openSUSE Leap Documentation › System Analysis and Tuning Guide › About This Guide
ContentsContents
System Analysis and Tuning Guide
  1. About This Guide
  2. I Basics
    1. 1 General Notes on System Tuning
  3. II System Monitoring
    1. 2 System Monitoring Utilities
    2. 3 Analyzing and Managing System Log Files
  4. III Kernel Monitoring
    1. 4 SystemTap—Filtering and Analyzing System Data
    2. 5 Kernel Probes
    3. 6 Hardware-Based Performance Monitoring with Perf
    4. 7 OProfile—System-Wide Profiler
  5. IV Resource Management
    1. 8 General System Resource Management
    2. 9 Kernel Control Groups
    3. 10 Automatic Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) Balancing
    4. 11 Power Management
  6. V Kernel Tuning
    1. 12 Tuning I/O Performance
    2. 13 Tuning the Task Scheduler
    3. 14 Tuning the Memory Management Subsystem
    4. 15 Tuning the Network
  7. VI Handling System Dumps
    1. 16 Tracing Tools
    2. 17 Kexec and Kdump
  8. VII Synchronized Clocks with Precision Time Protocol
    1. 18 Precision Time Protocol
  9. A GNU Licenses
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About This Guide

Available Documentation
Feedback
Documentation Conventions

openSUSE Leap is used for a broad range of usage scenarios in enterprise and scientific data centers. SUSE has ensured openSUSE Leap is set up in a way that it accommodates different operation purposes with optimal performance. However, openSUSE Leap must meet very different demands when employed on a number crunching server compared to a file server, for example.

It is not possible to ship a distribution that is optimized for all workloads. Different workloads vary substantially in some aspects. Most important among those are I/O access patterns, memory access patterns, and process scheduling. A behavior that perfectly suits a certain workload might reduce performance of another workload. For example, I/O-intensive tasks, such as handling database requests, usually have completely different requirements than CPU-intensive tasks, such as video encoding. The versatility of Linux makes it possible to configure your system in a way that it brings out the best in each usage scenario.

This manual introduces you to means to monitor and analyze your system. It describes methods to manage system resources and to tune your system. This guide does not offer recipes for special scenarios, because each server has got its own different demands. It rather enables you to thoroughly analyze your servers and make the most out of them.

General Notes on System Tuning

Tuning a system requires a carefully planned proceeding. Learn which steps are necessary to successfully improve your system.

Part II, “System Monitoring”

Linux offers a large variety of tools to monitor almost every aspect of the system. Learn how to use these utilities and how to read and analyze the system log files.

Part III, “Kernel Monitoring”

The Linux kernel itself offers means to examine every nut, bolt and screw of the system. This part introduces you to SystemTap, a scripting language for writing kernel modules that can be used to analyze and filter data. Collect debugging information and find bottlenecks by using kernel probes. Last, monitor applications with the help of Oprofile.

Part IV, “Resource Management”

Learn how to set up a tailor-made system fitting exactly the server's need. Get to know how to use power management while at the same time keeping the performance of a system at a level that matches the current requirements.

Part V, “Kernel Tuning”

The Linux kernel can be optimized either by using sysctl or via the /proc file system. This part covers tuning the I/O performance and optimizing the way how Linux schedules processes. It also describes basic principles of memory management and shows how memory management could be fine-tuned to suit needs of specific applications and usage patterns. Furthermore, it describes how to optimize network performance.

Part VI, “Handling System Dumps”

This part enables you to analyze and handle application or system crashes. It introduces tracing tools such as strace or ltrace and describes how to handle system crashes using Kexec and Kdump.

Tip
Tip: Getting the SUSE Linux Enterprise SDK

The SDK is a module for SUSE Linux Enterprise and is available via an online channel from the SUSE Customer Center. Alternatively, go to http://download.suse.com/, search for SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit and download it from there. Refer to Book “Start-Up”, Chapter 10 “Installing Add-On Products” for details.

Many chapters in this manual contain links to additional documentation resources. This includes additional documentation that is available on the system and documentation available on the Internet.

For an overview of the documentation available for your product and the latest documentation updates, refer to http://www.suse.com/doc or to the following section:

1 Available Documentation

We provide HTML and PDF versions of our books in different languages. The following manuals for users and administrators are available for this product:

Book “Start-Up”

This manual will see you through your initial contact with openSUSE® Leap. Check out the various parts of this manual to learn how to install, use and enjoy your system.

Book “Reference”

Covers system administration tasks like maintaining, monitoring and customizing an initially installed system.

Book “Virtualization Guide”

Describes virtualization technology in general, and introduces libvirt—the unified interface to virtualization—and detailed information on specific hypervisors.

Book “AutoYaST”

AutoYaST is a system for installing one or more openSUSE Leap systems automatically and without user intervention, using an AutoYaST profile that contains installation and configuration data. The manual guides you through the basic steps of auto-installation: preparation, installation, and configuration.

Book “Security Guide”

Introduces basic concepts of system security, covering both local and network security aspects. Shows how to use the product inherent security software like AppArmor or the auditing system that reliably collects information about any security-relevant events.

System Analysis and Tuning Guide

An administrator's guide for problem detection, resolution and optimization. Find how to inspect and optimize your system by means of monitoring tools and how to efficiently manage resources. Also contains an overview of common problems and solutions and of additional help and documentation resources.

Book “GNOME User Guide”

Introduces the GNOME desktop of openSUSE Leap. It guides you through using and configuring the desktop and helps you perform key tasks. It is intended mainly for end users who want to make efficient use of GNOME as their default desktop.

Find HTML versions of most product manuals in your installed system under /usr/share/doc/manual or in the help centers of your desktop. Find the latest documentation updates at http://doc.opensuse.org/ where you can download PDF or HTML versions of the manuals for your product.

2 Feedback

Several feedback channels are available:

Bugs and Enhancement Requests

For services and support options available for your product, refer to http://www.suse.com/support/.

To report bugs for a product component, go to https://scc.suse.com/support/requests, log in, and click Create New.

User Comments

We want to hear your comments about and suggestions for this manual and the other documentation included with this product. Use the User Comments feature at the bottom of each page in the online documentation or go to http://www.suse.com/doc/feedback.html and enter your comments there.

Mail

For feedback on the documentation of this product, you can also send a mail to doc-team@suse.de. Make sure to include the document title, the product version and the publication date of the documentation. To report errors or suggest enhancements, provide a concise description of the problem and refer to the respective section number and page (or URL).

3 Documentation Conventions

The following typographical conventions are used in this manual:

  • /etc/passwd: directory names and file names

  • placeholder: replace placeholder with the actual value

  • PATH: the environment variable PATH

  • ls, --help: commands, options, and parameters

  • user: users or groups

  • Alt, Alt–F1: a key to press or a key combination; keys are shown in uppercase as on a keyboard

  • File, File › Save As: menu items, buttons

  • Dancing Penguins (Chapter Penguins, ↑Another Manual): This is a reference to a chapter in another manual.

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