Provided by: pcp_4.0.1-1_amd64 
NAME
pmlogconf - create/edit a pmlogger configuration file
SYNOPSIS
pmlogconf [-cqrv] [-d groupsdir] [-h hostname] configfile
DESCRIPTION
pmlogconf may be used to create and modify a generic configuration file for the PCP
archive logger, pmlogger(1).
If configfile does not exist, pmlogconf will create a generic configuration file with a
default set of enabled metrics and logging intervals.
Once created, configfile may be used with the -c option to pmlogger(1) to select
performance metrics and specify logging intervals for a PCP archive.
If configfile does exist, pmlogconf will prompt for input from the user to enable or
disable groups of related performance metrics and to control the logging interval for each
enabled group.
Group selection requires a simple y (yes) or n (no) response to the prompt Log this
group?.
Other responses at this point may be used to select additional control functions as
follows:
m Report the names of the metrics in the current group.
q Finish with group selection (quit) and make no further changes to this group or
any subsequent group.
/pattern Make no change to this group but search for a group containing pattern in the
description of the group or the names of the associated metrics.
A logging interval is specified by responding to the Logging interval? prompt with the
keywords once or default or a valid pmlogger(1) interval specification of the form ``every
N timeunits'' or simply ``N timeunits '' (the every is optional) where N is an unsigned
integer and timeunits is one of the keywords msec, millisecond, sec, second, min, minute,
hour or the plural form of one of the keywords.
When run from automated logging setup processes, the -c option is used to indicate that
pmlogconf is in auto-create mode and no interactive dialog takes place. The output
configfile has an additional comment message and timestamp indicating this fact, so that
it can be identified and subsequently updated using -c again. This option is not
appropriate for interactive use of the tool.
The -q option suppresses the logging interval dialog and preserves the current interval
from configfile.
More verbose output may be enabled with the -v option.
SETUP GROUP FILES
When an initial configfile is created, the default specifications come from a set of group
files below the groupsdir specified with the -d option (the default groupsdir is
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogconf which is most commonly correct, so the -d option is rarely
used in practice).
The directory structure below groupsdir is arbitrary as all regular files will be found by
recursive descent and considered, so add-on products and PMDA developers can easily extend
the available defaults to pmlogconf by adding new directories and/or group files below
groupsdir.
These group files are processed in the following ways:
• When a new configfile is created, all group files are processed.
• Whenever pmlogconf is run with an existing configfile, groupsdir is traversed to see if
any new groups have been defined and should be considered for inclusion in configfile.
• When pmlogconf processes a group in configfile that is enabled, the list of metrics
associated with the group is taken from the group file (and replaces any previous list
of metrics associated with this group in configfile).
• When either the -r (reprobe) or the -c (auto-create) command line option is specified,
every group (not just newly discovered ones) is reprocessed to see if it should be
considered for inclusion in configfile.
• If a group is found in configfile but the corresponding group does not exist below
groupsdir (as would be the case when a group is made obsolete by a PCP upgrade) then
the handling of the group depends on the mode in which pmlogconf is being run. With -c
the corresponding group is culled from configfile, otherwise the corresponding group is
unchanged in configfile. In either case a warning is issued.
Each group file is structured as follows:
• The first line must contain #pmlogconf-setup 2.0
• Other lines beginning with # are treated as comments.
• Blank lines are ignored.
• One or more lines starting with the keyword ident are used to provide the human-
readable description of the group.
• Non-blank lines beginning with white space define metrics to be associated with this
group, one per line. Each metric specification follows the rules for a pmlogger(1)
configuration, namely either the name of a non-leaf node in the PMNS (implying all
descendent names in the PMNS), or the name of a leaf node in the PMNS optionally
followed by one or more instance names enclosed by ``['' and ``]''.
• A control line starting with one of the keywords probe or force must be present.
• An optional logging interval control line begins with the keyword delta followed by one
of the pmlogger(1) interval specification described above.
• probe control lines have the format:
probe metric [condition [state_rule] ]
where metric is the name of a PCP metric (must be a leaf node in the PMNS, no instance
specification is allowed, and it must not be a derived metric) and the optional
condition is the keyword exists (true if metric exists, i.e. is defined in the PMNS) or
the keyword values (true if metric exists in the PMNS and has one or more current
values) or an expression of the form
op val
where op is one of the awk(1) operators (==, !=, >, >=, <, <=, ~ (regular expression
match) or !~ (negated regular expression match)) and val is a value (arbitrary sequence
of characters, excluding a space) and the condition is true if there is some instance
of metric that makes the expression true.
If the condition is missing, the default is exists.
When an explicit condition is provided, there may also be an optional state_rule of the
form
? true_state : false_state
where true_state (applies if condition is true) and false_state (applies if condition
is false) are both taken from the keywords include (include and enable the group and
the associated metrics in configfile), available (include and disable the group in
configfile - a user action of y as described above is needed to enable the group and
add the associated metrics into configfile) or exclude (the group is not considered for
inclusion in configfile).
The default state_rule is
? available : exclude
• force control lines begin with the keyword force followed by one of the states defined
above, so one of the actions include, exclude or available is applied unconditionally
to the group.
Probing is only done when a new group is being added to configfile or when the -r command
line option is specified. The evaluation of the probing conditions is done by contacting
pmcd(1) on hostname (defaults to local:).
EXAMPLE
The following group file demonstrates all of the supported syntactic elements.
#pmlogconf-setup 2.0
ident Example group file
ident ... more description
delta 1 minute
probe sample.secret.foo.one values ? include : exclude
sample.secret.foo.one
sample.secret.foo.bar # non-leaf in the PMNS
sample.colour [ red green ]
MIGRATION
The current version of pmlogconf (2.0) supports a slightly different format for configfile
compared to earlier versions. If an old version configfile is presented to pmlogconf it
will be converted to the new format.
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(5). Note that pmlogconf specifically
overrides its own $PCP_DERIVED_CONFIG environment variable to an empty string, for
performance reasons.
SEE ALSO
pmcd(1), pmlogger(1), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).