Using the command snapshots to really control your system

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This way to monitor, possible from 4.0.3 version, allows you to  capture output from commands, different from parsing a single value or string. This module stores the information as text, but with the purpose to get the exact output of the command, not as single data. It will show you the same output format and contents as was return by the command.

An image is better than words, so:

 

This is the “netstat -an” command output, captured by Pandora FMS, after clicking in the special icon for command snapshot, only available when we got a multiline text -non splitted- output.

For example, just imagine you got random events on big CPU % or Memory in the server, but you never know what is happening, because when you connect the server is everything OK, so the ideal thing will have a “photo” of the system to detect what happen in specific time lapse, something like a TOP screenshot.

Why not ?

In this way, you will, the agent will generate command snapshot almost for any command (just replace “netstat….” by your command). Some useful suggestions for Unix systems are:

* top -b -n 1
* ps aux
* vmstat 1 5
* who 
* last -10

On Windows systems:

* tasklist
* netstat -an
* net start

You can get more technical information in our documentation.