How To Start OSWatcher Black Box (OSWBB) Every System Boot

APPLIES TO:

Reference from Oracle Doc ID 580513.1
Linux OS - Version Oracle Linux 4.6 to Oracle Linux 6.3 [Release OL4U6 to OL6U3]
Oracle VM - Version 2.1 to 3.1.1 [Release OVM21 to OVM31]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

GOAL

Oracle support often recommends that the OSWatcher Black Box(*) tool be run for an extended period.  Should the system reboot during this time, the system administrator must manually restart the OSWatche Black Boxr, and allow it to run until the necessary data have been collected.

* NOTE:

Depending on the version you have, the OSWatcher Black Box tool may also be referred to as simply OSWatcher; the nomenclature has been changed.

To automate this procedure, a simple shell script can be used.  Care must be taken to avoid accidentally overwriting the log data upon a restart.   The script must also ensure that the OSWatcher Black Box tool be run using the correct user privileges.

The osw-service RPM package does not include the OSWatcher Black Box  tool.  OSWatcher Black Box must be downloaded separately.

SOLUTION

The osw-service RPM package provides a script to run the OSWatcher at system boot, and to stop it down gracefully at system shutdown.  It provides an "osw" service that can be controlled using the standard Linux init(1) script controls:

# /sbin/chkconfig oswbb on
# /sbin/service oswbb start

The osw-service RPM package is available as an attachment to this note.  Download and install it as any other RPM package.  A source RPM is provided for completeness.

Before starting the service, first change the settings in the /etc/oswbb.conf configuration file to fit your situation:

# Set OSW_HOME to the directory where your OSWatcher tools are installed
OSW_HOME='/opt/osw'
# Set OSW_INTERVAL to the number of seconds between collections
OSW_INTERVAL='60'
# Set OSW_RETENTION to the number of hours logs are to be retained
OSW_RETENTION='48'
# Set OSW_USER to the owner of the OSWHOME directory
OSW_USER='root'
# Set OSW_COMPRESSION to the desired compression scheme
OSW_COMPRESSION='bzip2'
# Set OSW_ARCHIVE to the location to generate the logs
OSW_ARCHIVE='archive'

Once this is done, the command:

# /sbin/service oswbb start

will start the OSWatcher tool upon every boot.

The OSWatcher logs will be stored in ${OSW_ARCHIVE); the default value is the archive/ subdirectory as in earlier versions