uaxtools: system management tools

last updated: 28 May 2020

uaxtools: system management tools

Overview

uaxtools - overview of the tools

These tools require the uals and uak packages referenced at the bottom. The tools also require ksh. Some of the tools existed before bash and cannot be conveniently converted as bash will fork children with functions and loops while ksh does not (the issue is passing env variables, children cannot pass back to parents).

In May 2010 the paper "Tools, Tips, and Tricks for Managing Cray XT Systems" was presented at the Cray User Group. Many of the tools are described in that paper and the accompanying slides. The general (non-Cray/XT specific) tools were subsequently packaged for distribution as uaxtools.

Tools

push - push commands, files, and ConfigFiles to systems
push_unset - unset push variables
get_Machines - identify systems
upd_LinuxFiles - update ConfigFiles registry
get_ConfigFiles - identify configureation fiel
chk_sanity - validate configuration files
cmp_sanity - backcopy and compare configuration files
get_state - generate current state files
chk_state - check state files
chk_local_dirs - check mode and ownership of directories
lsof_ports - pdsh|push wrapper invoking lsof_ps.ksh
lsof_ps - uase 'lsof -Pi' to get and parse open ports
module_avail - capture 'module avail'
permchk - execute process-setuid on a platform os systems
process-setuid - analyze [sg]uid,acl,o+w files on a system
subject - generate a mail subject in a standard format
syncguid - compare uid|gid between two passwd|group files

In addition to the bin tools cited above, there are a number of sbin supporting scripts.

Configuration

The following etc files (samples provided) are utilized by uaxtools; many are scripts sourced by the tools:

etc/machines.linux
Registry of systems managed by push, chk_sanity, ...
etc/sguid.list
Registry of suid, guid, o+w, and acl files for any filesystem not mounted nosuid. Utilized by process-setuid which can regenerat the list after an upgrade.
etc/sudoers
Sample sudoers file establishing NOPASSCMDS for the tools so they can be run from a user less priviledged than root. ARSC utilized user sysmon with group linuxman.
etc/local.dirs - local directories, links, files (chk_local_dirs)
etc/uaxtools.cfg - sourced script for setup of uaxtools
etc/push.cfg - host specific setup (source): master, ssh options, ...
etc/chk_sanity.cfg - host specific setup (source)
etc/upd_LinuxFiles.cfg - host specific setup (sourced)
etc/gs.base - base sourced variables for get_state
etc/gs.host - host specific sourced variables for get_state
etc/lsof_ports.cfg - host specific setup (sourced)
etc/lsof_ps.filter - source filter of "accceptable" open ports

ARSC Documentation

The man pages were mostly quick writes, the following ARSC documents are dated and not entirely accurate, but they do have more detail than the man pages:

ConfigFiles - ARSC ConfigFiles and Push Processes
push - Overview of ARSC push command
chk_sanity - Overview of chk_sanity.ksh
cmp_sanity - Overview of cmp_sanity.ksh
permchk - Overview of permchk and process-setuid

ARSC existed from 1993 to 2015, for the complete story see wikipedia.

The uaxtools were written by Kurt Carlson, et.al., at the University of Alaska and the Arctic Region Super Computing Center. Many of the tools have been in use over two decades supporting a large range of UNIX and Linux clusters. There are periodic updates and corrections to this software, it is provided "as is".

Questions, comments, bug reports can be directed to denalisun907@gmail.com. Sourceforge files include both tar.gz and an el7.x86_64 rpm.

Other Packages

uak - general utilities and routines
uals - enhanced (very) ls
uac19 - report UVA COVID-19 csv files