Monitoring Your Unix Boxen?

Griim asks: "I've been using Linux for years and loving it, and have also worked a bit on a few Sun stations and BSD boxes as well. My question is this: what is the easiest way to keep tabs on all of the activity?"

"I know a few people who 'tail -f' the main log files, or who run 'top' every so-often. These require constant monitoring though, and you could miss essential error messages if you step away for too long. Are there any projects that do this successfully? I've seen a couple out there that started to do this, but appear to be abandoned.

Ideally, I would like some type of all-in-one, that possibly generates a daily (email/web) report of network statistics, user logins, and (web)server traffic/hits, as well as anything 'suspicious' that might be happening, perhaps what apps have been taking most of the processor time, or if any of the daemons have been busier than they normally would be. I know there probably isn't one single app out there that does all of this, so what's the best configuration , for keeping tabs on multiple machines, something I can skim for a minute or two each day, to make sure things are the way they should be? I want to know what works best, and just as importantly, what *doesn't* work (I do realize that relying on a single solution would be bad here too, so if you have more than one suggestion, that would be appreciated)."

Comments

User of the word boxen

[monthos]

I know this is slightly offtopic, even though he used it in the topic of this article. but seriously, the use of the word boxen is stupid, we dont say "a box factory makes boxen", so dont use the term for computers.

Whenever someone uses that word to me i turn around and stop listening to them, it really makes me question there inteligence both in the IT field and in general inteligence.

Re:User of the word boxen

[monthos]

I agree, i use w00t on the occasion as well, like when i frag a clanmate after he/she trash talking for over an hour or so. but its just the word boxen doesnt fit well into sentences on the online community. typically words created are meant to make the typing easier or to make it sound short, sweet and cool. boxen does nothing of the short.

Perhaps it could also be the first time i heard it was the time a script kiddie tried harrassing me, and i went forward to making fun of it. bandwith did rise on my machine as he attempted to dos it though, good thing hes not good at it :)