Install RSTATD on Ubuntu 9

Today I had the pleasure (or pressure) to install RSTATD on Ubuntu since we needed to monitor one of our hosts during a stress test. It turned out to be not so simple so I’m documenting the steps here:

1. Install the packages:

   sudo xinetd rstatd

   We need to specifically ask for xinetd since we need to configure RSTATD service below.

2. Create the file “/etc/xinetd.d/rstatd” with the following content

   # default: off
   # # description: An xinetd internal service which rstatd’s characters back to clients.
   #
   service rstatd
   {
   type            = RPC
   rpc_version     = 2-4
   socket_type     = dgram

   protocol        = udp
   wait            = yes
   user            = root
   log_on_success  += USERID

   log_on_failure  += USERID
   server          = /usr/sbin/rpc.rstatd
   disable         = no
   }

3. Install rstat-client (optional):

   sudo apt-get install rstat-client

4. To test it (using rsysinfo from rstat-client package):
   root@ci-server3:~# rsysinfo localhost
   System Information for: localhost
   uptime:  24 days, 17:32, load average: 0.05 0.07 0.07
   cpu usage (jiffies): user 1455679  nice 550  system 624328  idle 420845047
   page in: 2308807  page out: 16027072   swap in: 673  swap out: 4985
   intr: 158243781     context switches: 346475642
   disks: 1383151 0 0 0
   ethernet:  rx: 1901663   rx-err: 58
   tx: 1271589   tx-err: 0    collisions: 0
5. That’s it!

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Tags: linux, monitoring, rstat, rstatd, stress test