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Episode 136 – All in the Details

Posted by Tony on October 5, 2014 in Show-mp3, Show-ogg | ∞
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Total Running Time:

Un-edited Live session – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=don10ODMb9A

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Summary

Kernel News: Mat
Time: 8:35
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 10:30
Tech News:
Time: 39:55
Toolbox
Time: 58:20
Conference Scene
Time: 1:04:45
Security Bit
Time: 1:11:00
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time: 1:22:45
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:27:35
Outtro Music
Time: 1:37:10

Intro:

Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Sound bites by Mike Tanner

Kernel News: Mat

Time: 8:35

mainline:	3.17-rc7	2014-09-28
stable: 	3.16.3  	2014-09-17
longterm:	3.14.19 	2014-09-17
longterm:	3.12.29 	2014-09-30
longterm:	3.10.55 	2014-09-17
longterm:	3.4.104 	2014-09-25
longterm:	3.2.63  	2014-09-13
longterm:	2.6.32.63	2014-06-18
linux-next:	next-20141003	2014-10-03

Distro Talk: Tony

Time: 10:30

Distrowatch.com

  • 9-22 – Salix 14.1 “Fluxbox”
  • 9-23 – Linux From Scratch 7.6
  • 9-26 – SparkyLinux 3.5 “MATE”, “Xfce”, “Openbox”, “JWM”
  • 9-26 – Oracle Linux 5.11
  • 9-26 – MidnightBSD 0.5
  • 9-26 – OpenMandriva Lx 2014.1
  • 9-27 – OpenELEC 4.2
  • 9-27 – Netrunner 2014.09.1 “Rolling”
  • 9-27 – Qubes OS 2
  • 9-30 – CentOS 5.11
  • 10-1 – Chakra GNU/Linux 2014.09
  • 10-1 – KNOPPIX 7.4.2
  • 10-3 – GhostBSD 4.0

Distro of the Week: Tony

  1. Fedora – 1403
  2. CentOS – 1816
  3. Debian – 1940
  4. Ubuntu – 2004
  5. Mint – 2286

Tech News:

Time: 39:55

Why Google is pushing Android One at the expense of open source
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/439793/why-google-pushing-android-one-expense-open-source

The Toolbox

Time: 58:20

Nicstat

Nicstat is a Solaris and Linux command-line tool. It prints network stats for all of the network interfaces on a machine. This includes packets, kilobytes per second, average packet sizes, along with much more. The developers are former Sun Microsystems employees, Tim Cook and Brendan Gregg.

As Tim Cook calls it on his blog the “Network Monitoring Tool You Did Not Know You Needed .”

The nicstat utility is to network interfaces what “prstat” is to processes, and “iostat” is to disks. When you first start nicstat, the stats for the time from system boot until the present are displayed. Let’s look at the command and some output:

If you just run nick stat this is what you will get:

$ nicstat
Time Int rKB/s wKB/s rPk/s wPk/s rAvs wAvs %Util Sat
05:47:01 p6p1 27.42 1.76 23.24 16.40 1208.0 110.0 0.24 0.00
05:47:01 lo 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 140.3 140.3 0.00 0.00

These are what those headings mean:

    Time – The time that nicstat is displating stats for in HH:MM:SS format
    Int – The interface that the stats to the right are for
    rKB/s – Kilobytes/second received
    wKB/s – Kilobytes/second transmitted
    rPk/s – Packets/second read
    wPk/s – Packets/second written
    rAvs – Average packet size received
    wAvs – Average packet size transmitted
    %Util – Percentage that the interface is utilized (differs depending on full or half duplex see the man page)

Sat – This the number of errors/second for the interface – a higher number may indicate the interface is becoming saturated

The x flag shows extended stats:

$ nicstat -x
05:59:36 RdKB WrKB RdPkt WrPkt IErr OErr Coll NoCP Defer %Util
p6p1 25.30 1.64 21.59 15.22 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.22
lo 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

These are what those headings mean:

(I could not find a defenition for RdKB, WrKB, RdPkt, WrPkt but from what I have read I believe they equivalent to rKB/s, wKB/s, rPk/s, wPk/s)

    IErr – Packets received containing errors
    OErr – Packets not successfully transmitted because of errors
    Coll – Ethernet collisions during transmit
    NoCP – When an incoming packet can’nt be sent to the process reading the socket
    Defer – Non-collision packets where first transmit attempt was delayed due to the medium being busy

Then there are -t and -u flags:

$ nicstat -t
05:59:40 InKB OutKB InSeg OutSeg Reset AttF %ReTX InConn OutCon Drops
TCP 0.00 0.00 19.53 14.60 0.05 0.00 0.000 0.00 0.18 0.00
$ nicstat -u
06:00:09 InDG OutDG InErr OutErr
UDP 0.50 0.50 0.00 0.00

(InKB, OutKB are the same as rKB/s, wKB/s and InSeg, OutSeg along with InDG, OutDG are the same as rPk/s, wPk/s also InErr, OutErr are the same as IErr, OErr)

    Reset – The number of times TCP the connection had to be reset
    AttF – The number of times the TCP connection has either gone to the CLOSED state or to the LISTEN state
    %ReTX – The number of TCP segments transmitted containing one or more previously transmitted octets
    InConn – TCP connections have gone to the SYN-RCVD state from the LISTEN state
    OutCon – TCP connections have gone to the SYN-SENT state from the CLOSED state
    Drops – The total from these three places, completed connection queue, incomplete connection queue, and connections dropped after the initial SYN packet was received

Additionaly you have the a flag which is equivalent to the xtu flags used together. Then there is M and n, which do megabytes instead of kilobytes and does not show the loopback respectivly. My favorite way to run it is with the -aMn flags

$ nicstat -aMn
06:23:08 InKB OutKB InSeg OutSeg Reset AttF %ReTX InConn OutCon Drops
TCP 0.00 0.00 17.42 13.09 0.05 0.00 0.000 0.00 0.17 0.00
06:23:08 InDG OutDG InErr OutErr
UDP 0.47 0.47 0.00 0.00
06:23:08 RdMbps WrMbps RdPkt WrPkt IErr OErr Coll NoCP Defer %Util
p6p1 0.18 0.01 19.43 13.66 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20

You can set an interval, by adding a space then a number after any flags you set, nicstat will display the stats at each interval of the seconds specifide. You can also specify a count, by adding a space then a number after the first number, nicstat will display the stats at each interval of seconds for nuimber of iterations specifide.

Conference Scene

Time: 1:04:45

The Security Bit

Time: 1:11:00
How to Protect your Server Against the Shellshock Bash Vulnerability
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-protect-your-server-against-the-shellshock-bash-vulnerability

SHA-256 SSL Certificates & Why You Need SHA-2
https://www.digicert.com/sha-2-ssl-certificates.htm

Generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) using Apache (with mod_ssl) & OpenSSL
http://www.networksolutions.com/support/csr-for-apache-with-mod-ssl-openssl/

Is it Alive?

Time: 1:22:45

Listener Feedback:

show (at) smlr.us or 734-258-7009
Time: 1:27:35

johanv
As you can probably guess, I am not a fan of word processors. I once did HPR episode about this.

Outtro Music

Time: 1:37:10
Balkan Cowboy by Jean Paul Grouve
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/690344/balkan-cowboy

This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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