Enhanced Linux System Accounting / News: Recent posts

The last version of ELSA is available. This new version has small fix. The main improvement is the SRPM package cleanup. We're waiting your feedack.

ELSA is an Enhanced Linux System Accounting that aims to extend the monitoring of resources done in Linux to a group of processes.

Best regards,
The ELSA team.

As connector is not included in the libc we need to include it through kernel source. The problem is that there is a conflit with some definitions in <time.h>. Some variable are defined in <sys/time.h> and redefined in <linux/time.h> (included in cn_proc.h). Thus we add a ugly #define to be able to compile. We will remove that hack as soon as libc includes connectors.

This version includes the process events connector that has been added in the linus'tree (since 2.6.15-rc1).

This is a major release. This release provides a webmin
interface to display information about group of processes
and accounting. It also provides scripts needed to
manage group of processes. The fork connector is part
of -mm tree.

Hello,

Here is the ChangeLog:

- Fork connector is now included in 2.6.12-rc4-mm1
- When asking for the status, the cn_fork_send_status()
send a message through the connector. We also
modify the structure "struct cn_fork_msg" to hold the
following values:
- ID of the cpu where the fork occurred
- Parent process id
- Parent thread id
- Child process id
- Child thread id

- utils/elsad: Now it listens to the status message. Add
colors if the command succeded.... read more

Hello,

Here is ELSA 0.8

In this release we replace all python scripts by only two scripts. The user space application 'elsa.py' will use information provided by the user space job daemon and the information provided by a per-process accounting mechanism (like BSD process accounting) to provide a
per-group accounting information. Script 'jobmng.py' is the interface to manage groups of processes. Those two scripts are renamed 'elsa' and 'jobmng' during the installation. The ChangeLog shows several others
minors improvements (read it on the ELSA website)... read more

Here is a new version.

ChangeLog:
Thu Apr 20 2005 Guillaume Thouvenin <guillaume.thouvenin@bull.net>

* NEWS: Update for 0.7.1

* utils/elsa.py: Move the elsa/elsa.py script in the utils/ directory.
This is to have all python scripts utilities in the same place.

* utils/acctv3dump.py: Read a file written by the 'acct' command. It
replaces the old ac_v3_read.c. It only works with acct_v3.

* utils/jobmsgdump.py: Read a file written by the job daemon. It
replaces the old jobd_read.c.... read more

Hello,

ELSA 0.7 can be downloaded from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=105806&package_id=133206&release_id=319968

This new release introduce a new python interface to manage jobs. Here is the complete ChangeLog:

Thu Apr 13 2005 Guillaume Thouvenin <guillaume.thouvenin@bull.net>

* NEWS: update for 0.7

* elsa/elsa.py: this new script replace the obsolete elsa.c
It allows to add/remove a process from a job and
it allows to execute a command in a new job or
in an existing job. You can also get information
about all jobs.... read more

This release includes changements in the kernel patch and also in user space applications. See the Change Log for more informations.

Every comments are welcome,
The ELSA team.

Hello,

Here is the new released 0.6

Now we use the fork connect module to get information when the Linux kernel is forking. Communication between jobd and kernel is done through the netlink interface. Communication between jobd and the user space application (elsa) is done through classical unix sockets.

All informations to download and install ELSA are available on the ELSA website.

http://elsa.sourceforge.net ... read more

Hello,

ELSA is an Enhanced Linux System Accounting. We propose a user space solution for managing groups of processes. We provide a per-job accounting instead of the classical per-process accounting.

