PMIE_CHECK(1)PMIE_CHECK(1)NAME
pmie_check, pmie_daily - administration of the Performance Co-Pilot
inference engine
SYNOPSIS
$PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check [-NsV] [-c control]
$PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily [-NV] [-c control] [-k discard] [-m
addresses] [-x compress] [-X program] [-Y regex]
DESCRIPTION
This series of shell scripts and associated control files may be used
to create a customized regime of administration and management for the
Performance Co-Pilot (see PCPintro(1)) inference engine, pmie(1).
pmie_daily is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early
morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to rotate
the log files for the running pmie processes - these files may grow
without bound if the ``print'' action is used, or any other pme action
writes to its stdout/stderr streams. After some period, old pmie log
files are discarded. This period is 14 days by default, but may be
changed using the -k option. Two special values are recognized for the
period (discard), namely 0 to keep no log files beyond the current one,
and forever to prevent any log files being discarded.
Log files can optionally be compressed after some period (compress), to
conserve disk space. This is particularly useful for large numbers of
pmie processes under the control of pmie_check. The -x option speci‐
fies the number of days after which to compress archive data files, and
the -X option specifies the program to use for compression - by default
this is bzip2(1). Use of the -Y option allows a regular expression to
be specified causing files in the set of files matched for compression
to be omitted - this allows only the data file to be compressed, and
also prevents the program from attempting to compress it more than
once. The default regex is ".meta$|.index$|.Z$|.gz$|.bz2|.zip$" - such
files are filtered using the -v option to egrep(1).
Use of the -m option causes pmie_daily to construct a summary of the
log files generated for all monitored hosts in the last 24 hours (lines
matching `` OK '' are culled), and e-mail that summary to the set of
space-separated addresses.
pmie_check may be run at any time, and is intended to check that the
desired set of pmie(1) processes are running, and if not to re-launch
any failed inference engines. Use of the -s option provides the
reverse functionality, allowing the set of pmie processes to be cleanly
shutdown.
Both pmie_check and pmie_daily are controlled by a PCP inference engine
control file that specifies the pmie instances to be managed. The
default control file is $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH but an alternate may be
specified using the -c option.
The control file should be customized according to the following rules.
1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments.
2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to
environment variables in the style of sh(1), and all text fol‐
lowing the ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the con‐
trol file, and the corresponding variable exported into the
environment. This is particularly useful to set and export
variables into the environment of the administrative script,
e.g.
$ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20
Warning: The $PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH file is a potential security
risk if it is writable by any user other than root.
3. There should be one line in the control file for each pmie
instance of the form:
host y|n logfile args
4. Fields within a line of the control file are separated by one or
more spaces or tabs.
5. The first field is the name of the host that is the default
source of the performance metrics for this pmie instance.
6. The second field indicates whether this pmie instance needs to
be started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd
through a firewall (y or n). Note that pmsocks is part of the
pcp product distribution, rather than the pcp_eoe distribution,
and as such may not be installed on your system. Refer to
PCPintro (1) for full details.
8. The third field is the name of the pmie activity log file. A
useful convention is that pmie instances monitoring the local
host with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/myhost, while activity logs for the remote
host mumble are maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/mumble. This is
consistent with the way pmlogger(1) maintains its activity logs
and archive files.
9. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to
pmie(1). Most typically this would be the -c option.
The following sample control lines specify one pmie instance monitoring
the local host (wobbly), and another monitoring performance metrics
from the host splat.
wobbly n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/wobbly -c pmie/config.default
splat n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat -c pmie/splat/cpu.conf
A typical crontab(5) entry for periodic execution of pmie_check is
given in $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/crontab and shown below.
# daily processing of pmie logs
14 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily
# every 30 minutes, check pmie instances are running
28,58 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check
Alternate redirection of the output from the cron(1) execution of the
script may be controlled as follows:
(1) The -V option to the script will enable verbose tracing of their
activity. By default the script generates no output unless some
error or warning condition is encountered.
(2) To redirect the e-mail from cron(1) away from the root login,
+ Instead of using the ``root'' login, create a special account
with uid equal to 0, e.g. su_pcp. The password may be locked
and/or the shell invalid to prevent login or su (1), but the home
directory should exist. For example the following entry in
/etc/passwd:
su_pcp:x:0:0:PCP Housekeeping:/usr/people/su_pcp:/dev/null
+ Create a $HOME/.forward for su_pcp, else an entry in
/usr/lib/aliases for su_pcp, redirecting the e-mail to a real
user or user(s).
+ Add the ``crontab'' entries above to the crontab file for su_pcp
not root, e.g. in the file /usr/spool/cron/crontabs/su_pcp
The -N option enables a ``show me'' mode, where the actions are echoed,
but not executed, in the style of ``make -n''. Using -N in conjunction
with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging.
FILES
$PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH
the default PCP inference engine control file
Warning: this file is a potential security risk if it is
writable by any user other than root.
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/crontab
sample crontab for automated script execution by root
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/hostname
default location for the pmie log file for the host hostname
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/hostname/lock
transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmie
administration for the host hostname - if present, can be
safely removed if neither pmie_daily nor pmie_check are run‐
ning
$PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES
PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends
PCP ENVIRONMENT
Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the
file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file
/etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. The
$PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration
file, as described in pcp.conf(4).
SEE ALSOchkconfig(1), cron(1), PCPintro(1), pmie(1) and pmsocks(1).
Performance Co-Pilot SGI PMIE_CHECK(1)
