PMPROBE(1)PMPROBE(1)NAMEpmprobe - lightweight probe for performance metrics
SYNOPSISpmprobe [-fIiLVvz] [-a archive] [-h hostname] [-K spec] [-n pmnsfile]
[-O time] [-Z timezone] [metricname ...]
DESCRIPTIONpmprobe determines the availability of performance metrics exported
through the facilities of the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP).
The metrics of interest are named in the metricname arguments. If met‐
ricname is a non-leaf node in the Performance Metrics Name Space
(pmns(4)), then pmprobe will recursively descend the PMNS and report on
all leaf nodes. If no metricname argument is given, the root of the
namespace is used.
The output format is spartan and intended for use in wrapper scripts
creating configuration files for other PCP tools. By default, there is
one line of output per metric, with the metric name followed by a count
of the number of available values. Error conditions are encoded as a
negative value count (as per the PMAPI(3) protocols, but may be decoded
using pmerr(1)) and followed by a textual description of the error.
Unless directed to another host by the -h option, pmprobe will contact
the Performance Metrics Collector Daemon (PMCD) on the local host.
The -a option causes pmprobe to use the specified archive rather than
connecting to a PMCD. The -a and -h options are mutually exclusive.
The -L option causes pmprobe to use a local context to collect metrics
from PMDAs on the local host without PMCD. Only some metrics are
available in this mode. The -a,-h and -L options are mutually exclu‐
sive.
Normally pmprobe operates on the distributed Performance Metrics Name
Space (PMNS), however, if the -n option is specified an alternative
local PMNS file is loaded from the file pmnsfile.
Other options control the output of additional information when one or
more values is available.
-f When used with -i or -I the set of instances reported will be all
of those known at the source of the performance data. By default
the set of reported instances are those for which values are cur‐
rently available, which may be smaller than the set reported with
-f.
-I Report the external identifiers for each instance. The literal
string PM_IN_NULL is reported for singular metrics.
-i Report the internal identifiers for each instance. The values are
in decimal and prefixed by ``?''. As a special case, the literal
string PM_IN_NULL is reported for singular metrics.
-K When using the -L option to fetch metrics from a local context,
the -K option may be used to control the DSO PMDAs that should be
made accessible. The spec argument conforms to the syntax
described in __pmSpecLocalPMDA(3). More than one -K option may be
used.
-O When used in conjunction with an archive source of metrics and the
-v option the time argument defines a time origin at which the
metrics should be fetched from the archive. Refer to PCPIntro(1)
for a complete description of this option, and the syntax for the
time argument.
When the ``ctime'' format is used for the time argument in a -O
option, the timezone becomes an issue. The default is to use the
local timezone on the system where pmprobe is run. The -Z option
changes the timezone to timezone in the format of the environment
variable TZ as described in environ(5). The -z option changes the
timezone to the local timezone at the host that is the source of
the performance metrics, as identified via the -a option.
-v Report the value for each instance, as per the formatting rules of
pmPrintValue(3). When fetching from an archive, only those
instances present in the first archive record for a metric will be
displayed; see also the -O option.
The -v option is mutually exclusive with either the -I or -i options.
The -V option provides a cryptic summary of the number of messages sent
and received across the PMAPI interface.
EXAMPLES
$ pmprobe disk.dev
disk.dev.read 2
disk.dev.write 2
disk.dev.total 2
disk.dev.blkread 2
disk.dev.blkwrite 2
disk.dev.blktotal 2
disk.dev.active 2
disk.dev.response 2
$ pmprobe-I disk.dev.read disk.dev.write disk.all.total
disk.dev.read 2 "dks0d1" "dks0d2"
disk.dev.write 2 "dks0d1" "dks0d2"
disk.all.total 1 PM_IN_NULL
$ pmprobe-v pmcd.numagents pmcd.version pmcd.control.timeout
pmcd.numagents 1 9
pmcd.version 1 "2.0 beta-1"
pmcd.control.timeout 1 5
$ pmprobe-v disk.dev.total disk.all.total
disk.dev.total -1012 Unknown metric name
disk.all.total 1 4992466
FILES
$PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
default PMNS specification files
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 ALSOPCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmdumplog(1), pminfo(1), PMAPI(3), pmErrStr(3),
__pmSpecLocalPMDA(3), pcp.conf(4), pcp.env(4) and pmns(4).
Performance Co-Pilot SGI PMPROBE(1)
