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] [-U username] 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 -U User account under which to run the agent and all commands. The
57 default is the unprivileged "pcp" account in current versions of
58 PCP, but in older versions the superuser account ("root") was used
59 by default.
60 The required configfile specifies ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs, each
62 on a separate line. All of the commands are run one after another,
63 with the whole group rescheduled to be run once per interval. For each
64 command that is run, pmdashping records information related to the suc‐
65 cess (or timeout), exit status, elapsed time and CPU time (system and
66 user), and this information is exported by the PMDA. The tags are used
67 to identify the individual commands amongst the values exported by the
68 PMDA, and form the external instance domain identifiers for the pmdash‐
69 ping metrics which relate to each command.
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72 In order for a host to export the names, help text and values for the
73 shping performance metrics, do the following as root:
74 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
76 # ./Install
77 The set of ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs may be specified from a
79 default (sample) configuration file, a customized file or entered
80 interactively as part of the Install script.
81 If you want to undo the installation, do the following as root:
83 # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
85 # ./Remove
86 pmdashping is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed
88 directly. The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the agent
89 is installed or removed.
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92 $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
93 command line options used to launch pmdashping
94 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/help
95 default help text file for the shping metrics
96 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/sample.conf
97 example configuration file with a number of common commands
98 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Install
99 installation script for the pmdashping agent
100 $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Remove
101 undo installation script for pmdashping
102 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/shping.log
103 default log file for error messages and other information
104 from pmdashping
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107 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
108 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
109 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
110 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
111 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
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114 PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1) and pcp-shping(1).
115Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMDASHPING(1)