One of the more useful utilities that Apple includes with its Xserve products is the Server monitor. This tool provides detailed remote hardware monitoring including:
- Info - Hostname, IP address, operating system, processor type and configuration as well as total system memory
- Memory - Name, size, speed and type of memory installed in each slot
- Drives - Model, type, capacity and SMART data for each hard drive
- Power - Current, voltage and power readings for various system components, both in numerical and graphical form
- Network - IP address, subnet mask, MAC address, link speed and duplex settings for all active network devices
- Temperature - Readings from more than ten enclosure and processor sensors
- Blowers - RPMs for all eight internal fans
- Security - The status of the security lock for the Xserve enclosure
Diagnosing problems when adding servers to be monitored can be quite difficult - they either show up immediately without fuss, or they eternally display the useless “Waiting for response” message. After spending several hours trying to diagnose these “Waiting for response” problems, it appears they are caused by one of two things.
Firstly, reverse DNS not being configured correctly for your server.
Secondly, the hardware monitor daemon (hwmond) not being started correctly.
If you install OS X.4 Server to an Xserve using Firewire target mode, you may find that hwmond isn’t started at boot time. To enable hwmond, edit your /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.hwmond.plist file and remove the lines that say:
<key>Disabled</key>
<true />
Previous versions of OS X Server used /etc/watchdog.conf to monitor and automatically (re)launch daemons when required. If this file doesn’t contain the line hwmond:respawn:/usr/sbin/hwmond then the hardware daemon will not start. The solution is to add the line, wait ten seconds, and try re-connect to the server. More details are available from Apple.
July 15th, 2005 at 23:49
Thank you so much on the info for the firewire target mode and system monitor not starting up. I looked a long time for this info.
August 13th, 2005 at 0:58
Thank you very much for this. You saved me a great deal of time.
August 14th, 2005 at 20:03
No problem David and Mindy - I spent a lot of time trying to figure out problems like this so I was hoping this would help others!
September 2nd, 2005 at 17:26
Another one who wants to say thank you so much! - and add a tip: as watchdog.conf must be changed as root and using the terminal to do so is not everybody’s favorite, I am using Pseudo (http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/pseudo.html) to start up TextEdit - and saving the modified .conf file is as easy as possible.
September 21st, 2005 at 19:00
you can also just change the “true” part to “false” if you want to preseve the entry but still have it work! thanks also from me for the info!
December 7th, 2005 at 12:59
Also, if you happen to be running OS X Server on an older machine, say, a Sawtooth G4, hwmond will not even start up :)
localhost:~ root# /usr/sbin/hwmond
hwmond will NOT run on this platform.
December 7th, 2005 at 16:11
Dan, you’re correct.
hwmond will only run on XServes - I believe it requires hardware monitoring services that aren’t built in to any other of Apple’s computers.
January 14th, 2006 at 3:11
one vital piece missing is that you need to run this command at the end:
/System/Library/ServerSetup/SetupExtras/hwmondSetup
this is for Tiger.
January 15th, 2006 at 9:13
Google brought me to your entry, which helped me figure out what was wrong with our G5 Cluster Node we installed the OS on (via firewire) several months ago. Thanks!
February 5th, 2006 at 7:28
Thanks so much :)
April 12th, 2006 at 0:20
A shame we cannot use hmond on older hardware. But SNMP should help monitoring the basics…? any thoughts?
January 26th, 2007 at 21:56
Thanks for this weblog, I deleted the two lines from the file, rebooted my Xserve G5 and now I can monitor it. Wonderful help.
May 4th, 2008 at 4:26
Lovely. Thank you!