1PMIE_CHECK(1) General Commands Manual PMIE_CHECK(1)
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6 pmie_check, pmie_daily - administration of the Performance Co-Pilot
7 inference engine
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10 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check [-CNsTV?] [-c control] [-l logfile]
11 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily [-NV?] [-c control] [-k discard] [-l log‐
12 file] [-m addresses] [-x compress] [-X program] [-Y regex]
13
15 This series of shell scripts and associated control files may be used
16 to create a customized regime of administration and management for the
17 Performance Co-Pilot (see PCPIntro(1)) inference engine, pmie(1).
18 pmie_check may be run at any time of the day and verifies that a
20 desired set of pmie processes is running. If not, it (re-)starts any
21 missing inference engine processes.
22 pmie_daily is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early
24 morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to rotate
25 the log files for the running pmie processes - these files may grow
26 without bound if the ``print'' action is used, or any other pmie action
27 writes to its stdout/stderr streams. After some period, old pmie log
28 files are discarded.
29
31 The available command line options are:
32 -c control, --control=control
34 Both pmie_check and pmie_daily are controlled by PCP inference
35 engine control file(s) that specify the pmie instances to be man‐
36 aged. The default control file is $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH but an
37 alternate may be specified using the -c option. If the directory
38 $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH.d (or control.d from the -c option)
39 exists, then the contents of any additional control files therein
40 will be appended to the main control file (which must exist).
41 -C This option causes pmie_check to query the system service runlevel
43 information for pmie, and use that to determine whether to start
44 processes or not.
45 -k period, --discard=period
47 The log retention period is 14 days by default, but this may be
48 changed using this option. Two special values are recognized for
49 the discard period, namely 0 to keep no log files beyond the cur‐
50 rent one, and forever to prevent any log files being discarded.
51 -l file, --logfile=file
53 In order to ensure that mail is not unintentionally sent when
54 these scripts are run from cron(8) diagnostics are always sent to
55 log files. By default, these files are
56 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/pmie_daily.log and
57 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/pmie_check.log but this can be changed using the
58 -l option. If this log file already exists when the script
59 starts, it will be renamed with a .prev suffix (overwriting any
60 log file saved earlier) before diagnostics are generated to the
61 new log file.
62 -m addresses, --mail=addresses
64 Use of this option causes pmie_daily to construct a summary of the
65 log files generated for all monitored hosts in the last 24 hours
66 (lines matching `` OK '' are culled), and e-mail that summary to
67 the set of space-separated addresses.
68 -N, --showme
70 This option enables a ``show me'' mode, where the programs actions
71 are echoed, but not executed, in the style of ``make -n''. Using
72 -N in conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities
73 for debugging.
74 -s, --stop
76 Use of this option provides the reverse pmie_check functionality,
77 allowing the set of pmie processes to be cleanly shutdown.
78 -T, --terse
80 This option to pmie_check produces less verbose output than the
81 default. This is most suitable for a pmie ``farm'' where many
82 instances of pmie are expected to be running.
83 -V, --verbose
85 The output from the cron execution of the scripts may be extended
86 using the -V option to the scripts which will enable verbose trac‐
87 ing of their activity. By default the scripts generate no output
88 unless some error or warning condition is encountered. Using -N
89 in conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for
90 debugging.
91 -x period, --compress-after=period
93 Log files can optionally be compressed after some period to con‐
94 serve disk space. This is particularly useful for large numbers
95 of pmie processes under the control of pmie_check. The -x option
96 specifies the number of days after which to compress archive data
97 files.
98 -X program, --compressor=program
100 This option specifies the program to use for compression - by
101 default this is xz(1).
102 -Y regex, --regex=regex
104 This option allows a regular expression to be specified causing
105 files in the set of files matched for compression to be omitted -
106 this allows only the data file to be compressed, and also prevents
107 the program from attempting to compress it more than once. The
108 default regex is ".(meta|index|Z|gz|bz2|zip|xz|lzma|lzo|lz4)$" -
109 such files are filtered using the -v option to egrep(1).
110 -?, --help
112 Display usage message and exit.
113
115 Warning: The $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH and $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH.d files
116 must not be writable by any user other than root.
117 The control file(s) should be customized according to the following
119 rules that define for the current version (1.1) of the control file
120 format.
121 1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments.
123 2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to envi‐
124 ronment variables in the style of sh(1), and all text following the
125 ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the control file, and
126 the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is
127 particularly useful to set and export variables into the environ‐
128 ment of the administrative script, e.g.
129 $ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20
130 3. There must be a version line in the initial control file of the
131 form:
132 $ version=1.1
133 4. There should be one line in the control file(s) for each pmie
134 instance of the form:
135 host y|n y|n logfile args
137 5. Fields within a line of the control file(s) are separated by one or
139 more spaces or tabs.
140 6. The first field is the name of the host that is the default source
141 of the performance metrics for this pmie instance.
142 7. The second field indicates if this is a primary pmie instance (y)
143 or not (n). Since the primary inference engine must run on the
144 local host, and there may be at most one primary for a particular
145 host, this field can be y for at most one pmie instance, in which
146 case the host name must be the name of the local host. When gener‐
147 ating pmie configuration files, the primary clause indicates that
148 pmieconf(1) should enable all rules in the primary group, in addi‐
149 tion to all other default rules.
150 8. The third field indicates whether this pmie instance needs to be
151 started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd
152 through a firewall (y or n).
153 9. The fourth field is the name of the pmie activity log file. A use‐
154 ful convention is that pmie instances monitoring the local host
155 with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory
156 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/myhost, while activity logs for the remote host
157 mumble are maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/mumble. This is consis‐
158 tent with the way pmlogger(1) maintains its activity logs and ar‐
159 chive files.
160 10. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to
161 pmie(1). Most typically this would be the -c option.
162 The following sample control lines specify one pmie instance monitoring
164 the local host (wobbly), and another monitoring performance metrics
165 from the host splat.
166 wobbly n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/wobbly -c config.default
168 splat n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat -c splat/cpu.conf
169 Typical crontab(5) entries for periodic execution of pmie_daily and
171 pmie_check are given in $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/crontab (unless installed
172 by default in /etc/cron.d already) and shown below.
173 # daily processing of pmie logs
175 08 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily
176 # every 30 minutes, check pmie instances are running
177 28,58 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check
178 When using systemd(1) on Linux, no crontab entries are needed as the
179 timer mechanism provided by systemd is used instead.
180
182 $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH
183 the default PCP inference engine control file
184 Warning: this file must not be writable by any user other than
185 root.
186 $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH.d
188 optional directory containing additional PCP inference engine con‐
189 trol files, typically one per host
190 Warning: this files herein must not be writable by any user other
191 than root.
192 $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/crontab
194 sample crontab for automated script execution by $PCP_USER (or
195 root) - exists only if the platform does not support the
196 /etc/cron.d mechanism.
197 $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/config.default
199 default pmlogger configuration file location for a localhost
200 inference engine, typically generated automatically by
201 pmieconf(1).
202 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/<hostname>
204 default location for the pmie log file for the host hostname
205 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/<hostname>/lock
207 transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmie
208 administration for the host hostname - if present, can be safely
209 removed if neither pmie_daily nor pmie_check are running
210 $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES
212 PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends
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215 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
216 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
217 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
218 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
219 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
220
222 egrep(1), PCPIntro(1), pmie(1), pmieconf(1), systemd(1), xz(1) and
223 cron(8).
224Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMIE_CHECK(1)