How To Install Sysdig on AlmaLinux 8 | Easy Steps – OrcaCore

In this guide on the Orcacore website, we will walk you through How To Install Sysdig on AlmaLinux 8. Sysdig is a powerful open-source tool designed to give system administrators and developers exceptional visibility into their systems’ behavior. The goal is to improve system-level monitoring and troubleshooting by offering a unified, detailed, and coherent view of storage, network, memory, and transmission subsystems. It also provides the capability to generate trace files of system operations that can be analyzed at any time.

The creators of Sysdig have developed a sophisticated filtering language that enables users to explore data intuitively and interactively. Additionally, they’ve created a comprehensive library of Lua scripts known as chisels, which address common system analysis challenges. Think of Sysdig as a supercharged combination of strace, tcpdump, and lsof.

Essentially, How To Install Sysdig on AlmaLinux 8 is about gaining a robust performance analysis method for scrutinizing a system’s state and its activities.

Before we begin, ensure you are logged into your AlmaLinux 8 server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. If you haven’t already, refer to our guide on Initial Server Setup with AlmaLinux 8 for instructions.

Now, let’s dive into the steps required to successfully install and use Sysdig on your AlmaLinux 8 system.

1. Install Sysdig on AlmaLinux 8

First, update your local package index with the following command:

sudo dnf update -y

Next, add the yum and Sysdig repositories to your server using these commands:

# sudo rpm --import https://download.sysdig.com/DRAIOS-GPG-KEY.public
# sudo curl -s -o /etc/yum.repos.d/draios.repo http://download.sysdig.com/stable/rpm/draios.repo

After that, install the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository on your server:

sudo dnf install epel-release -y

Now, install the Sysdig tool itself with the following command:

sudo dnf -y install sysdig

Once the installation is complete, verify it by checking the installed Sysdig version on AlmaLinux 8:

sysdig --version

2. How to Use Sysdig Command on AlmaLinux 8?

With Sysdig installed, you can now begin using it for monitoring.

Note: Sysdig requires root privileges to access critical system areas such as /proc file system, /dev/sysdig* devices, and to auto-load the sysdig-probe kernel module.

To launch Sysdig’s interactive UI, run the following command:

sudo csysdig

The output in csysdig includes the following information:

• PID: Process PID.
• CPU: The Amount of CPU used by the process.
• TH: Number of threads that the process contains.
• VIRT: Total virtual memory for the process.
• RES: Resident’s non-swapped memory for the process.
• FILE: Total (input+output) file I/O bandwidth generated by the process, in bytes per second.
• NET: Total (input+output) network I/O bandwidth generated by the process, in bytes per second.
• Command: The full command line of the process

Press the F2 button to change the view for future reference.

Use the arrow keys to navigate and select the options you want to monitor.

To return to the previous menu, use the F2 key. You’ll find an extensive list of monitoring options.

Here are some more examples of how to use the Sysdig tool on AlmaLinux 8.

To view the top processes ranked by CPU utilization percentage, run:

sudo sysdig -c topprocs_cpu

To see the system’s network connections, use the command:

sudo sysdig -c netstat

To list all system processes, execute:

sudo sysdig -c ps

Alternative Solutions for System Monitoring on AlmaLinux 8

While Sysdig is a powerful tool, other options exist for system monitoring on AlmaLinux 8. Here are two alternative solutions:

1. Using perf (Performance Counters for Linux):

perf is a built-in Linux profiling tool that provides detailed performance analysis capabilities. Unlike Sysdig, perf works directly with hardware performance counters and kernel tracepoints, offering low-level insights into CPU, memory, and I/O behavior. While perf doesn’t have Sysdig’s user-friendly chisels or interactive UI, it’s incredibly powerful for deep performance analysis.

Explanation:

perf directly interacts with the kernel and hardware to collect performance data. This allows for extremely accurate profiling, identifying bottlenecks at a granular level. It requires a good understanding of system internals and performance metrics to interpret the results effectively. perf is especially useful for identifying hotspots in code, analyzing cache misses, and understanding the impact of different system configurations.

Code Example:

To record CPU cycles for a specific command (e.g., my_application):

sudo perf record -e cycles my_application

After the command finishes, you can analyze the recorded data:

sudo perf report

This will display a report showing the functions or code sections that consumed the most CPU cycles. You can also use perf top for a real-time view of the most active processes.

2. Using Prometheus and Grafana:

Prometheus is a powerful open-source monitoring solution that collects metrics from systems and applications. Grafana is a data visualization tool that can create dashboards to display these metrics in a user-friendly way. This combination offers a more centralized and scalable monitoring solution compared to Sysdig, especially for complex environments.

Explanation:

Prometheus uses exporters to collect metrics from various sources (e.g., node_exporter for system-level metrics, cAdvisor for container metrics). These metrics are then stored in Prometheus’s time-series database. Grafana connects to Prometheus and uses its query language (PromQL) to create dashboards that visualize the collected data. This allows you to monitor trends, set alerts, and gain a comprehensive overview of your system’s performance.

Code Example (Illustrative – requires setup of Prometheus and node_exporter):

First, install the node_exporter on your AlmaLinux 8 server:

sudo dnf install prometheus-node_exporter
sudo systemctl enable --now prometheus-node_exporter

This exporter collects system-level metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, and network statistics.

Next, configure Prometheus to scrape metrics from the node_exporter. Edit the Prometheus configuration file (/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml) and add a job to scrape the node_exporter:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'node'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9100']  # Assuming node_exporter is running on localhost

Restart Prometheus:

sudo systemctl restart prometheus

Finally, in Grafana, add Prometheus as a data source. Then, create a dashboard using pre-built templates or custom queries to visualize the metrics collected by the node_exporter. For example, you can create a graph showing CPU usage over time using the PromQL query: rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode!="idle"}[5m]).

These alternative solutions offer different approaches to system monitoring, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. perf provides low-level performance analysis, while Prometheus and Grafana offer a scalable and centralized monitoring platform. Choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs and the complexity of your environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, How To Install Sysdig on AlmaLinux 8 is a straightforward process that provides valuable tools for system monitoring and troubleshooting. By following these steps, you can gain deep insights into system activity and performance. Understanding alternative solutions like perf and Prometheus/Grafana expands your monitoring toolkit and allows you to choose the best approach for your environment.

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