Hi all,
Hobbit is a amazing software, but it has a small painful misbehaviour regarding vmstat on Linux :
I have a lot of hosts with several different flavors of Linux. Every now and then in the history of procps, the output of vmstat changes. That sucks but it's there. The way hobbit handles vmstat data does not work well. Basically, it try to guess the format of vmstat from the kernel version or OS flavour (on RHEL, the format changes when you switch from 3.1 to 3.2 !).
So, only the version of vmstat matters.
vmstat version 2.0.6 looks like this : procs memory swap io system cpu r b w swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id 0 1 0 7520 13236 31856 386296 3 0 3 2 5 1 1 4 2
vmstat version 3.2.7 looks like this : procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system------cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 7520 14028 30544 386980 3 0 3 2 5 1 83 15 2 0
The two above commands where launched on the same machine, a Debian 2.2 with a 2.4.31 kernel.
On an older kernel (2.2.25, ouch), vmstat 2.0.6 has the same output, and vmstat 3.2.7 just says "FATAL: kernel too old".
I suggest the hobbit client returns the procps version (vmstat -V), and the server chooses the layout from that information.
Regards,
-- Charles Goyard - cgoyard at cvf.fr - (+33) 1 45 38 01 31