upclient(8)

NAME
upclient - logs system uptime with uptimes.wonko.com.

SYNOPSIS
upclient [-h] [-V] [-q|-v|-vv]

[sudo] kill `cat /var/run/upclient.pid`

DESCRIPTION
Client for The Uptimes Project

The Uptimes Project collects data on the amount of time a computer has been running since its last reboot and provides statistics on various operating system and hardware configurations.

Upon starting, the daemon logs a brief message to stderr and syslog (on those operating systems that support syslog) then forks into the background. If the daemon cannot start it will try to output error messages to stderr and syslog. Normally the daemon runs quietly and unobtrusively in the background, and writes entries to syslog every few minutes whenever it communicates with the server.

-q  In quiet mode no uptime transmissions will be logged. This means that once upclient has started, there will be no indication in the system logs that upclient is still running unless it encounters a problem.

-v  Verbose mode. A few additional status and error messages will be logged to aid basic troubleshooting.

-vv Verbose-verbose mode may be useful for troubleshooting or to satisfy curiosity. To see even more status messages, upclient can be compiled in DEBUG mode (see below).

-h  Display a brief usage message and exit.

-V  Show the version and exit.

If you need to stop upclient, signal it with TERM and it will clean up its pid file then quit. The easiest way to do this is [sudo] kill `cat /var/run/upclient.pid` . The daemon ignores INT signals.

GETTING STARTED
1. Create an account at: http://uptimes.wonko.com/. 2. Add a host, this gives you an authorization key. 3. Paste your auth key into /usr/local/etc/upclient.conf. 4. Start the upclient daemon: [sudo] /usr/local/sbin/upclient. 5. Visit your account at http://uptimes.wonko.com/ to view your machine's status and other collected statistics.

CONTROLLING UPCLIENT
upclient performs certain actions when it receives certain signals:

SIGALRM
    Resets the timer and causes upclient to transmit uptime status immediately.

SIGHUP
    Tells upclient to re-read the configuration file and restart.

TROUBLESHOOTING
If you suspect a problem with upclient, check your syslog for upclient messages.

On BSD systems (including Darwin), upclient must be run as root to send idle time.

Use the following command to trigger an immediate upclient transmission:

[sudo] kill -SIGALRM `cat /var/run/upclient.pid`

To have upclient output many debugging messages to the syslog, recompile it in debug mode. Set the EXTRA_CFLAGS envvar to '-DDEBUG', or edit the Makefile to add

CFLAGS='-DDEBUG' \

FILES
/usr/local/sbin/upclient
    client
/usr/local/etc/upclient.conf
    configuration
/var/run/upclient.pid
    process id
/usr/local/share/doc/upclient/
    documentation

AUTHORS
Carsten Klapp <carstenklapp@users.sourceforge.net> Protocol 5 client

Ryan Grove <ryan@wonko.com> Protocol 5, Uptimes Server and web site

Alex C. de Haas <alex@uptimes.net> Protocol 4 client

Martijn Broenland <tgm@uptimes.net> Original Author

Many people have contributed to the uptime client. Please see /usr/local/share/doc/upclient/AUTHORS.

LICENSE
Copyright © 1999-2002 Martijn Broenland, Alex C. de Haas, Carsten Klapp

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

SEE ALSO
uptime(1), ruptime(1), getloadavg(3), uname(3), sysctl(8)

HISTORY
Version 5 by default transmits uptime information via UDP to port 49153 to reduce load on the server. If you are behind a closed firewall or using a proxy server the client uses the older protocol 4.2 via HTTP instead, with the same functionality. See /usr/local/share/doc/upclient/ for more information.

$Id: upclient.man,v 1.5 2002/11/01 05:20:54 carstenklapp Exp $