OSWbb collects and archives operating system and network metrics that you can use to diagnose performance issues. OSWbb operates as a set of background processes on the server and gathers data on a regular basis, invoking such Unix utilities as vmstat, mpstat, netstat, iostat, and top.

OSWbb is particularly useful for Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) and Oracle Grid Infrastructure configurations. The RAC-DDT (Diagnostic Data Tool) script file includes OSWbb, but does not install it by default.

To install OSWbb:

1. Log in to My Oracle Support (MOS) at https://support.oracle.com.

2. Download OSWatcher from the link listed by Doc ID 301137.1 at https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=301137.1.

3. Copy the file to the directory where you want to install OSWbb, and run the following command:

   sudo tar xvf oswbbVERS.tar

   VERS represents the version number of OSWatcher, for example 730 for OSWatcher 7.30.

   Extracting the tar file creates a directory named oswbb, which contains all the directories and files that are associated with OSWbb, including the startOSWbb.sh script.

4. To enable the collection of iostat information for NFS volumes, edit the OSWatcher.sh script in the oswbb directory, and set the value of nfs_collect to 1:

   nfs_collect=1

To start OSWbb, run the startOSWbb.sh script from the oswbb directory.

sudo ./startOSWbb.sh [frequency
                  duration]

The optional frequency and duration arguments specify how often in seconds OSWbb should collect data and the number of hours for which OSWbb should run. The default values are 30 seconds and 48 hours. The following example starts OSWbb recording data at intervals of 60 seconds, and has it record data for 12 hours:

sudo ./startOSWbb.sh 60 12

...
Testing for discovery of OS Utilities...
VMSTAT found on your system.
IOSTAT found on your system.
MPSTAT found on your system.
IFCONFIG found on your system.
NETSTAT found on your system.
TOP found on your system.

Testing for discovery of OS CPU COUNT
oswbb is looking for the CPU COUNT on your system
CPU COUNT will be used by oswbba to automatically look for cpu problems

CPU COUNT found on your system.
CPU COUNT = 4

Discovery completed.

Starting OSWatcher Black Box v7.3.0  on date and time
With SnapshotInterval = 60
With ArchiveInterval = 12
...
Data is stored in directory: OSWbba_archive

Starting Data Collection...

oswbb heartbeat: date and time
oswbb heartbeat: date and time + 60 seconds
...

OSWbba_archive is the path of the archive directory that contains the OSWbb log files.

To stop OSWbb prematurely, run the stopOSWbb.sh script from the oswbb directory.

sudo ./stopOSWbb.sh

OSWbb collects data in the following directories under the oswbb/archive directory:

OSWbb stores data in hourly archive files named system_name_command_name_timestamp.dat. Each entry in a file is preceded by a timestamp.

From release v4.0.0, you can use the OSWbb analyzer (OSWbba) to provide information on system slowdowns, system hangs and other performance problems, and also to graph data collected from iostat, netstat, and vmstat. OSWbba requires that you have Java version 1.4.2 or a later version installed on your system. You can use yum to install Java; or you can download a Java RPM for Linux from http://www.java.com.

Use the following command to run OSWbba from the oswbb directory:

sudo java -jar oswbba.jar -i OSWbba_archive
               

OSWbba_archive is the path of the archive directory that contains the OSWbb log files.

You can use OSWbba to display the following types of performance graph:

• Process run, wait and block queues.

• CPU time spent running in system, user, and idle mode.

• Context switches and interrupts.

• Free memory and available swap.

• Reads per second, writes per second, service time for I/O requests, and percentage utilization of bandwidth for a specified block device.

You can also use OSWbba to save the analysis to a report file, which reports instances of system slowdown, spikes in run queue length, or memory shortage, describes probable causes, and offers suggestions of how to improve performance.

sudo java -jar oswbba.jar -i OSWbba_archive -A

For more information about OSWbb and OSWbba, refer to the OSWatcher Black Box User Guide (Article ID 301137.1) and the OSWatcher Black Box Analyzer User Guide (Article ID 461053.1), which are available from My Oracle Support (MOS) at https://support.oracle.com.