1PMDASHPING(1) General Commands Manual PMDASHPING(1)
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6 pmdashping - "shell-ping" performance metrics domain agent
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9 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/pmdashping [-C] [-d domain] [-l logfile] [-I
10 interval] [-t timeout] configfile
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13 pmdashping is a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) which exports
14 quality of service and response time measurements for arbitrary com‐
15 mands as might be run from a shell such as sh(1).
16 These measurements are intended to be used to quantify service quality
18 and service availability for those services that are either mission
19 critical or act as early indicators of adverse system performance.
20 The sample configuration monitors simple shell commands (exit and
22 date(1)), a short computationally intensive task using sum(1), a short
23 C compilation, DNS lookup via nslookup(1), YP lookup via ypcat(1),
24 bind/portmapper service using rpcbind(1), SMTP by connecting to telnet
25 port 25 and sending an ``expn root'' request, and NNTP by connecting to
26 telnet port 119 and running a ``listgroup'' command.
27 It is expected that other commands would follow the examples in the
29 sample configuration file, and most deployments of the pmdashping PMDA
30 are expected to use a customized configuration file.
31 A brief description of the pmdashping command line options follows:
33 -C Parse configfile, reporting any errors and exiting with non-zero
35 status if the file contains syntactical errors.
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 shping.log
43 is written in the current directory of pmcd(1) when pmdashping 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 -I Amount of time (in seconds) between subsequent executions of the
49 list of commands provided via the configuration file configfile.
50 The default is 2 minutes.
51 -t Amount of time (in seconds) to wait before timing out awaiting a
53 response for a command from configfile. The default is 20 sec‐
54 onds.
55 The required configfile specifies ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs, each
57 on a separate line. All of the commands are run one after another,
58 with the whole group rescheduled to be run once per interval. For each
59 command that is run, pmdashping records information related to the suc‐
60 cess (or timeout), exit status, elapsed time and CPU time (system and
61 user), and this information is exported by the PMDA. The tags are used
62 to identify the individual commands amongst the values exported by the
63 PMDA, and form the external instance domain identifiers for the pmdash‐
64 ping metrics which relate to each command.
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67 In order for a host to export the names, help text and values for the
68 shping performance metrics, do the following as root:
69 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
71 # ./Install
72 The set of ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs may be specified from a
74 default (sample) configuration file, a customized file or entered
75 interactively as part of the Install script.
76 If you want to undo the installation, do the following as root:
78 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
80 # ./Remove
81 pmdashping is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed
83 directly. The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the agent
84 is installed or removed.
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87 $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
88 command line options used to launch pmdashping
89 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/help
90 default help text file for the shping metrics
91 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/sample.conf
92 example configuration file with a number of common commands
93 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Install
94 installation script for the pmdashping agent
95 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Remove
96 undo installation script for pmdashping
97 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/shping.log
98 default log file for error messages and other information
99 from pmdashping
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102 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
103 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
104 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
105 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
106 file, as described in pcp.conf(4).
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109 pmcd(1) and pmgshping(1).
110Performance Co-Pilot SGI PMDASHPING(1)