http://www.sarcheck.com/soltech.

htm SarCheck will find a few bugs in the sar utility (for example, occasional negati ve sar -b numbers), so here's the FAQ section from the manual. These questions m ake up 80 percent of our support calls. What versions of Solaris are supported by the SarCheck? Should I implement recommendations which only show up occasionally? Every time I make changes based on SarCheck s recommendations, it makes more r ecommendations. Why doesn't it just figure out the correct values for all the pa rameters? When I try to run sarcheck, I get the message sarcheck: not found . What s wrong? How long does it take SarCheck to perform the analysis? Why do I get the message "WARNING: Bad sar -b data has been detected"? I added the SUNWaccu and SUNWaccr packages, but I can't find the sa1 and sa2 scripts in the crontab entries for sys. Now what? Why do I get the message "sa[0-3][0-9]: No such file or directory"? Why do I get the message "sar[0-3][0-9]: No such file or directory"? Recent enhancements and the current version of SarCheck for Solaris SPARC Why did SarCheck stop producing reports? Why do I get the message "/dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist"? Why do I get the message "kvm_open open error"? Why do I get the message "/opt/sarcheck/bin/analyze syntax error at line 1.. ."? Why do I get the message "sar: malloc failed Not enough space"? How do I concatenate the following files in order to produce a multiday anal ysis? sar18 sar19 sar20 How do I change the starting and ending times of the period being analyzed? Why don't I get any disk performance information? What version of Solaris am I running? Back to the SarCheck home page Frequently asked questions (FAQ): What versions of Solaris are supported by the SarCheck? SarCheck supports Solaris SPARC 8+ and Solaris x86 10+. SarCheck uses our ZoneHo und product to monitor Solaris Zones because this information is not present in sar. Should I implement recommendations which only show up occasionally? Feel free to try, but implement the regularly occurring recommendations first, s ince those will address the most frequently occurring problems. If SarCheck occa sionally recommends increasing the amount of memory, you should certainly try it . On systems with some extra memory, SarCheck will be able to make additional re commendations that could not be made on systems where memory is tight . Every time I make changes based on SarCheck s recommendations, it makes more recom mendations. Why doesn't it just figure out the correct values for all the parame ters? That s not how real performance tuning works. There are no correct values because tu ning is a series of compromises between various system resources. Performance tu ning involves a certain degree of trial and error, and gradual change is the onl y way to do it. When I try to run sarcheck, I get the message sarcheck: not found . What s wrong?

Check the following: Are you root? Does the sarcheck script really exist? (look for /opt/sarcheck/bin/sarcheck) . Is /opt/sarcheck/bin in your PATH variable? (echo $PATH) How long does it take SarCheck to perform the analysis? SarCheck uses approximately one second of CPU time to analyze a simple sar repor t . Why do I get the message "WARNING: Bad sar -b data has been detected"? This is apparently caused by a bug in sar but we haven't seen it since Solaris 2 .5.1. Check the sar -b statistics for negative numbers. Their presence is an ind ication of the sar bug. I added the SUNWaccu and SUNWaccr packages, but I can't find the sa1 and sa2 scr ipts in the crontab entries for sys. Now what? Uncomment or add these lines to the crontab entries for user sys: 0 * * * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa1 20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa1 5 18 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -s 8:00 -e 18:01 -i 1200 -A Why do I get the message "sa[0-3][0-9]: No such file or directory"? This The r is has message indicates that there are no sar data files for sarcheck to analyze. most common cause of this message is that there's a problem with the way sa set up, or possibly the kernel was built at least 7 days ago and the system not been rebooted since then.

Why do I get the message "sar[0-3][0-9]: No such file or directory"? This message indicates that there are no sar report files for sarcheck to analyz e. The most common cause of this message is that there's a problem with the way sar is set up, or possibly the system is shut down at night before the sa2 scrip t can be run by cron. Why did SarCheck stop producting reports? Run 'analyze' and look for the expiration date at the bottom of the usage text. If you've licensed SarCheck and the expiration date doesn't make sense to you, r un 'analyze -s' and send us the output. Why do I get the message "/dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist" or "kvm_op en open error"? These messages indicate that a 32-bit version of the /opt/sarcheck/bin/analyze p rogram is trying to read a 64-bit kernel. If you only see the kvm_open error mes sage, it's possible that you're trying to run SarCheck from a non-root account. Generally this problem indicates that you need the 64-bit version of SarCheck fo r Solaris SPARC. Contact us for a 64-bit version of SarCheck for Solaris SPARC. Why do I get the message "/opt/sarcheck/bin/analyze syntax error at line 1..."? This message indicates that you are trying to run the 64-bit version of SarCheck on a 32-bit system. Contact us for a 32-bit version of SarCheck.

Why do I get the message "sar: malloc failed Not enough space"? This is a sar problem, not a SarCheck problem. The message usually means that cr on is running the sa1 script twice instead of once. For example, if your crontab entries look like this: 0 * * * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa1 0,20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa1 The sa1 script gets run twice at 8:00 on weekday mornings, and gets run twice ev ery hour after that until 17:00. This example was taken from an actual support c all, and the problem disappeared once the second line was changed to this: 20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa1 How do I concatenate the following files in order to produce a multiday analysis ? sar18 sar19 sar20 There are several ways. The easiest is: cat /var/adm/sa/sar18 /var/adm/sa/sar19 /var/adm/sa/sar20 > /tmp/multisar Other ways are cat `ls /var/adm/sa/sar?? | egrep '1(8|9)|20'` > /tmp/multisar or the somewhat easier to read: cat `ls /var/adm/sa/sar?? | egrep '18|19|20'` > /tmp/multisar The question you'll probably ask is how to concatenate any sar report which is l ess than 10 (or some other number) days old. To do that: cat `/usr/bin/find /var/adm/sa \( -name 'sar*' \) -mtime -10` > /tmp/multisar How do I change the starting and ending times of the period being analyzed? This answer assumes that you know a little about shell scripts and how to edit t hem. If you run 'sarcheck', you'll have to edit the sarcheck script. Edit /opt/sarche ck/bin/sarcheck, changing the values of the ST (start time) and EN (end time) va riables. Pick starting and ending times that are the times of day when you're mo st concerned about performance. Be careful not to include the times of the day w hen you perform backups, because backup activity is not like most user activity and recommendations will not be optimized for the load put on the system by prod uction activity. If you use the 'analyze' program to produce SarCheck reports in the /var/adm/sa directory, you'll have to edit the crontab entry which runs /usr/lib/sa/sa2 , ch anging the -s and -e switches. Regardless of whether you run 'sarcheck' or 'analyze' to produce a SarCheck repo rt, you should collect data at consistent intervals throughout the monitoring pe riod. By default, sar data is collected every 20 minutes between 8:00 and 18:00 on weekdays and every 60 minutes at other times. Edit the crontab entry which ru ns /usr/lib/sa/sa1 to make sure that the data is collected at the same intervals during the entire period you wish to analyze.

Why don't I get any disk performance information? Many years ago, a customer reported solving this problem on Solaris 2.6 with pat ch 106818-02, and we haven't seen the problem since. If you're not getting disk information in your SarCheck report and only the headers show up in the sar repo rt, this is a sar problem and there may be a patch that can help you. Check with Oracle to find out what patch, if any, you need.