1PMDAPROC(1) General Commands Manual PMDAPROC(1)
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6 pmdaproc - process performance metrics domain agent (PMDA)
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9 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/pmdaproc [-AL] [-d domain] [-l logfile] [-r cgroup]
10 [-U username]
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13 pmdaproc is a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) which extracts
14 performance metrics describing the state of the individual processes
15 running on a Linux system.
16 The proc PMDA exports metrics that measure the memory, processor and
18 other resource use of each process, as well as summary information col‐
19 lated across all of the running processes. The PMDA uses credentials
20 passed from the PMAPI(3) monitoring tool identifying the user request‐
21 ing the information, to ensure that only values the user is allowed to
22 access are returned by the PMDA. This involves the PMDA temporarily
23 changing its effective user and group identifiers for the duration of
24 requests for instances and values. In other words, system calls to
25 extract information are performed as the user originating the request
26 and not as a privileged user. The mechanisms available for transfer of
27 user credentials are described further in the PCPIntro(1) page.
28 A brief description of the pmdaproc command line options follows:
30 -A Disables use of the credentials provided by PMAPI client tools,
32 and simply runs everything under the "root" account.
33 -L Changes the per-process instance domain used by most procproc met‐
35 rics to include threads as well.
36 -d It is absolutely crucial that the performance metrics domain num‐
38 ber specified here is unique and consistent. That is, domain
39 should be different for every PMDA on the one host, and the same
40 domain number should be used for the same PMDA on all hosts.
41 -l Location of the log file. By default, a log file named proc.log
43 is written in the current directory of pmcd(1) when pmdaproc is
44 started, i.e. $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd. If the log file cannot be cre‐
45 ated or is not writable, output is written to the standard error
46 instead.
47 -r Restrict the set of processes exported in the per-process instance
49 domain to only those processes that are contained by the specified
50 cgroup resource container. This option provides an optional finer
51 granularity to the monitoring, and can also be used to reduce the
52 resources consumed by pmdaproc during requests for instances and
53 values.
54 -U User account under which to run the agent. The default is the
56 privileged "root" account, with seteuid (2) and setegid (2)
57 switching for accessing most information.
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60 The pmdaproc Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) includes an addi‐
61 tional set of per-process metrics with an instance domain of processes
62 restricted to an "interesting" or "hot" set. Unlike the stock metrics
63 exported by the proc PMDA, which have an instance domain equal to the
64 current processes, hot metrics have an instance domain which is a sub‐
65 set of this. This hotproc instance domain is determined by a config‐
66 urable predicate evaluated over some refresh interval.
67 As well as the equivalent per-process proc metrics, hotproc provides a
69 cpuburn metric which specifies the CPU utilization of the process over
70 the refresh interval, total metrics which indicate how much of the
71 available CPU time the "interesting" processes account for, predicate
72 metrics which show the values of the reserved variables (see below)
73 that are being used in the hotproc predicate, and control metrics for
74 controlling the agent.
75
77 The configuration file consists of one predicate used to determine if a
78 process should be in the interesting set or not.
79 An example configuration file may be found at $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/sam‐
81 plehotproc.conf
82 This file with any modifications can be copied to
84 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/hotproc.conf in order to configure the hot metrics.
85 The pmstore(1) and pmStore(3) interfaces can be used as well (described
86 below).
87 The predicate is described using the language specified below. The
89 symbols are based on those used by the C(1) and awk(1) languages.
90 Boolean Connectives
92 && (and), || (or), ! (not), () (precedence overriding)
93 Number comparators
95 < , <= , > , >= , == , !=
96 String comparators
98 == , !=
99 String/Pattern comparators
101 ~ (string matches pattern) , !~ (string does not match pattern)
102 Reserved variables
104 uid (user id; type integer) uname (user name; type string), gid
105 (group id; type integer) gname (group name; type string), fname
106 (process file name; type string), psargs (process file name with
107 args; type string), cpuburn (cpu utilization; type float), iode‐
108 mand (I/O demand - Kbytes read/written per second; type float),
109 ctxswitch (number of context switches per second; type float),
110 syscalls (number of system calls per second; type float), virtu‐
111 alsize (virtual size in Kbytes; type float), residentsize (resi‐
112 dent size in Kbytes; type float), iowait (blocked and raw io
113 wait in secs/sec; type float), schedwait (time waiting in run
114 queue in secs/sec; type float).
115 Literal values
117 1234 (positive integer), 0.35 (positive float), "foobar"
118 (string; delimited by "), /[fF](o)+bar/ (pattern; delimited by
119 /), true (boolean), false (boolean)
120 Comments
122 #this is a comment (from # to the end of the line).
123 Examples
125 cpuburn > 0.2 # cpu utilization of more than 20%
126 cpuburn > 0.2 && uname == "root"
127 cpuburn > 0.2 && (uname == "root" || uname == "hot")
128 psargs ~ /pmda/ && cpuburn > 0.4
129 The hotproc.predicate metrics may be used to see what the values of the
132 reserved variables are that were used by the predicate at the last
133 refresh. They do not cover the reserved variables which are already
134 exported elsewhere. A hotproc.predicate metric may not have a value if
135 it is not referenced in the configuration predicate.
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139 The hot metrics can also be configured at runtime through the
140 pmstore(1) interface (and, implicitly, the pmStore(3) API)
141 Examples
143 pmstore hotproc.control.config 'fname == "mingetty"'
144 pmstore hotproc.control.config 'uid == 0'
145 To force the config file to be reloaded:
147 pmstore hotproc.control.reload_config "1"
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150 The proc PMDA is installed and available by default. If you want to
151 undo the installation, do the following as root:
152 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc
154 # ./Remove
155 If you want to establish access to the names, help text and values for
157 the proc performance metrics once more, after removal, do the following
158 as root:
159 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc
161 # ./Install
162 pmdaproc is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed directly.
164 The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the agent is
165 installed or removed.
166
168 $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
169 command line options used to launch pmdaproc
170 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/help
171 default help text file for the proc metrics
172 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/Install
173 installation script for the pmdaproc agent
174 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/Remove
175 undo installation script for the pmdaproc agent
176 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/proc.log
177 default log file for error messages and other information
178 from pmdaproc
179 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/samplehotproc.conf
180 simple sample hotproc configuration
181 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/proc/hotproc.conf
182 default hotproc configuration file
183
185 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
186 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
187 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
188 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
189 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
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192 PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmstore(1), seteuid(2), setegid(2), PMAPI(3),
193 pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).
194Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMDAPROC(1)