WESTERN REGION TECHNICAL ATTACHMENT
NO. 98-29
July 28, 1998

AWIPS SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM

Jason Burks - WRH, SSD - Salt Lake City, UT

[Editor's Note: This program streamlines the time it takes for the ESA or AWIPS Focal Point to check the health of the AWIPS system. It is strongly encouraged that sites take advantage of this program.]

Introduction

The AWIPS System Managers Manual describes several tasks to be performed daily by the local AWIPS System Administrator. The tasks to be performed check vital AWIPS system functions including: disk usage on the main data storage area, the operation of 33 separate processes such as decoders, and data ingests, along with CPU usage and the Informix Database. These separate procedures provide the System Administrator with information on the current state of the AWIPS system and alert the Administrator to any possible problems. A System Administrator can perform this list of procedures in about one hour if no conflicts are encountered.

Program Information

Western Region SSD has developed a program to perform the daily System Administrator tasks and report results using a graphical user interface. This program performs the following tasks:

  • Checks disk usage on the FXA_DATA directory.
  • Checks for the existence of 33 vital processes on AS1, AS2, and DS1.
  • Checks Level 0 archive improper exiting, completed checkpoints, current log files, backing up of current log files, and checks size of logs to make sure they are increasing on Informix Database.
  • Checks CPU usage and idle time.
  • Checks Xserver size on each workstation

    The tasks can be performed individually or all at once, and the results are displayed graphically with additional text information. With this program, tasks that once took the System Administrator one hour, can now be performed in approximately one minute with the click of a button. The program provides several other options for checking system status besides the System Administrator daily tasks.

    The program also allows the user to execute Informix commands such as "onstat -m", "onstat -l", and "onstat -g dri", and view the output which allows the user to evaluate the performance of the Informix Database operations. A radar troubleshooting feature has been added to aid in the diagnosis of missing radar data. The radar troubleshooter tails several log files which record information about radar data ingest and processing and displays the results in a window. The two added features, combined with the common System Administrator task capabilities, make this program a useful tool for the System Administrators of the AWIPS system.

    How to Load Onto System

    The program, along with instructions, can be found on the Western Region homepage, awips.wrh.noaa.gov. SSD plans to continue to improve this program as the AWIPS system evolves.