14 Oracle Management Agent

This chapter describes the Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD and provides installation and configuration information. The reader is supposed to be familiar with Oracle Enterprise Manager.

The Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD monitors all components on the host computer. Once installed, the Oracle Management Agent knows how to monitor default target types, such as the Oracle Database. For more information, refer to Oracle Enterprise Manager Concepts.

This chapter describes the following sections:

14.1 Preinstallation Issues

The following is a list of preinstallation issues:

  • Check if the BS2000/OSD POSIX subsystem is started

  • Check if the openNet Server tool netstat is installed under POSIX.

  • Check if jenv v6.0 is installed

  • Check if perl v5.8 is installed

    If one of the required software packages is not installed, then install the software package first before installing Oracle Management Agent.

  • Ensure that the user address space is 1 GB

  • Ensure that there is at least 1 GB disc space available on the POSIX file system

  • Ensure that the file /etc/hosts includes an entry with a loopback address for the localhost similar to the following example:

    127.0.0.1 localhost local # loopback
    
  • Add all Oracle databases you want to monitor the file /var/opt/oracle/oratab with the following format:

    ORACLE_SID:ORACLE_HOME:N|Y:ORACLE_DATA
    

    The following table describes the parameters in the format:

    Parameter Description
    ORACLE_SID system identifier of the database
    ORACLE_HOME Oracle home directory under POSIX
    ORACLE_DATA user ID where the database files are stored

    Each database that should be monitored needs an entry in the oratab file. An example for a valid oratab file is:

    # oratab file
    # valid entries are of the following form:
    # ORACLE_SID:ORACLE_HOME:N|Y:ORACLE_DATA
    orcl:/ora11202/oracle/product/10g:N:$ORACLE
    

    Note:

    The DBA group should have read and write access to the oratab file and the oracle directory in the /var/opt folder.
  • Check the Oracle Management Agent release number. Oracle Management Agent that ships with release 11.2 can monitor releases 10.x and 11.x. Monitoring of a Oracle9i is not supported.

  • Ensure that you copy the appropriate LISTENER.ORA file to the $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin directory to monitor a LISTENER.

  • Ensure that you grant access to the alert file to all users, if you want to monitor a database under a user ID different from the user ID of the Enterprise Management Agent.

14.2 Running the Installation Script

It is recommended to install the Oracle Management Agent under a separate Oracle Home directory. All Oracle users should belong to the same group, for example, oracle. To start the installation enter:

/CALL-PROCEDURE $ORACLE1120.INSTALL.P.AGENT

You are prompted for the following:

Parameter Description
EMDROOT This is the Management Agent's home directory.
EM-AGENT-PORT The port on which the Management Agent should listen.
EM-OMS-HOST The host name of the Oracle Management Server
EM-OMS-HTTP-PORT The port of the Oracle Management Server

To finalize the EM Agent installation login as root and execute the following script:

   $EMDROOT/root.sh

The installation of the Management Agent, can also be operated by a background process. In this case, the parameters EMDROOT, EM-AGENT-PORT, EM-OMS-HOST and EM-OMS-HTTP-PORT are mandatory parameters and must be specified with the following procedure call:

/ENTER-PROCEDURE $ORAC1120.INSTALL.P.AGENT,(EMDROOT='/u01/app/orac1120/product/emagent',EM-AGENT-PORT='1813',EM-OMS-HOST='omshost.example.com',EM-OMS-HTTP-PORT='1159'), CPU-LIMIT=300

Note:

  • The installation is logged to the INSTALL.EMAGENT.LST file.

  • It is recommended to use a CPU-LIMIT greater than 200.

14.3 Running the Agent

  • To run the agent, start a POSIX shell and type the following command:

    emctl start agent
    

    If you start the Management Agent with the emctl utility in the POSIX shell, then the Management Agent inherits the JOB-CLASS, CPU-LIMIT and RUN-PRIORITY of the login process.As a consequence a defined CPU-LIMIT causes the Management Agent to terminate when the limit is reached. If you want to start the Management Agent without CPU-LIMIT, then use the BS2000 start procedure for the Management Agent. Login to the BS2000 Management Agent user ID and execute the command:

    /ENTER-PROCEDURE ST-AGENT.PRC,JOB-NAME=EMAGENT,JOB-CLASS=<ntl-j-c>,CPU-LIMIT=*NO,RUN-PRIO=210
    
  • To stop the agent, start a POSIX shell and type the following command:

    emctl stop agent
    
  • To get the status of the agent, start a POSIX shell and type the following command:

    emctl status agent
    

Use the Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD as described in the Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Manager book set.

