>>>> Stan Sieler wrote:

>    1) Buying the AIF:MI
>       (Architected Interface Facility : Measurement Interface)

 Thanks for the reply Stan.

 That's slightly possible.  I'm not concerned about the initial CPU
start up cost as I hope to launch this at ~ 3:00 am.  Monetary costs
could sink this one though.

>    2) compute it yourself: get CPU time of every process, pause, do it again,
>       utilization is about (new_cpu - old_cpu) / pause time * 100.
>       But...doesn't take into account the time it takes to get the CPU,
>       and what happens when a process terminates (and thus isn't seen in
>       the "new_cpu" number), and has other problems.

 A good idea... perhaps more resource consumptive (over the long run)
than I would prefer.


>    3) Use SMTP.
>       Enable SMTP on your 3000, and write a network-aware utility that
>       uses SMTP protocols to ask your 3000 how busy it is.

 I think you may mean SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) as
opposed to SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

 I started down this road, the MIB variable is
hp.nm.system.general.mpeXLSystem.processor.cpuUtilization.0

 According to the documentation that variable is only set when the
Measurement Interface has been enabled, otherwise it will return 0.
I suspected that Glance/XL enabled the measurement interface so I
started it up but SNMP still reported 0 and glance said 35%.  Argh!

>    4) start a VERY LOW priority background process whose only purpose is
>       to do:    while true do ;
>       (i.e., it simply eats CPU)
>       I'd set the priority:

 That's a cool idea.  I may take some time and roll that one around.


 Thanks again, I appreciate your insight and willingness to share
your knowledge.


Jim


******************************************************************
Jim Alton
Systems Analyst
Mohawk College
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