Thread: Database health check/auditing

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone has some pointers to
sites/repositories/resources for scripts to perform basic database
audits and health checks.

situation: I have just commenced a DBA and developer role for an
organisation with a number of Postgres databases (9.4 and 9.6
versions). There has been no dedicated DBA and a number of the databases
were setup by people with little to know Postgres or database
experience. I need to get an overview on what I'm dealing with and start
prioritising what to address first.

It has been some years since I've done any real work with Postgres. Most
of my technical work over the last 10 years has been with Oracle. I
prefer to use scripts over GUI tools like pgAdmin and suspect that there
is probably some good resources out there with existing scripts I can
use as a starting point.

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross

Melvin Davidson schrieb am 16.02.2018 um 05:26:
> Tim,
> 
> FYI, the policy in this list is to avoid top posting and bottom post instead.

Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email thread is repeated in the quote.

Thomas

> situation: I have just commenced a DBA and developer role for an
> organisation with a number of Postgres databases (9.4 and 9.6
> versions). There has been no dedicated DBA and a number of the databases
> were setup by people with little to know Postgres or database
> experience. I need to get an overview on what I'm dealing with and start
> prioritising what to address first.
> 
> It has been some years since I've done any real work with Postgres. Most
> of my technical work over the last 10 years has been with Oracle. I
> prefer to use scripts over GUI tools like pgAdmin and suspect that there
> is probably some good resources out there with existing scripts I can
> use as a starting point.

You might want to have a look at OPM: http://opm.io/

Ibrahim Edib Kokdemir <kokdemir@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Tim,
> There are good continuously running apps to monitor postgres.
> IMHO, the most successful one is pgcenter.
> Here is the link.  https://github.com/lesovsky/pgcenter
>

Thanks, a useful link.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross

Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:

>> situation: I have just commenced a DBA and developer role for an
>> organisation with a number of Postgres databases (9.4 and 9.6
>> versions). There has been no dedicated DBA and a number of the databases
>> were setup by people with little to know Postgres or database
>> experience. I need to get an overview on what I'm dealing with and start
>> prioritising what to address first.
>> 
>
> You might want to have a look at OPM: http://opm.io/

Looks interesting. Nagios is what is used here for monitoring and
although rusty, once upon a time, I use to cut quite a lot of perl, so
reasonable skill set match. Will check it out.

Although on-going monitoring of the systems is definitely required, the
first step is to just get an overall handle on the situation. There is
no documentation and configuration, maintenance etc has been patchy.

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross

Melvin Davidson <melvin6925@gmail.com> writes:

> On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 10:46 AM, Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) <
> bob.basques@ci.stpaul.mn.us> wrote:
>
>>
>> What about bottom *and* top posting.  Just joking sort of.  I really like
>> to reply to questions inline myself on a lot of occasions.
>>
>> Seems like a good Mail tool lets you know what’s what with top,vs bottom
>> posting . . . .
>>
>
> *As for bottom or top posting, that is simply the convention of this
> support list and I don't know of any email programs that *
>
> *understand that policy. At least not until AI becomes more sophisicated.*

I will try to comply with the list policy/conventions. My original reply
was from within the Gmail web interface, which is OK as web based mail
goes, but it certainly 'encourages' top posting. My preferred MUA is
more 'old school' (mu4e), where dealing with such preferences is much
easier, but our wise network admins ban access internally (but you can
still access the web interface...). 

Top v bottom posting issues are a blast from the past - I've not even
seen a reference to it since the old Newsgroups days! ;-)

Tim
-- 
Tim Cross

Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:

> Melvin Davidson schrieb am 16.02.2018 um 05:26:
>> Tim,
>> 
>> FYI, the policy in this list is to avoid top posting and bottom post instead.
>
> Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email thread is repeated in the quote.
>
> Thomas

While I'm happy to comply, I disagree with trimming/editing the
thread. Certainly made sense when networks were slower and MUAs were
less sophisticated, but these days I prefer using a MUA which is able to
fold the original content and keep all the content in the message. This
reduces confusion, misunderstanding and incorrect attribution arising
from poor editing and makes it easy to reference the full discussion in
one spot rather than having to go back through messages putting it all
back together. YMMV.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross

On Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:23:32 +1100, Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email
>> thread is repeated in the quote.
>
>While I'm happy to comply, I disagree with trimming/editing the
>thread. Certainly made sense when networks were slower and MUAs were
>less sophisticated, but these days I prefer using a MUA which is able to
>fold the original content and keep all the content in the message. This
>reduces confusion, misunderstanding and incorrect attribution arising
>from poor editing and makes it easy to reference the full discussion in
>one spot rather than having to go back through messages putting it all
>back together. YMMV.
>
>Tim

The problem is that conversations rarely remained confined to a single
topic [this thread for example 8-)].

