Ubuntu Manpage: watch-mimedefang - Keep an eye on mimedefang-multiplexor

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 workers, number of busy workers, and number  of  idle
              workers.  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 Workers
This graph shows the number of busy workers each time the statistics are sampled.

o Workers/scan
This graph shows the average number of busy workers 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 workers activated per second.

o Reaps/s
This graph shows the average number of workers 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  Dianne  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.