1WATCH-MIMEDEFANG(8) System Manager's Manual WATCH-MIMEDEFANG(8)
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6 watch-mimedefang - Keep an eye on mimedefang-multiplexor
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9 watch-mimedefang [options]
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13 watch-mimedefang is a Tk script which graphically displays the status
14 of mimedefang-multiplexor(8). Note that Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher is
15 required to run watch-mimedefang.
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19 watch-mimedefang's display is divided into three main areas, from top
20 to bottom:
21 o The graph display shows six graphs representing various statis‐
24 tics about the multiplexor.
25 o The control area shows the maximum number of slaves, number of
28 busy slaves, and number of idle slaves. The "Control Command"
29 text entry lets you monitor remote MIMEDefang servers; see
30 "REMOTE MONITORING" for details.
31 The "10s", "1m", "5m" and "10m" checkboxes allow you to enable
33 or disable the graphing of statistics averaged over the last 10
34 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 10 minutes.
35 The "Reread Filters" button forces the multiplexor to reread
37 filter rules. The "Quit" button terminates watch-mimedefang.
38 o The scale at the bottom lets you change the update interval
41 (default 500ms). Be aware that frequent updating may make
42 watch-mimedefang consume a significant fraction of CPU time.
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46 The graph area contains six graphs:
47 o Busy Slaves
50 This graph shows the number of busy slaves each time the statis‐
51 tics are sampled.
52 o Slaves/scan
55 This graph shows the average number of busy slaves each time a
56 message was scanned. The red plot shows the average over the
57 last ten seconds, the blue plot shows the average over the last
58 minute, and the green and yellow plots show the average over the
59 last five and ten minutes, respectively.
60 o Latency (ms)
63 This graph shows the average time taken by each SCAN command
64 over the last ten seconds, one minute, five minutes and ten min‐
65 utes.
66 o Messages/s
69 This graph shows the average number of messages per second that
70 were scanned.
71 o Activations/s
74 This graph shows the average number of new slaves activated per
75 second.
76 o Reaps/s
79 This graph shows the average number of slaves that have termi‐
80 nated per second.
81 If the Activations and Reaps increase significantly, it could
83 indicate heavy load, or an error causing filters to terminate
84 abnormally.
85 If only Activations increase, then it probably indicates a sud‐
87 den increase in e-mail volume.
88 If only Reaps increase, then it probably indicates a quiet time
90 just after a period of heavy mail volume.
91 You can enable or disable the ten second, one minute, five minute or
94 ten minute plots by clicking on the "10s", "1m", "5m" or "10m" check‐
95 box.
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99 Running watch-mimedefang on your actual mail server poses two problems:
100 You need Tcl/Tk and the X client libraries installed, and the CPU con‐
101 sumption of watch-mimedefang can be considerable.
102 A better method is to run watch-mimedefang on a desktop machine, but
104 have it monitor the mail server with a remote session.
105 The best way to establish a remote session is via SSH. For example, if
107 you are running MIMEDefang on "mail.mydomain.net", you can type the
108 following into the Control Command entry box and press enter:
109 ssh root@mail.mydomain.net md-mx-ctrl
111 You must have a public/private key for the target machine and you must
113 be running ssh-agent or equivalent; you cannot use an ssh command that
114 requires entry of a password or passphrase.
115 Assuming your SSH setup is correct, watch-mimedefang will open an SSH
117 connection to mail.mydomain.net and exchange low-bandwith information
118 over that session for monitoring purposes.
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122 watch-mimedefang accepts the following command-line options:
123 -command cmd
126 Use cmd as the control command. You may need to quote cmd
127 -interval msec
130 Set the update interval to msec milliseconds.
131 -10s flag
134 Enable the "10s" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
135 is 0.
136 -1m flag
139 Enable the "1m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
140 is 0.
141 -5m flag
144 Enable the "5m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
145 is 0.
146 -10m flag
149 Enable the "10m" graph plot if flag is 1, or disable it if flag
150 is 0.
151 -title string
154 Add string to the title of the main window.
155 -help Print usage information.
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161 As an example, to monitor MIMEDefang on the machine "mail.mydomain.net"
162 updating once a second, with the 5m and 10m plots turned off, use:
163 watch-mimedefang -command 'ssh root@mail.mydomain.net md-mx-ctrl' \
165 -interval 1000 -5m 0 -10m 0 -title "mail"
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169 watch-mimedefang was written by David F. Skoll <dfs@roaringpen‐
170 guin.com>. The mimedefang home page is http://www.mimedefang.org/.
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174 watch-mimedefang uses md-mx-ctrl; therefore, it probably needs to be
175 run as root or the same user as mimedefang-multiplexor, or (if you are
176 monitoring a remote machine), the SSH connection must be done as root
177 or the MIMEDefang user.
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182 mimedefang.pl(8), mimedefang-filter(5), mimedefang(8), mimedefang-pro‐
183 tocol(7), md-mx-ctrl(8), watch-multiple-mimedefangs(8)
1844th Berkeley Distribution 24 October 2002 WATCH-MIMEDEFANG(8)