The etcupdate utility is a tool for managing updates to files that are
not updated as part of `make installworld' such as files in /etc. It
manages updates by doing a three-way merge of changes made to these files
against the local versions. It is also designed to minimize the amount
of user intervention with the goal of simplifying upgrades for clusters
of machines.
The primary difference from mergemaster is that etcupdate requires less
manual work. The primary difference from etcmerge is that etcupdate
updates files in-place similar to mergemaster rather than building a
separate /etc tree.
NFSping is a command line utility for measuring the response time of an NFS
server. It's basically a copy of the fping interface but doesn't share any code
with that project.
On modern NFS servers, the network stack and filesystem are often being run on
separate cores or even hardware components. This means in practise that a fast
ICMP ping response isn't indicative of how quickly the NFS filesystem is
responding. This tool more directly tests the responsiveness of the server's
operating system's NFS component.
Munin network-wide graphing framework (node)
Munin is a tool for graphing all sorts of information about one or more
servers and displaying it in a web interface. It uses the excellent
RRDTool (written by Tobi Oetiker) and is written in Perl. Munin has a
master/node architecture. The master connects to all the nodes at regular
intervals, and asks them for data. It then stores the data in RRD-files,
and (if needed) updates the graphs. One of the main goals have been ease
of creating own "plugins" (graphs).
This is the collector. It is installed on the machine that shall collect
and display performance data.
The bsdcrashtar utility creates tar a archive that contains all files needed
for debugging FreeBSD kernel crash (vmcore, kernel, loaded modules, sources
that appear in backtrace). This is useful for debugging a crash on another
host, sending it to developers or if you are going to upgrade the kernel on
crashed host but would like to keep crashdump in case the developers ask you to
provide additional info.
Created tar archive contains also a script that when being run inside unpacked
archive will give kgdb(1) session with crash core loaded in it. The script
should be run with root privileges because it does chroot(8) before starting
kgdb(1).
The sdparm utility accesses SCSI device parameters. When the SCSI device
is a disk, sdparm's role is similar to its namesake: the Linux hdparm
utility which is primarily designed for ATA disks that had device names
starting with "hd". More generally sdparm can be used to access parameters
on any device that uses a SCSI command set. Apart from SCSI disks, such
devices include CD/DVD drives (irrespective of transport), SCSI and ATAPI
tape drives and SCSI enclosures. A small set of commands associated with
starting and stopping the media, loading and unloading removable media
and some other housekeeping functions can also be sent with this utility.
Munin network-wide graphing framework (node)
Munin is a tool for graphing all sorts of information about one or more
servers and displaying it in a web interface. It uses the excellent
RRDTool (written by Tobi Oetiker) and is written in Perl. Munin has a
master/node architecture. The master connects to all the nodes at regular
intervals, and asks them for data. It then stores the data in RRD-files,
and (if needed) updates the graphs. One of the main goals have been ease
of creating own "plugins" (graphs).
This is the node part. It is used on all machines Munin shall watch.
XSysStats is a system information display tool similar to perfmeter. It
displays its information in the form of a strip chart. It can also display
information about remote hosts, as perfmeter can do.
XSysStats can display any number of graphs at one time in the same window.
Information being displayed in the window need not be all of the same host.
For example, you could have it display the percentage of cpu being utilized
of half a dozen (or more) different hosts. Also, splitting the window
into smaller windows is now supported (similar to what the perfmeter
in OW 3 allows)
USB_ModeSwitch is (surprise!) a mode switching tool for controlling
"flip flop" (multiple device) USB gear.
USB_ModeSwitch makes this process easy to handle by taking the important
parameters from a configuration file and doing all the initialization
and communication stuff, with heavy help from "libusb". It is mainly
used automatically - via udev events and rules - to do the switch
without any user interaction. But it can also be run as a command line
tool, usually when trying to make unknown devices work with it.
volman is a FreeBSD specific volume manager. It acts
as a translator of devd(8) events, probing storage
devices for their file system information, and serving
this over a FIFO based API to which clients can
subscribe. In addition to notifying clients of new
or lost volumes, it will mount and unmount such
volumes at the command of subscribing clients.
It runs as root and allows any local clients the
ability to mount and unmount volumes which are
detected, regardless of any user privileges. This
is intended for single user X11 systems needing
an easy way of accessing USB flash disks on the fly.
Tracker is a powerful desktop-neutral first class object database, tag/metadata
database, search tool and indexer.
Tracker is also extremely fast and super efficient with your systems memory when
compared with some other competing frameworks and is by far the fastest and most
memory efficient Nautilus search and Deskbar backends currently availble.
It consists of a common object database that allows entities to have an almost
infinte number of properties, metadata (both embedded/harvested as well as user
definable), a comprehensive database of keywords/tags and links to other
entities.