1PMDATRACE(1) General Commands Manual PMDATRACE(1)
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6 pmdatrace - application-level transaction performance metrics domain
7 agent
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10 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace/pmdatrace [-d domain] [-l logfile] [-A access] [-I
11 port] [-M username] [-N buckets] [-T period] [-U units]
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14 pmdatrace is a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) which exports
15 transaction performance metrics from application processes which use
16 the pcp_trace library described in pmdatrace(3).
17 A brief description of the pmdatrace command line options follows:
19 -d It is absolutely crucial that the performance metrics domain num‐
21 ber specified here is unique and consistent. That is, domain
22 should be different for every PMDA on the one host, and the same
23 domain number should be used for the same PMDA on all hosts.
24 -l Location of the log file. By default, a log file named trace.log
26 is written in the current directory of pmcd(1) when pmdatrace is
27 started, i.e. $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd. If the log file cannot be cre‐
28 ated or is not writable, output is written to the standard error
29 instead.
30 -A Host-based access control for pmdatrace. access must be either an
32 allow or deny specification, using either allow:hostspec:maxconns
33 or disallow:hostspec, where `allow' and `disallow' are keywords,
34 `hostspec' is a host specification conforming to the format used
35 by both pmcd(1) and pmlogger(1), and `maxconns' is the maximum
36 number of connections allowed from a given `hostspec'. Using a
37 maximum connections of zero specifies an unlimited number of con‐
38 nections for the accompanying `hostspec'.
39 -I Communicate with pcp_trace clients via the given Internet port.
41 This can alternatively be specified by setting $PCP_TRACE_PORT in
42 the environment to some valid port number (use of the -I option
43 overrides this). The default port number is 4323.
44 -T period defines the aggregation period used to compute the recent
46 averages and extrema. Specified as a time interval using the syn‐
47 tax described in PCPIntro(1) for the common -t PCP argument, e.g.
48 30 seconds or 1 min. The default is 60 seconds.
49 -M User account under which to run the agent. The default is the
51 unprivileged "pcp" account in current versions of PCP, but in
52 older versions the superuser account ("root") was used by default.
53 -N Internally, the aggregation period is divided into bucket divi‐
55 sions, and the rolling average is recomputed every period/bucket
56 seconds. For example, the defaults correspond to -T 60 and -N 12,
57 which means the average is recomputed every five seconds for a
58 period covering the prior 60 seconds.
59 -U This option allows the dimension and scale associated with the
61 observation value metric to be configured. units is a comma-sepa‐
62 rated string of six integer values, which are the space dimension,
63 time dimension, count dimension, space scale, time scale, and
64 count scale, respectively. The default dimension and scale is
65 ``none'', which is equivalent to presenting ``0,0,0,0,0,0'' as the
66 argument to -U. The units associated with a metric are most eas‐
67 ily viewed using the -d (metric description) option to pminfo(1).
68 The Install script described below steps through this option quite
69 explicitly, so it is recommended that the Install script be used
70 for building up the units specification.
71 Essentially, the exported metrics provide statistics on the time for
73 completion of each transaction, and an average count of transactions
74 completed and watch points passed over a given time period.
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77 In order for a host to export the names, help text and values for the
78 Trace performance metrics, do the following as root:
79 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace
81 # ./Install
82 If you want to undo the installation, do the following as root:
84 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace
86 # ./Remove
87 pmdatrace is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed directly.
89 The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the agent is
90 installed or removed.
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93 $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
94 command line options used to launch pmdatrace
95 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace/help
96 default help text file for the trace metrics
97 $PCP_DEMOS_DIR/trace/*
98 example programs which use the pcp_trace library
99 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace/Install
100 installation script for the pmdatrace agent
101 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/trace/Remove
102 undo installation script for pmdatrace
103 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/trace.log
104 default log file for error messages and other information
105 from pmdatrace
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108 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
109 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
110 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
111 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
112 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
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115 PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmtrace(1), PMAPI(3) and pmdatrace(3).
116Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMDATRACE(1)