Netflix: Linux performance analysis in 60 seconds

Netflix and Linux performance analysis in 60 seconds

Netflix has a very big EC2 Linux cloud and makes good use of performance tools to keep track of how well it is working for the company. In a recent blog post Netflix shares how it investigates performance of its Linux cloud at the command line.

Brendan Gregg reports for Netflix:

You login to a Linux server with a performance issue: what do you check in the first minute?

At Netflix we have a massive EC2 Linux cloud, and numerous performance analysis tools to monitor and investigate its performance. These include Atlas for cloud-wide monitoring, and Vector for on-demand instance analysis. While those tools help us solve most issues, we sometimes need to login to an instance and run some standard Linux performance tools.

In this post, the Netflix Performance Engineering team will show you the first 60 seconds of an optimized performance investigation at the command line, using standard Linux tools you should have available.

In 60 seconds you can get a high level idea of system resource usage and running processes by running the following ten commands. Look for errors and saturation metrics, as they are both easy to interpret, and then resource utilization. Saturation is where a resource has more load than it can handle, and can be exposed either as the length of a request queue, or time spent waiting.

More at the Netflix Blog

The Netflix blog post caught the attention of Linux redditors and they shared their thoughts about it:

Psi: ”If the box is not in extremely laggy state on login then the first thing that gets written is “htop”.”

Michalf: ”We always start with htop, top, atop to see the “big picture” first. At this point in 90% cases we already know where to go next. Only after that we dig into details like iostat etc. nload is OK for quick network traffic check too.”

ilikerackmounts: ”Hah, you are the first and only person I know of that gives any creedance to load averages out of uptime. I’ve read your books, I know why it’s mildy useful in the first 10 seconds after login, but still I’ve never know anyone who went to this command as their first look as opposed to top.”

Sendmetohell: ”Load averages are usually a good way of getting perspective. I use it rather than top because I want someting succinct and on a single line.

I also wouldn’t look at top for more reliable metrics, I’d be more inclined to look at sar -u or something. I care more about what it’s been doing rather than what it happens to currently be doing.”

Decwakeboarder: ”w – 5 less keystrokes than uptime and more information. The first thing I check on a box is to make sure I’m not going to undo work another admin is doing or vice versa.”

Chaporouge: ”I cannot believe I’ve never seen that command. I mean, I’m no veteran, just a huge fan of unix-like systems, never seen it. Really useful, thanks !”

Brendangregg: ”It’s partly habit, and I just want it on a line, and I want it in my scrollback buffer in case the server vanishes as I’m debugging (and top’s output usually isn’t there). I’ve done much post-incident documentation based on scrollback, as either the server is gone or the issue went away.

‘w’ is ok too. I hope I’m not the only person who uses uptime for load averages; I’m reminded of the Coukoo’s Egg, where the cracker had a distinctive usage of ‘ls’!”

More at Reddit

How to install Unity 8 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 15.10

Unity 8 has attracted the attention of many Ubuntu users, and some of them want to know how to install it on Ubuntu 15.10 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Softpedia has a helpful how-to that should get the job done for Ubuntu users.

Marius Nestor reports for Softpedia:

We’ve created the following tutorial at the request of our readers who asked us to post some easy-to-follow instructions on how to install the next-generation Unity 8 user interface on the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

The fact of the matter is that the latest Unity 8 packages, including the next-gen Mir display server, are available in the default software repositories of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), which is currently under development, and Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf), the latest stable release.

So, if you’re OK with running Ubuntu 15.10 or an early build of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, maybe just to see for yourselves what the new Unity 8 user interface looks like on the desktop, then you can follow the instructions posted in this guide.

Things you need before attempting to install Unity 8 and Mir? Well, all you need is a healthy installation of the Ubuntu 15.10 or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating systems, which are available for download from Softpedia. Both 64-bit (recommended) and 32-bit computers are supported.

More at Softpedia

Google ends support for Chrome on 32-bit Linux

Time always marches on, and at some point companies stop supporting older versions of operating systems and software. And that’s just what has happened with Chrome on 32-bit Linux, Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 7. Google has announced that it is ending its support for them.

Marius Nestor reports for Softpedia:

The brief announcement was made an hour ago by Dirk Pranke on the Chromium-dev group, and it informs users of Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux distributions that, starting March 2016, the Google Chrome web browser will no longer be available for 32-bit hardware platforms.

Additionally, Google also says that future releases of the Google Chrome web browser will no longer be supported on the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) and Debian GNU/Linux 7 (Wheezy) OSes, urging users to update to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and Debian GNU/Linux 8 (Jessie), respectively.

According to Mr. Pranke, the decision to end support for Google Chrome on 32-bit Linux operating system was made to provide GNU/Linux users with the best experience possible. As you might know, Google Chrome is currently distributed as DEB and RPM binary packages for various distributions.

More at Softpedia

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