NAME

       sar2pcp - import sar data and create a PCP archive

SYNOPSIS

       sar2pcp infile outfile

DESCRIPTION

       sar2pcp  is  intended  to  read  a binary System Activity Reporting (sar) data file as created by sadc(1)
       (infile) and translate this into a Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive with the basename outfile.

       However, if infile has the suffix ``.xml'', then it will be considered already in XML format and  sar2pcp
       will operate directly on it.

       The  resultant  PCP  achive  may be used with all the PCP client tools to graph subsets of the data using
       pmchart(1), perform data reduction and reporting, filter with the PCP inference engine pmie(1), etc.

       A series of physical files will be created with the prefix outfile.  These are outfile.0 (the performance
       data),  outfile.meta  (the  metadata  that  describes the performance data) and outfile.index (a temporal
       index to improve efficiency of replay operations for the archive).  If any of these files exists already,
       then sar2pcp will not overwrite them and will exit with an error message of the form

       __pmLogNewFile: ``blah.0'' already exists, not over-written

       sar2pcp  is a Perl script that uses the PCP::LogImport Perl wrapper around the PCP libpcp_import library,
       and as such could be used as an example to develop new tools to import other types  of  performance  data
       and create PCP archives.  A Python wrapper module is also available.

NOTES

       As  of  sysstat  version 12.0.5, sadc(1) has added functionality to directly write PCP archive files.  To
       produce archive files from sar run:

       $ sadf -l -O pcparchive=ARCHIVE_NAME sar.dat -- -A

CAVEATS

       When not using the XML input option, sar2pcp requires infile to have been created by a version of sadc(1)
       from http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-orange.fr/ which includes the sadf(1) utility to translate infile
       into an XML stream (any since version 6); sar2pcp  will  automatically  run  sadf(1)  and  translate  the
       resultant XML into a PCP archive.

       When  using binary sadc files it is important to ensure the installed sadf is compatible with the version
       of sadc that originally generated the binary files.  Simply assuming a newer installed version will  work
       is  unfortunately far too optimistic, and nor should one assume that binary data from different platforms
       (e.g. different endianness) will work - these issues are due to limitations in sadc and sadf, and not  in
       sar2pcp itself.

       Fortunately,  the  sadf message indicating that an incompatibility has been detected is consistent across
       versions, and is always prefixed

       Invalid system activity file

       Using an XML infile has the advantage that the installed version of sadf is completely bypassed.  sar2pcp
       undertakes  to  transform  any valid XML produced by any of the different variations of sadf into a valid
       PCP archive.  Any version of PCP will be able to interpret the archive files produced by any  version  of
       sar2pcp,  and  you  are  also  free to move the binary PCP archive between different platforms, different
       hardware, even different operating systems - it Just Works (TM).

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).

       For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see pmGetOptions(3).

SEE ALSO

       pmie(1),  pmchart(1),  pmlogger(1),   pmlogextract(1),   pmlogsummary(1),   sadc(1),   sadf(1),   sar(1),
       Date::Parse(3pm), Date::Format(3pm), PCP::LogImport(3pm), XML::TokeParser(3pm) and LOGIMPORT(3).