I have two machines connected by a switch. I have a popular server application which we can call "SXC_SERVER" on machine A and I interrogate the "SXC_SERVER" with the corresponding application from machine B, which I'll call "SXC_CLIENT". What I am trying to do is two-fold:
- firstly, gain the traffic flow of SXC_SERVER and SXC_CLIENT interaction through tcpdump. The interaction between the two is a simple GET and RESPONSE, but I require the traffic traces.
- secondly, I am wanting to log the Resident Set Size (RSS) usage of the SXC_SERVER process during each interaction/iteration
Moreover, I don't just need one traffic trace of the communication and one memory usage log of the SXC_SERVER process otherwise I wouldn't be writing this because I could go away and do that in ten minutes... In fact I am aiming to do very many! But let's say here for simplicity I want to do 10.
Since this will be very labor intensive as it will require me to be at both machines stopping and starting all of the SCX_CLIENT-to-SXC_SERVER interrogation, the tcpdump traffic capture, and the RSS memory usage of SXC_SERVER logging I want to write an automation script.
But! I am not a programmer, or software guy...(darn)
However, that said I can imaging a separate client/server program that oversees this automation, which we can call AUTO_SERVER and AUTO_CLIENT. My thoughts are that machine B would run AUTO_CLIENT and machine A would run AUTO_SERVER. The aim of both are to facilitate the automation, i.e. the stopping and starting of the tcpdump, and the memory logging on machine A of SXC_SERVER process before machine B queries SXC_SERVER with SXC_CLIENT (if you follow me!).
Effectively after one run of the SXC_SERVER-to-SXC_CLIENT GET/RESPONSE interaction I'll end up with:
- one traffic capture *.pcap file called n1.pcap
- and one memory log dump (of the RSS associated to the process) called n1.csv.
I am not a programmer or software guy but I can see a rough method (to the best of my ability) to achieve this, as follows:
Machine A: AUTO_SERVER
BEGIN:
msgRecieved = open socket(listen on port *n*)
DO
1. wait for machine A to tell me when to start watch (as in the program) to log RSS memory usage of the SXC_SERVER process using hardcoded command:
watch -n 0.1 'ps -p $(pgrep -d"," -x snmpd) -o rss= | awk '\''{ i += $1 } END { print i }'\'' >> ~/Desktop/mem_logs/mem_i.csv
UNTIL (messageRecieved == "FINISH")
quit
END.
Machine B: AUTO_CLIENT
BEGIN:
open socket(new)
for i in 10, do
1. locally start tcpdump with hardcoded hardcoded tcpdump command with relevant filter to only capture the SXC_SERVER-to-SXC_CLIENT traffic and set output flag to capture all traffic to a PCAP file called n*i*.pcap where *i* is the integer of the current for loop, saving the file in folder "~/Desktop/test_captures/".
2. Send the GET request to SXC_SERVER
3. wait for RESPONSE reply from SXC_SERVER
4. after recieved reply tell machine B to stop watch command
i++
5. send string "FINISH" to machine A.
END.
As you can see I would assume that this would be achieved by the use of a separate, and small client/server-like program (which here I've called AUTO_SERVER and AUTO_CLIENT) on both machines. The really rought pseudo-code design should be self-explanatory.
I have found a small client/server socket program located here: http://www.velvetcache.org/2010/06/14/python-unix-sockets which I would think may be suitable if I edit it, but I am not sure how exactly I can feasibly achieve this. Which is where you may be able to provide some assistance.
Can Python to do this automating? Can it be done with a single bash script? Do you think I am on the right path with this? Or have you any helpful suggestions?
Regards.
