Provided by: pcp_5.0.3-1_amd64 
NAME
pmlogconf - create/edit a pmlogger configuration file
SYNOPSIS
pmlogconf [-cqrv?] [-d groupsdir] [-h host] 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:).
OPTIONS
The available command line options are:
-c Enable non-interactive, auto-create mode.
-d groupdir, --groups=groupdir
Specify the path to the groupsdir directory.
-h host, --host=host
Performance metrics source is pmcd(1) on host, rather than on the default localhost.
-q, --quiet
Quiet mode, suppress logging interval dialog.
-r, --reprobe
Reconsider every group for inclusion in the configfile.
-v, --verbose
Enable verbose mode.
-?, --help
Display usage message and exit.
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).
pmlogconf overrides any $PCP_DERIVED_CONFIG environment variable to an empty string, for performance
reasons.
pmlogconf honours the $PMCD_WAIT_TIMEOUT environment variable when probing and creating new pmlogger
configuration files. It uses a default timeout value of 10 seconds for this, in the absence of an
environment setting.
SEE ALSO
pmcd(1), pmlogger(1), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).