Note:

Oracle recommends to use the start procedure in the BS2000 environment to start the Management Agent.

14.4 Restrictions

The following is a list of issues that might affect Oracle Enterprise Manager Agent

  • Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD can monitor servers that are running Oracle Database 10g or Oracle Database 11g.

  • The Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD does not support the SNMP framework. That means, the agent is not integrated within the EMANATE master agent for BS2000/OSD. The agent does not accept any SNMP requests and does not send any SNMP trap. Therefore, the Oracle Management Agent for BS2000/OSD is not usable with third party SNMP management systems.

  • Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Database 11g for BS2000/OSD supports only a minimal set of system statistics and these may not reflect the actual performance of the system.

  • Currently, Oracle Database 11g for BS2000/OSD only ships with the Oracle Enterprise Manager Agent. Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Console is not supported, though this release does support a remote Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Console.

  • Currently, the Management Agent supports only a minimal set of host metrics and these may not reflect the actual performance and only a part of the configuration of the system.

  • The dbconsol is not supported on BS2000/OSD.

14.5 Troubleshooting

Typically, the Oracle Management Agent is monitored by an internal watchdog process and is restarted in case of an error. This method does not prevent from any crashes where at least one task of the thread application is kept alive and might inhibit a proper restart of the Management Agent. If the Oracle Management Agent cannot be started or restarted, then use the following instructions to resolve the issue:

/CALL-PROCEDURE $TSOS.SYSPRC.PTHREADS.010(ITH-SHOW)

Login to the POSIX shell, set your environment and run the utility ithshow, for example:

$ . /u01/app/orac1120/agent11g/.profile.oracle
$ ithshow

This utility produces an output similar to the following:

STARTED AT 2012-06-12-135624 BY POSIX (running) 
LLM = EMAGENT (prelinked)
MAIN = IC@#MAIN
APPLL = :POR2:$ORAQAX13.ORALOAD-ASCII.LIB
RUNTL = :BUG1:$TSOS.SYSLNK.PTHREADS.013   
PTHvers = 01.3A10 2011-04-14 09:19:23
FDs = 8 (8 ORIG FDs)
Threads = 10 (6 user threads, 4 system threads)
TYPE TSN PID JOB-TYPE PRI CPU-USED CPU-MAX ACCOUNT#
ORIG 1MYQ 3942 (X'0F66') 3 DIALOG *0 240 16.7989 32767 FSC
executing request
THRE 1MYW 3948 (X'0F6C') 3 DIALOG *0 240 21.7415 32767 FSC
executing user thread

Here you find the TSNs of the tasks involved in the PTHREADS application. You can connect to the PTHREADS application when you choose the TSN of the ORIG task as the input for the parameter TSN of the ITH-START procedure in the following format:

/CALL-PROCEDURE $TSOS.SYSPRC.PTHREADS.013(ITH-START),(TSN=1MYQ)

When you see the double slash prompt you can type CANCEL-THREADED-PROGRAM to cancel the PTHREADS application. If the ORIG task is already terminated, then you can terminate all other PTHREADS tasks by using the BS2000 system command

/CANCEL_JOB JOB-IDENTIFICATION=tsn

If the Management Agent is running on a SQ system in x86-64 mode, then you must define the proper load library in the procedure parameters as follows:

/CALL-PROCEDURE $TSOS.SYSPRC.PTHREADS.013(ITH-START),(START-LIBRARY=$TSOS.SKULNK.PTHREADS.013,TSN=1MYQ)

If the Management Agent terminates abnormally, then it might be possible that a process with the name dbluuser_number stays alive. This process is a program cache and cannot be canceled with the BS2000 CANCEL-JOB command. This process can only be stopped using the POSIX command posdbl. For example, the following shows you how you can identify and stop a pending program cache in the POSIX shell:

$ ps -fu emuser
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
EMUSER 2178 2175 0 07:48:08 pts/0 0:01 [sh]
EMUSER 4179 2178 2 14:05:16 pts/0 0:00 [ps]
EMUSER 4168 1 0 14:05:06 ? 0:00 dblu511

In this example, the process dblu511 with the pid 4168 is still alive. To stop this process enter the following command:

$ pdbl -uD