1PMLOGCONF(1) General Commands Manual PMLOGCONF(1)
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6 pmlogconf - create/edit a pmlogger configuration file
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9 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogconf [-qrv] [-d groupsdir] [-h hostname] config‐
10 file
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13 pmlogconf may be used to create and modify a generic configuration file
14 for the PCP archive logger, pmlogger(1).
15 If configfile does not exist, pmlogconf will create a generic configu‐
17 ration file with a default set of enabled metrics and logging inter‐
18 vals.
19 Once created, configfile may be used with the -c option to pmlogger(1)
21 to select performance metrics and specify logging intervals for a PCP
22 archive.
23 If configfile does exist, pmlogconf will prompt for input from the user
25 to enable or disable groups of related performance metrics and to con‐
26 trol the logging interval for each enabled group.
27 Group selection requires a simple y (yes) or n (no) response to the
29 prompt Log this group?.
30 Other responses at this point may be used to select additional control
32 functions as follows:
33 m Report the names of the metrics in the current group.
35 q Finish with group selection (quit) and make no further
37 changes to this group or any subsequent group.
38 /pattern Make no change to this group but search for a group contain‐
40 ing pattern in the description of the group or the names of
41 the associated metrics.
42 A logging interval is specified by responding to the Logging interval?
44 prompt with the keywords once or default or a valid pmlogger(1) inter‐
45 val specification of the form ``every N timeunits'' or simply ``N time‐
46 units '' (the every is optional) where N is an unsigned integer and
47 timeunits is one of the keywords msec, millisecond, sec, second, min,
48 minute, hour or the plural form of one of the keywords.
49 The -q option suppresses the logging interval dialog and preserves the
51 current interval from configfile.
52 More verbose output may be enabled with the -v option.
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56 When an initial configfile is created, the default specifications come
57 from a set of group files below the groupsdir specified with the -d
58 option (the default groupsdir is $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogconf which is
59 most commonly correct, so the -d option is rarely used in practice).
60 The directory structure below groupsdir is arbitrary as all regular
62 files will be found by recursive descent and considered, so add-on
63 products and PMDA developers can easily extend the available defaults
64 to pmlogconf by adding new directories and/or group files below groups‐
65 dir.
66 These group files are processed in the following ways:
68 · When a new configfile is created, all group files are processed.
70 · Whenever pmlogconf is run with an existing configfile, groupsdir is
72 traversed to see if any new groups have been defined and should be
73 considered for inclusion in configfile.
74 · When pmlogconf processes a group in configfile that is enabled, the
76 list of metrics associated with the group is taken from the group
77 file (and replaces any previous list of metrics associated with this
78 group in configfile).
79 · When the -r (reprobe) command line option is specified, every group
81 (not just newly discovered ones) is reprocessed to see if it should
82 be considered for inclusion in configfile.
83 Each group file is structured as follows:
85 · The first line must contain #pmlogconf-setup 2.0
87 · Other lines beginning with # are treated as comments.
89 · Blank lines are ignored.
91 · One or more lines starting with the keyword ident are used to pro‐
93 vide the human-readable description of the group.
94 · Non-blank lines beginning with white space define metrics to be
96 associated with this group, one per line. Each metric specification
97 follows the rules for a pmlogger(1) configuration, namely either the
98 name of a non-leaf node in the PMNS (implying all descendent names
99 in the PMNS), or the name of a leaf node in the PMNS optionally fol‐
100 lowed by one or more instance names enclosed by ``['' and ``]''.
101 · A control line starting with one of the keywords probe or force must
103 be present.
104 · An optional logging interval control line begins with the keyword
106 delta followed by one of the pmlogger(1) interval specification
107 described above.
108 · probe control lines have the format:
110 probe metric [condition [state_rule] ]
111 where metric is the name of a PCP metric (must be a leaf node in the
112 PMNS and no instance specification is allowed) and the optional con‐
113 dition is the keyword exists (true if metric exists, i.e. is defined
114 in the PMNS) or the keyword values (true if metric exists in the
115 PMNS and has one or more current values) or an expression of the
116 form
117 op val
118 where op is one of the awk(1) operators (==, !=, >, >=, <, <=, ~
119 (regular expression match) or !~ (negated regular expression match))
120 and val is a value (arbitrary sequence of characters, excluding a
121 space) and the condition is true if there is some instance of metric
122 that makes the expression true. If the condition is missing, the
123 default is exists. When an explicit condition is provided, there
124 may also be an optional state_rule of the form
125 ? true_state : false_state
126 where true_state (applies if condition is true) and false_state
127 (applies if condition is false) are both taken from the keywords
128 include (include and enable the group and the associated metrics in
129 configfile), available (include and disable the group in configfile
130 - user action of y as described above is needed to enable the group
131 and add the associated metrics into configfile) or exclude (the
132 group is not considered for inclusion in configfile). The default
133 state_rule is
134 ? available : exclude
135 · force control lines begin with the keyword force followed by one of
137 the states defined above, so one of the actions include, exclude or
138 available is applied unconditionally to the group.
139 Probing is only done when a new group is being added to configfile or
141 when the -r command line option is specified. The evaluation of the
142 probing conditions is done by contacting pmcd(1) on hostname (defaults
143 to localhost).
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146 The following group file demonstrates all of the supported syntactic
147 elements. #pmlogconf-setup 2.0 ident Example group file ident ...
148 more description delta 1 minute probe sample.secret.foo.one values
149 ? include : exclude
150 sample.secret.foo.one
151 sample.secret.foo.bar # non-leaf in the PMNS
152 sample.colour [ red green ]
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155 The current version of pmlogconf (2.0) supports a slightly different
156 format for configfile compared to earlier versions. If an old version
157 configfile is presented to pmlogconf it will be converted to the new
158 format.
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161 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
162 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
163 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
164 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
165 file, as described in pcp.conf(4).
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168 pmcd(1), pmlogger(1), pcp.conf(4) and pcp.env(4).
169Performance Co-Pilot SGI PMLOGCONF(1)