
scripts are described below.
log_hosts_ext
- This script can be used to follow the log file from the net performance
tests at the control host for the hosts set with the hosts extension
hosts_ext. When
xtail
is installed at your system, also the
crontab
log file is followed. In a X Windows
environment a new xterm
terminal emulator is used for the
logging. This script may be useful for checking the status of the
monitor.
net_test_mean_hosts_ext
- This script can be used to recalculate the mean data files for the hosts set
configuration with the hosts extension hosts_ext. The mean data
files of the performance monitor are periodically updated. This implies that
there is a reasonable chance that they may become corrupted. A cause for
corruption may be irregularities in the monitor due to network problems.
However, a stable factor in the monitor is the week data files: a week data
file stays unchanged when the corresponding week is ended. Therefore, the
week data files are used at the recalculation of the mean data files.
- See also the discussion in the
"Measurement Strategy" section.
- The real calculation is done by the
net_test_mean
script. However, the
usage of this script is more convenient because all appropriate arguments
are specified by it in the correct form to
net_test_mean
.
net_test_mean
- This script can be used to recalculate the mean data files. However, do not
use it directly but use the
net_test_mean_hosts_ext
script instead: that
script contains the required arguments in the correct form to recalculate
the mean data files for the hosts set with hosts extension
hosts_ext.
mean_time_net_test
- The Web pages contains various data files where the mean values are
calculated as a function of the hours of the day where the data were
measured. See also the
description of the data files. This
script makes it possible to make a more precise definition of the domain
where the mean time data are calculated. The mean values can be calculated
for the throughput and round-trip values. The domain can be specified with
the following attributes
- The weeks.
- The days in the week.
- The hours in the day.
- The script
list_net_test_weeks
can be
used to translate a week interval, in which the mean values should be
calculated, into week numbers in a form suited to specify to this
script.
- Besides calculating mean values this script can also determine the minimum
and maximum values at the hours of the day.
hist_net_test
- This script calculates a histogram from the weekly data files. The histogram
will be calculated for the connection from a source host to a destination
host. The histogram can be calculated for the throughput and round-trip
values. Also here the script
list_net_test_weeks
can be
used to translate week intervals into week number options which are suited
to supply to this script.
event_net_test
- This script lists net performance events which are specified using
Perl regular expressions. The throughput
and round-trip values may be used in these expressions. Also here the script
list_net_test_weeks
can be
used to translate week intervals into week number options which are suited
to supply to this script.
list_net_test_weeks
- This script lists the information of the weeks from which the data are
stored for a particular host set. Optionally also the hosts can be listed
which are participating in the tests for a particular week. Alternatively,
when a week interval rate is specified, the available weeks can be grouped
in a form suited to other scripts from this package. For instance this can
be used to calculate the mean values for all data obtained in a particular
week interval rate, using the script
mean_time_net_test
.
sed_net_data
- This script executes the stream editor
sed
at all net data
files in the net data directory tree.
- Please note that the data files can become corrupted when you make an error.
Therefore, follow the instructions in the
"WARNING" section of the
sed_net_data(1) man page.
update_net_data_headers
- This script updates some fixed header values in all net performance data
files with the values from the configuration files. This is especially
useful when you made a change to a configuration file.
- Please note that the data files can become corrupted when you make an error.
Therefore, follow the instructions in the
"WARNING" section of the
update_net_data_headers(1) man page.
net_load
- This script can be used to determine the various routes between sites
participating in this package. Also the network load at these routes,
induced by the traffic generated at the participating sites, can be
calculated.
- See also the "Net load" sub
section contained in the
"Description" section of this
manual.
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