KARMAGENTD(1)

NAME
Karma - karmagentd

DESCRIPTION
The karmagentd daemon is an additional utility which is used in conjunction with OS and/or alertlog monitoring. In order for karmad to find valid information regarding either of these services, this daemon must be running on each target database.

SYNOPSIS
The karmagentd daemon checks statistics from the operating system and inserts them into a table called karma_os_stats in the target database. If this table is missing, karmagentd will continue running supporting alertlog monitoring, if possible.

The karmagentd daemon's more important functionality is in monitoring your alertlog on designated destination databases. It does this by reading through the file on startup, and then waking up periodically to check for changes. If it finds any 'ORA-' errors, it will insert the timestamp, and error along with the associated text into the karma_alertlog_errors table. If this table doesn't exist, and karmagentd failed to do gather OS statistics, it will exit with a message. Additionally, karmagentd attempts to use the .karmagent.sav file to store the current seek point into the alertlog file, so it can start from where it left off.

NOTES
The basic way to invoke karmagentd is as follows:

`$ ./karmagentd -u karma -t mydb'

Invoked this way, without specifying the password on the command line is best. If you choose to specify the password on the command line, it can be viewed via the operating system command 'ps', or equivalent on Win32 platforms, which presents a rather large security hole, and is not recommended. Instead, invoke as described above, and karmagentd will simply prompt you for the password.

Optionally, the alertlog file can be specified explicitely `-a /opt/oracle/admin/mydb/bdump/alertmydb.log', however if it is in the standard OFA location, karmagentd should find it.