Monitor RAM and CPU usage on Remote Server?

Question

I want to monitor the CPU and RAM usage on my remote server and set up a notification system which notifies me when the RAM usage is high and automatically kill that process.

I tried the Nagios plugin but there were some errors.

Any alternatives to that?

Edit: please don't suggest htop, free, top and the like as I am not going to keep ssh'ing into the remote server and check its health repeatedly!

Answer 1

Are you familiar with top? Shows you CPU and RAM usage (and more) for each process and also the total sum.

you can also run top -u USER to only see a specific user's processes. just start with running top with no arguments. press q in order to quit.

EDIT

and for using within a script: try top -b -n1 for running in non interactive mode. you can then parse the data with head, sed and grep however you like.

Answer 2

I create some custom script. Is not complete solution for you but maybe help.

#!/bin/bash

#we use output from "uptime" and "w" on every 5 min

UPTIME=`uptime`;
W=`w`;
RAM=`free -m`;
PS=`ps auxf | sort -nr -k 4 | head -15`
DATUM=`date`;
sleep 3
MYSQL=`mysqladmin -u root -pmz567sQld processlist;`
sleep 3
SYN=`netstat -natp | grep SYN`
sleep 3
HTTPD=`pgrep httpd | wc -l`
sleep 3

echo "######################################" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$DATE" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "UPTIME:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$UPTIME" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "W COMMAND:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$W" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "FREE RAM:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$RAM" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "TOP 10 processes:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$PS" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "MYSQL PROCESSLIST:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$MYSQL" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "POTENTIAL ATTACKERS:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$SYN" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "NUMBER OF HTTPD PROCESS (currently maxclients are 64):" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "$HTTPD" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "CURRENTLY OPENED HTTPD CONNECTIONS:" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log
echo "#####################################" >> /var/log/load-result/load_log

after that also add crontab rule to send log to some mail on every 5 min with log file. Also run script on every 5 min

sudo nano /etc/crontab

*/5 * * * * sh /path_to_script/name_of_script     
*/5 * * * * mail -s "insert_subject" some_adress@domain < /var/log/load-result/load_log