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 https://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.