Provided by: pcp_5.0.3-1_amd64 
NAME
pmdiff - compares archives and report significant differences
SYNOPSIS
pmdiff [-dzV?] [-B starttime] [-E endtime] [-p precision] [-q thres] [-S starttime] [-T endtime] [-x
metric] [-X file] [-Z timezone] [--skip-excluded] [--skip-missing] archive1 [archive2]
DESCRIPTION
pmdiff compares the average values for every metric in either one or two sets of archives, in a given
time window, for changes that are likely to be of interest when searching for performance regressions.
The archive specifiers archive1 and archive2 may be comma-separated lists of names, each of which may be
the base name of an archive or the name of a directory containing one or more archives. Each archive in
the resulting set of archives must have been previously created using pmlogger(1). The pmlogsummary(1)
utility is used to obtain the average values used for comparison.
There are two sorts of invocation of the tool: with either one or two sets of archives.
In the first case, the only sensible command line requires use of all four time window arguments. These
are specified using the same time window format described in PCPIntro(1), and are -S/--start and
-T/--finish for the start and end times of the first time window of interest in the archive set, and
-B/--before and -E/--end for the start and end times of the second time window of interest.
In the second case, with two sets of archives, the -B/--before and -E/--end options might be unnecessary.
This might be the case, for example, when comparing the same time window of two consecutive days (usually
two separate sets of archives), or a time window on the same day of different weeks.
In either case, pmdiff produces a sorted summary of those metrics in the specified window whose values
have deviated the most from a minimal threshold. The level of deviation is calculated by dividing the
average value of each metric in both logs, and then calculating whether the ratio falls outside of a
range considered normal. This ratio can be adjusted using the -q/--threshold option, and by default it
is 2 (i.e. report all metrics with average values that have more than doubled in the two time windows or
more than halved in the two time windows).
If the baseline value is zero and the comparison value is non-zero, the ratio is reported as ``|+|''
(infinitely large). If the comparison value is zero and the baseline value is non-zero, the ratio is
reported as ``|-|'' (infinitely small).
Reported metrics are sorted in ascending ratio order.
Should any metrics be present in one window but missing from the other, a diagnostic will be displayed
listing each missing metric and the archive set from which it was missing.
Metrics with counter semantics are converted to rates before being evaluated.
OPTIONS
The available command line options are:
-d, --keep
Debug mode, keep intermediate files.
-B time, --begin=time
Start time for the second time window.
-E time, --end=time
End time for the second time window.
-p precision, --precision=precision
Print all floating point numbers with precision digits after the decimal place.
-q threshold, --threshold=threshold
Change the threshold for interesting metrics, see above for more details.
-S time, --start=time
Start time of the first time window.
-T time, --finish=time
End time of the first time window.
-V, --version
Display version number and exit.
-x metric
Compare each metric in each archive set in the time windows specified to a given egrep(1) pattern,
excluding those that match from the report output.
-X file
Allows a file to be specified which containing egrep(1) patterns which are applied to the metric
names to optionally exclude some from the report.
-z, --hostzone
Use the local timezone from the given archive set.
-Z timezone, --timezone=timezone
Changes the timezone in the archive labels to timezone in the format of the environment variable TZ
as described in environ(7).
-?, --help
Display usage message and exit.
--skip-excluded
Cull the list of names of metrics being excluded from the output.
--skip-missing
By default, pmdiff will report the names of any metrics that are in one archive set but not the
other. This option suppresses that reporting.
FILES
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/<hostname>
Default directory for PCP archives containing performance metric values collected from the host
hostname.
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).
SEE ALSO
PCPIntro(1), pmlogger(1), pmlogsummary(1), egrep(1), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).