Introduction

PIKT is a cross-categorical, multi-purpose toolkit with uses limited only by your imagination.

Here are several case studies, with examples and commentary, introducing some of PIKT's varied uses, and many of its special features:

Reporting a Problem (high system load average)
Fixing a Problem (kill idle user sessions; monitoring user activity)
Reporting and Fixing a Problem (delete junk files; disk space management)
Reporting Multiple Problems (service failures; system downages)
Scanning a Log File (dmesg scan; log file analysis)
Scanning Multiple Log Files (syslog scans; PIKT log scans)
Site-Wide System Scanning (interactive system monitoring)
Enhancing the Command Line (remote command execution; command line macros)
Monitoring System Security (checksum differences; change auditing)
Job Scheduling (centrally directed scheduling daemon; cron alternative)
Monitoring SNMP (air conditioning & power failures; monitoring SNMP-enabled devices)
Configuring a System (nsswitch.conf, motd; system and application configuration)
Configuring a Network (resolv.conf, named configuration files; DNS, BIND, and network configuration)
Reporting Policies (alert e-mail routing and scheduling)
Script Development and Testing (debugging, testing; private vs. public reporting)

For a brief introduction to PIKT, visit the Wikipedia PIKT page.

Following is a paper presented at the LISA 2000 Conference December 2000 in New Orleans. It is a good, concise, and still accurate if increasingly outdated introduction to PIKT.

PIKT: Problem Informant/Killer Tool, Postscript version (gzip'ed).

(Note that the paper is out-of-date and doesn't reflect the latest official software release, pikt-current.tar.gz, especially in the area of security. Please see the distribution NEWS and ChangeLog files, also the PIKT Reference, for the latest info.)