The Geek Diary

Performing Network Diagnostics in Solaris 11 with “network-monitor”

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network-monitor is a fault manager daemon (fmd) transport module utility. The network-monitor module:

  • Monitors network resources
  • Reports conditions that might lead to limited or degraded network functionality
  • Generates an ireport on detecting an abnormal network condition
  • Does not diagnose the error condition
  • Does not perform any recovery actions

You can use the fmdump command to retrieve ireports.

Managing the network-monitor Module

You can use the fmadm command to report the current status of the network-monitor module, which is displayed as active when it is performing fault monitoring, as shown in the example below.

# fmadm config
MODULE              VERSION    STATUS    DESCRIPTION        
cpumem-retire       1.1        active    CPU/Memory Retire Agent      
disk-diagnosis      0.1        active    Disk Diagnosis engine     
...                  
network-monitor     1.0        active    Network monitor

You control the state of the network-monitor module by setting the enable property to true in the /usr/lib/fm/fmd/plugins/network-monitor.conf configuration file, as shown in the second example below. The monitor will be active upon reboot.

# vi /usr/lib/fm/fmd/plugins/network-monitor.conf
...
# enable
#
# Enable/disable the network-monitor. 
#
setprop enable true
...

Retrieving Reports That Are Generated by the network-monitor Module

If a problem with your network occurs, or if you suspect degraded network performance, you can retrieve the ireports that are generated by the network-monitor module by using the fmdump command. These reports include the name of the datalink for which a potential problem was detected. Use the fmdump command to retrieve the ireports:

# fmdump –Ivp –c 'ireport.os.sunos.net.datalink.*'

nvlist version: 0
    class = ireport.os.sunos.net.datalink.mtu_mismatch
    version = 0x0
    uuid = f3832064-e83b-6ce8-9545-8588db76493d pri = high
    detector = fmd:///module/network-monitor attr = (embedded nvlist)
    nvlist version: 0
  linkname = net0
  linkid = 0x3
  mtu = 0x1b58
    (end attr)
 __ttl = 0x1
 __tod = 0x513a4f2e 0x279ba218

Viewing Statistics of the network-monitor Fault Management Module

The fmstat command reports fault management module statistics. You can also use the fmstat command to view statistics for diagnosis engines and agents that are currently participating in fault management, which includes the network-monitor transport module utility. Use the fmstat command to view statistics that are kept by the network-monitor fault management module:

# fmstat –m network-monitor

                 NAME   VALUE   DESCRIPTION    
mtu-mismatch.allocerr   0       memory allocation errors     
 mtu-mismatch.enabled   true    operating status for mtu-mismatch 
 mtu-mismatch.nprobes   7       number of transmitted ICMP probes 
 mtu-mismatch.procerr   0       errors processing datalinks 
           sysev_drop   0       number of dropped sysevents 
vlan-mismatch.enabled   true    operating status for vlan-mismatch

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