esp(1)

NAME
     esp - Embedded Support Partner

DESCRIPTION
     esp is an infrastructure that is integrated into the operating system for
     the purposes of support. This infrastructure contains various components
     that perform the following:

     Capture and store system level events
     Capture and store system configuration
     Capture and store system availability information
     Provide features of proactive notification
     Generate various reports for supportability

     The Embedded Support Partner consists of a set of daemons that perform
     various monitoring activities. These include an event monitoring
     daemon(eventmond), event management daemon(espemd) and database
     daemon(espdbd). The Embedded Support Partner can be pre-programmed for
     event monitoring and provides flexible throttling features for the
     events.  Actions can also be programmed for each event.

     Event sources include kernel, performance monitoring tools, availability
     tools, configuration monitoring tools and user applications. Events are
     categorized into classes and types. A class can have many types. Example
     of a class could be SCSI and the various types under this class could be
     SCSI hard error, SCSI Bus reset, etc.  The event types are uniquely
     sequenced with pre-assigned numbers. The events propagate to the
     Embeedded Support Partner through syslogd and captured by the eventmond.
     The message string contains the unique sequence number with a special tag
     which eventmond identifies.  The tag and sequence number also show up in
     SYSLOG. An example of the message in SYSLOG is:

     May 24 23:16:34 6D:starwars esphttpd[5722]: |$(0x200120)started

     User defined events can be added using the Embedded Support Partner user
     interface.  The sequence numbers are automatically generated. User
     applications can log user defined events into the Embedded Support
     Partner framework by two mechanisms.  Applications can include the
     EventMonAPI(3X) calls within or could use the command line driven
     application esplogger(1M). Both methods would need to use the unique
     sequence number generated by the Embedded Support Partner user interface.

     Each event can have assoicated actions that can be proactively triggered
     by the Embedded Support Partner in reaction to an event. Actions can be
     pre-programmed and assigned to events. Examples of actions include:
     Graphical posts onto the console, email, chatty paging and numeric
     paging. Most of the notification features are incorporated using
     espnotify(1) utility. Numeric paging needs the use of modems and uses
     QuickPage(1M) software. The option of numeric paging must be
     chkconfig(1M) on for use.
     The Embedded Support Partner also provides the facility to manage
     multiple systems in a group environment. Under this environment, one of
     the systems can be designated as the Group Manager. The Group Manager can
     then subscribe to various events from the member systems. The member
     systems forward the occurance and assoicated data of the subscribed
     events to the Group Manager for which proactive actions can be set to be
     taken. Certain class of events have to be subscribed in full. Examples of
     this are Availability, Configuration, etc.  The Group Manager also
     provides the capability to monitor various services on the member
     systems. These include: icmp, rpcbind, dns, smtp, nntp, etc. The services
     can be configured using the Embedded Support Partner user interface and
     requires that pcp_eoe subsystem be installed. The Group Manager
     capabilities are licensed.

     The Embedded Support Partner supports a html browser based interface and
     for non-graphics systems, a Lynx based ASCII interface. The ASCII
     interface supports single systems only. The browser interface supports
     both single systems and multiple systems (Group Management) environment.
     At the time of logging in, one must choose the type from the user
     interface. The interfaces runs from a http based server that is started
     by inetd on connection only.

     The Embedded Support Partner supports a variety of reports. These
     include: hardware and software reports, event reports, actions reports
     and availability reports. The Embedded Support Partner user interface, by
     default, is accessable by localhost only.  The user interface can be
     started by the launchESPartner(1) or by clicking the icon for Embedded
     Support Partner in the icon catalog under the support tools page.  The
     Embedded Support Partner could then be customized according to the needs
     at the site. An online help facility is also provided for reference.

SEE ALSO
     pcp(1), chkconfig(1M), configmon(1M), espnotify(1M), esplogger(1M),
     esparchive(1M), launchESPartner(1), QuickPage(1M), EventMonAPI(3X),
     availmon(5)

REFERENCES
     SGI Embedded Support Partner User Guide