ChangeLog:

Now we use the fork connect module to get information when the Linux kernel is forking. Communication between jobd and kernel is done through the netlink interface. Communication between jobd and the user space application (elsa) is done through classical unix sockets. ... read more

Hello,

ELSA is an Enhanced Linux System Accounting. We propose a solution for managing groups of processes without kernel modifications. We provide a per-job accounting instead of the classical per-process accounting. Work can be split into the following parts :

1. A LSM hook
2. A kernel module
3. A user space daemon
4. Per-process accounting informations (external like
BSD-accounting)
5. A user space application... read more

ELSA is an Enhanced Linux System Accounting. We propose a solution
for managing groups of processes without kernel modifications. We
provide a per-job accounting instead of the classical per-process
accounting. Work can be split into the following parts :

1. A LSM hook
2. A kernel module
3. A user space daemon
4. Per-process accounting informations (external like
BSD-accounting)
5. A user space application... read more

Hello,

ELSA is an Enhanced Linux System Accounting. We
propose a user space solution for managing groups of
processes and providing a per-job accounting instead of
the classical per-process accounting. Work can be
split into the following parts :

1. A kernel patch
2. A kernel module
3. A user space daemon
4. Per-process accounting informations (external like
BSD-accounting)
5. A user space application... read more

In this project we propose a user space solution for
managing groups of processes. The gaol is to keep a
trace about how the system forks. This will allow to keep
process in the same group according to their
relationship. Therefore, most of the enhanced
accounting is done in user space.

Work can be split into the following parts :

1. A kernel patch
2. A kernel module
3. A user space daemon
4. Per-process accounting informations
5. A user space application... read more

Hello,

Enhanced Linux System Accounting is now available for kernel 2.6.8.1. This patch implements a solution for managing a group of process (called a bank) in order to provide accounting values like memory, IO or CPU usage. Process can be added to or removed from a bank using the "elsacct" device interface with ioctl. There is no major improvements since the "bank" mechanism is working well. ... read more

Patch for kernel 2.6.8-rc1 is now available. You can find it on sourceforge (http://elsa.sf.net)

It is an update from 2.6.7 kernel patch. The only difference is that we have replaced statements:

BUG_ON(the_test)

by:

if (unlikely(the_test)
BUG()

Best,
Guillaume

I made a small patch to add information about bytes and blocks read and written. Fields was already in the BSD accounting but they were never updated. The patch is based on the CSA accounting patch.

- It adds four counters in the task_struct (chars read, chars written, blocks read and blocks written). I think it's intresting to separate read and write even if this difference is not made in the BSD accounting (can easly be changed).... read more

Here is a new patch for kernel 2.6.7. You can download it from sourceforge at
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/elsa/patch-2.6.7-elsa?download

This patch provides structures and functions to do accounting for a group of process. There is two parts. On one hand there is two APIs that allow the creation and the destruction of an item called a "bank" that will contain an group of processes. There is also two other routines that can add or remove processes in a bank. On the other hand, you have the accounting mechanism that used bank to perform BSD-like accounting for a group of process. We used ioctl()
interface to create/destroy a bank and also to add/remove a process in a bank. Currently, device driver is dev/elsacct and the major number is dynamically allocated, therefore you need to check the number in the /proc/devices and create the corresponding device. A sample code is given at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/elsa/tests/elsa_cmd.c?rev=1.7&view=markup... read more

We added a new patch for kernel 2.6.6 with a new ELSA layout. There is many improvements (see ChangeLog) from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=237149

Every comments about the project are welcome.

Guillaume

A new patch "patch-2.6.5-elsa_1" is available on http://elsa.sf.net

We remove system call sys_elsa() and we replace it by a device and ioctl(). We moved files used by ELSA into a new directory called linux/devices/elsacct/. We added new entry in the menu config and we removed some stuff from kernel files (like ELSA /proc management which is now in elsacct.c). We also started to recover some accounting information from banks (we used BSD accounting information).... read more

The goal of accounting is to collect and report the use of various system resources by applications. Informations, like process time, CPU usage, connect time or disk space usage, provides data that helps the system to adjust the use of resources between processes.

The current BSD-like process accounting that already exists in Linux collects informations on individual users or groups of users. The ELSA project aims to improve and extend the monitoring of resources with different criteria like groups of processes. Another target for this project is to give Linux an homogeneous set of commands for all kinds of accounting (memory, CPU and I/O). ... read more