1PMIE_CHECK(1) General Commands Manual PMIE_CHECK(1)
2
6 pmie_check, pmie_daily - administration of the Performance Co-Pilot in‐
7 ference engine
8
10 $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check [-CNPpsTV?] [-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 de‐
20 sired 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 en‐
35 gine 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) ex‐
39 ists, 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 -p, --skip-primary
80 If this option is specified for pmie_check then any line from the
81 control files for the primary pmie will be ignored. This option
82 is intended for environments where some system daemon, like sys‐
83 temd(1), is responsible for controlling (starting, stopping,
84 restarting, etc.) the primary pmie.
85 -P, --only-primary
87 If this option is specified for pmie_check then only the primary
88 pmie entry in the control files will be processed. This is the
89 logical opposite of the -p option described above and is intended
90 for use by RC scripts that start only the primary pmie, such as
91 the pmie.service unit. The -p and -P options to pmie_check are
92 mutually exclusive.
93 -T, --terse
95 This option to pmie_check produces less verbose output than the
96 default. This is most suitable for a pmie ``farm'' where many in‐
97 stances of pmie are expected to be running.
98 -V, --verbose
100 The output from the cron execution of the scripts may be extended
101 using the -V option to the scripts which will enable verbose trac‐
102 ing of their activity. By default the scripts generate no output
103 unless some error or warning condition is encountered. Using -N
104 in conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for
105 debugging.
106 -x period, --compress-after=period
108 Log files can optionally be compressed after some period to con‐
109 serve disk space. This is particularly useful for large numbers
110 of pmie processes under the control of pmie_check. The -x option
111 specifies the number of days after which to compress archive data
112 files.
113 -X program, --compressor=program
115 This option specifies the program to use for compression - by de‐
116 fault this is xz(1).
117 -Y regex, --regex=regex
119 This option allows a regular expression to be specified causing
120 files in the set of files matched for compression to be omitted -
121 this allows only the data file to be compressed, and also prevents
122 the program from attempting to compress it more than once. The
123 default regex is ".(meta|index|Z|gz|bz2|zip|xz|lzma|lzo|lz4)$" -
124 such files are filtered using the -v option to egrep(1).
125 -?, --help
127 Display usage message and exit.
128
130 Warning: The $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH and $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH.d files
131 must not be writable by any user other than root.
132 The control file(s) should be customized according to the following
134 rules that define for the current version (1.1) of the control file
135 format.
136 1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments.
138 2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to envi‐
139 ronment variables in the style of sh(1), and all text following the
140 ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the control file, and
141 the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is
142 particularly useful to set and export variables into the environ‐
143 ment of the administrative script, e.g.
144 $ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20
145 3. There must be a version line in the initial control file of the
146 form:
147 $ version=1.1
148 4. There should be one line in the control file(s) for each pmie in‐
149 stance of the form:
150 host y|n y|n logfile args
152 5. Fields within a line of the control file(s) are separated by one or
154 more spaces or tabs.
155 6. The first field is the name of the host that is the default source
156 of the performance metrics for this pmie instance.
157 7. The second field indicates if this is a primary pmie instance (y)
158 or not (n). Since the primary inference engine must run on the lo‐
159 cal host, and there may be at most one primary for a particular
160 host, this field can be y for at most one pmie instance, in which
161 case the host name must be the name of the local host. When gener‐
162 ating pmie configuration files, the primary clause indicates that
163 pmieconf(1) should enable all rules in the primary group, in addi‐
164 tion to all other default rules.
165 8. The third field indicates whether this pmie instance needs to be
166 started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd
167 through a firewall (y or n).
168 9. The fourth field is the name of the pmie activity log file. A use‐
169 ful convention is that pmie instances monitoring the local host
170 with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory
171 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/myhost, while activity logs for the remote host
172 mumble are maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/mumble. This is consis‐
173 tent with the way pmlogger(1) maintains its activity logs and ar‐
174 chive files.
175 10. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to
176 pmie(1). Most typically this would be the -c option.
177 The following sample control lines specify one pmie instance monitoring
179 the local host (wobbly), and another monitoring performance metrics
180 from the host splat.
181 wobbly n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/wobbly -c config.default
183 splat n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat -c splat/cpu.conf
184 Typical crontab(5) entries for periodic execution of pmie_daily and
186 pmie_check are given in $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/crontab (unless installed
187 by default in /etc/cron.d already) and shown below.
188 # daily processing of pmie logs
190 08 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily
191 # every 30 minutes, check pmie instances are running
192 28,58 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check
193 When using systemd(1) on Linux, no crontab entries are needed as the
194 timer mechanism provided by systemd is used instead.
195
197 $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH
198 the default PCP inference engine control file
199 Warning: this file must not be writable by any user other than
200 root.
201 $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH.d
203 optional directory containing additional PCP inference engine con‐
204 trol files, typically one per host
205 Warning: this files herein must not be writable by any user other
206 than root.
207 $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/crontab
209 sample crontab for automated script execution by $PCP_USER (or
210 root) - exists only if the platform does not support the
211 /etc/cron.d mechanism.
212 $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/config.default
214 default pmie configuration file location for a localhost inference
215 engine, typically generated automatically by pmieconf(1).
216 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/pmie_check.log
218 default location for the pmie_check log file. When run as a dae‐
219 mon service, if the pmie process failed to start or exited early,
220 there may be error messages in this file, particularly if the dae‐
221 mon could not open it's own log file.
222 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/pmie_daily.log
224 default location for error messages generated during the daily
225 pmie service maintenance operations.
226 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/<hostname>
228 default directory location for the pmie log file for the host
229 hostname
230 $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/<hostname>/lock
232 transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmie ad‐
233 ministration for the host hostname - if present, can be safely re‐
234 moved if neither pmie_daily nor pmie_check are running
235 $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES
237 PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends
238
240 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
241 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
242 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
243 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
244 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
245
247 egrep(1), PCPIntro(1), pmie(1), pmieconf(1), systemd(1), xz(1) and
248 cron(8).
249Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMIE_CHECK(1)