1PMLOGGER.CONTROL(5) File Formats Manual PMLOGGER.CONTROL(5)
2
6 pmlogger.control - control files for Performance Co-Pilot archive log‐
7 ging
8
10 Historical archive logging of performance data for Performance Co-Pilot
11 (see PCPIntro(1)) uses pmlogger(1) and one or more instances of pmlog‐
12 ger may be managed by pmlogger_check(1) and pmlogger_daily(1).
13 pmlogger_check(1) may be run at any time of the day and is intended to
15 check that the desired set of pmlogger processes are running. If not,
16 it (re-)starts any missing logger processes. By default, pmlog‐
17 ger_check(1) also calls pmlogger_daily(1) with a -K option to execute
18 any required archive compression tasks.
19 pmlogger_daily(1) is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the
21 early morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to
22 aggregate, rotate and perform general housekeeping for one or more sets
23 of PCP archives.
24 Both pmlogger_check(1) and pmlogger_daily(1) operate on a family of
26 shared control files, namely the $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH file and
27 files within the $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH.d directory. These files
28 must not be writable by any user other than root.
29 The control file(s) should be customized according to the following
31 rules that define for the current version (1.1) of the control file
32 format.
33 1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments. A special case is lines
35 beginning ``#!#''; these are control lines for a pmlogger that has
36 been stopped using pmlogctl(1).
37 2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to envi‐
38 ronment variables in the style of sh(1), and all text following the
39 ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the control file, and
40 the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is
41 particularly useful to set and export variables into the environ‐
42 ment of the administrative scripts, e.g.
43 $ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20
44 If the value to the right of the ``='' contains any white space,
45 then the value should be enclosed in double (") or single (')
46 quotes.
47 3. There must be a version line in the control file of the form:
48 $version=1.1
49 4. Fields within a line of the control file(s) are usually separated
50 by one or more spaces or tabs (although refer to the description of
51 the directory field below for some important exceptions).
52 5. There should be one line in the control file(s) for each pmlogger
53 instance with at least 4 fields of the form:
54 host primary socks directory args ...
55 6. The host field is the name of the host that is the source of the
56 performance metrics for this pmlogger instance. The reserved word
57 LOCALHOSTNAME will be replaced by the name of the local host.
58 7. The primary field indicates if this is a primary pmlogger instance
59 (y) or not (n). Since the primary logger must run on the local
60 host, and there may be at most one primary logger for a particular
61 host, this field can be y for at most one pmlogger instance, in
62 which case the host name must be the name of the local host (or LO‐
63 CALHOSTNAME).
64 8. The socks field indicates if this pmlogger instance needs to be
65 started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd(1)
66 through a firewall (y or n).
67 9. The directory field is a directory name. All archive files associ‐
68 ated with this pmlogger instance will be created in this directory,
69 and this will be the current directory for the execution of any
70 programs required to maintain those archives. A useful convention
71 is that primary logger archives for the local host with hostname
72 myhost are maintained in the directory $PCP_ARCHIVE_DIR/myhost
73 (this is where the default pmlogger start-up script in
74 $PCP_RC_DIR/pcp will create the archives), while archives for the
75 remote host mumble are maintained in $PCP_ARCHIVE_DIR/mumble.
76 10. The directory field may contain embedded shell syntax that will be
77 evaluated by sh(1) to produce the real directory name to be used.
78 The allowed constructs are:
79 • Any text (including white space) enclosed with $( and ) will be
80 interpreted as a shell command.
81 • Any text (including white space) enclosed with ` and ` (back
82 quotes) will be interpreted as a shell command.
83 • An initial double quote (") followed by arbitrary text (including
84 white space, but excluding an embedded double quote) and a final
85 double quote.
86 • An initial single quote (') followed by arbitrary text (including
87 white space, but excluding an embedded single quote) and a final
88 single quote.
89 • Any word containing a $ (assumed to introduce an environment
90 variable name).
91 11. In the directory field, the reserved word LOCALHOSTNAME will be re‐
92 placed by the name of the local host.
93 12. The optional args field and any remaining fields are interpreted as
94 arguments to be passed to pmlogger(1). Most typically this would
95 be at least the -c option to specify the metrics to be logged and
96 the logging frequencies.
97 The following sample control lines specify a primary logger on the lo‐
99 cal host (bozo), and non-primary loggers to collect and log performance
100 metrics from the hosts wobbly, boing and the local host (i.e. bozo).
101 $version=1.1
103 bozo y n $PCP_ARCHIVE_DIR/bozo -c config.default
104 wobbly n n "/store/wobbly/$(date +%Y)" -c ./wobbly.config
105 boing n n $PCP_ARCHIVE_DIR/boing -c ./pmlogger.config
106 LOCALHOSTNAME n n /cluster/LOCALHOSTNAME -c ./precious.config
107
109 The periodic execution of pmlogger_check(1) and pmlogger_daily(1) is
110 controlled by either systemd(1) or cron(8).
111 Typical crontab(5) entries are provided in $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlog‐
113 ger/crontab (unless installed by default in /etc/cron.d already) and
114 shown below.
115 # daily processing of archive logs
117 14 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily
118 # every 30 minutes, check pmlogger instances are running
119 25,55 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_check
120 When using systemd(1) on Linux, no crontab entries are needed as the
122 timer mechanism provided by systemd is used instead to achieve the same
123 period execution as the crontab example above.
124
126 $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH
127 the PCP logger control file. For a new installation this file
128 contains no pmlogger(1) control lines (the real control files are
129 all in the $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH.d directory), but this file
130 is still processed to support any legacy configurations therein
131 from earlier PCP releases.
132 Warning: this file must not be writable by any user other than
133 root.
134 $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH.d
136 optional directory containing additional PCP logger control files,
137 with one or more per pmlogger specification per file.
138 Warning: the files herein must not be writable by any user other
139 than root.
140 $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogger/crontab
142 sample crontab for automated script execution by $PCP_USER (or
143 root). Exists only if the platform does not support the
144 /etc/cron.d mechanism.
145
147 Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
148 file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
149 /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
150 $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
151 file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
152
154 PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmlogctl(1), pmlogger(1), pmlogger_check(1), pm‐
155 logger_daily(1), pmlogger_daily_report(1), pmsocks(1), systemd(1) and
156 cron(8).
157Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMLOGGER.CONTROL(5)