The list servers do have message size limits (independent of any email
server limits).  It isn't a problem for simple text messages, but a
lot of people now are sending MIME messages that include all the text
twice (or 3 times) plus embedded HTML+CSS formatting.

On some lists, I have seen MIME messages (mostly sent from Google
Groups users) that contain - not kidding - 5,000+ lines of hidden
HTML+CSS surrounding a few lines of comment.


I agree with you that messages should stand alone wrt to the subject
they address.  It's just that, too often, messages that contain a lot
of quoted material have wandered considerably and so are mostly noise.

YMMV,
George

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> writes:

> On Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:23:32 +1100, Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:
>>
>>> Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email
>>> thread is repeated in the quote.
>>
>>While I'm happy to comply, I disagree with trimming/editing the
>>thread. Certainly made sense when networks were slower and MUAs were
>>less sophisticated, but these days I prefer using a MUA which is able to
>>fold the original content and keep all the content in the message. This
>>reduces confusion, misunderstanding and incorrect attribution arising
>>from poor editing and makes it easy to reference the full discussion in
>>one spot rather than having to go back through messages putting it all
>>back together. YMMV.
>>
>>Tim
>
> The problem is that conversations rarely remained confined to a single
> topic [this thread for example 8-)].
>
> The list servers do have message size limits (independent of any email
> server limits).  It isn't a problem for simple text messages, but a
> lot of people now are sending MIME messages that include all the text
> twice (or 3 times) plus embedded HTML+CSS formatting.
>
> On some lists, I have seen MIME messages (mostly sent from Google
> Groups users) that contain - not kidding - 5,000+ lines of hidden
> HTML+CSS surrounding a few lines of comment.
>
>
> I agree with you that messages should stand alone wrt to the subject
> they address.  It's just that, too often, messages that contain a lot
> of quoted material have wandered considerably and so are mostly noise.
>
> YMMV,
> George

I certainly agree with the comments regarding MIME and bloody HTML
messages. Extending email to use HTML is something I've always
considered to have been a big mistake. In addition to the wasted
bandwidth, it has created far too many security problems. The whole
situation has been made worse by the appalling HTML generation of many
clients (I"m looking at you Microsoft!). Only this week yet another
exploit was discovered which uses MUA preview facilities and MIME/HTML
integration. As someone who is legally considered to be blind, I can
state categorically that email has become LESS accessible as a result of
these 'enhancements'. 

However, I think the key takeaway from your comments is the need for all
of us to be a little more proactive when it comes to the subject
title. I agree 100% we should try to ensure we change the title when the
thread wanders off topic. 

Tim
-- 
Tim Cross

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> writes:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:23:32 +1100, Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:
>>> Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email
>>> thread is repeated in the quote.

>> While I'm happy to comply, I disagree with trimming/editing the
>> thread.

> The problem is that conversations rarely remained confined to a single
> topic [this thread for example 8-)].
> The list servers do have message size limits (independent of any email
> server limits).

I don't think this rule is about any technical limits.  It's about having
minimal courtesy to your readers by not forcing them to re-read stuff they
just read.  There are hundreds or thousands of people reading this list;
if you take thirty seconds to save each reader a third of a second, it's
a good tradeoff.  If you won't spend that time, you're being discourteous.

Personally, if I get two or three screenfuls down into a message without
seeing a single line of new content, I stop reading.

Conversely, if you figure you can avoid spending any of your precious time
in quote-clipping by top-posting a couple of lines of commentary, you're
also being discourteous to readers who may come across your post sometime
later, who won't have just seen the whole thread.  They won't know what it
is you're responding to, and you shouldn't make them dig through the
entire thread history in order to figure out what your one or two
sentences are in response to.

Gmail have done their level best to destroy email in general, and mailing
lists in particular, as a useful communication medium.  Don't help them
out by being a jerk about your quoting habits.

            regards, tom lane