start_activity(1)
NAME
start_activity - instructs the Network Weather Service to start monitoring resources
SYNOPSIS
start_activity [-F][-a][-f file] host [attribute:value ...]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page explains the start_activity program. You can start to
monitor resources using start_activity and you can use halt_activity(1)
to stop the monitoring.
start_activity contacts a nws_sensor(1) running on host and instructs
it to start the activity specified by attribute:value. Here is a list
of attribute you can specify (is not complete)
- name
- specifies the unique name that specifies the activity to be started. If you don't specify one, an automatic one will be generated.
- skillName
- specify the resource that can be monitored (cpuMonitor, diskMonitor, memoryMonitor, tcpConnectMonitor, tcpMessageMonitor)
- controlName
- specify the control that is ultimately responsible for how frequently measurements are taken. periodic and clique are the allowed values: the former takes one host measurements (cpuMonitor) and the latter takes care of the multiple host measurements (tcpMessageMonitor)
- member
- specify a host that is part of this clique. Tipically you will have at least 2 of these options. You can specify members with the host:port format. Currently there is a limitation of 100 member for a clique.
- period
- specify how many seconds between measurements.
- size
- specify the size of the experiment to be conducted (valid only for 2 hosts experiments like bandwidth experiment). This is the total number of kB sent for a single experiment (default is 64 for versions 2.6 and smaller, 256 for the others).
- message
- specify the size of the messagei (measured in kB) to be used during network experiments. It cannot be bigger then what specify by size. Default is 16 kB.
- buffer
- specify the buffer to be requested when opening a socket to conduct a network experiment (measured in kB). Not all systems allows the user to change this value: NWS will revert to what is allowed in this case. Default is 32 kB.
- You can see EXAMPLES later on for a simple example.
OPTIONS
- -F
- force the nws_sensor to start the activity even if a record still exists in the nws_nameserver
- -a
- restart all activities on this host
- -f file
- read attribute:value from file instead of the command line.
EXAMPLES
- Let's suppose we have few machines already running nws_sensor(1) and
that we want these nodes to begin performing measurements (of latency
and bandwidth in this example). Let A, B and C be three such hosts. You
can create a configuration file that defines this situation and then
execute start_activity to refer to this configuration using the -f
switch. Here is a sample configuration file:
- name:pippo
- controlName:clique
- skillName:tcpMessageMonitor
- member:A
- member:B
- member:C
- size:32
- period:120
- This instucts the sensors to form a clique named pippo whose members are A, B and C, that uses a message size of 32K and that takes measurements every 120 seconds. The command line will be
- start_activity -f file A
BUGS
Bugs list is at http://nws.cs.ucsb.edu. <http://nws.cs.ucsb.edu>
AUTHOR
NWS is an original idea of Rich Wolski Rich Wolski (rich@cs.ucsb.edu)
who came up with the original nws_memory.
Neil Spring, Jim Hayes (jhayes@cs.ucsd.edu) and Martin Swany maintained
and enhanced it.
Graziano Obertelli (graziano@cs.ucsb.edu) currently maintains NWS and
wrote this man page.