Ubuntu Manpage: pmlogger_check, pmlogger_daily, pmlogger_merge - administration of Performance Co-Pilot archive log files

NAME

       pmlogger_check, pmlogger_daily, pmlogger_merge - administration of Performance Co-Pilot archive log files

SYNOPSIS

       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_check [-CNsTV] [-c control]
       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily  [-NorV]  [-c control] [-k discard] [-m addresses] [-s size] [-t want] [-x
       compress] [-X program] [-Y regex]
       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_merge [-fNV] [input-basename ... output-name]

DESCRIPTION

This series of shell scripts and associated control files may be used to create a customized regime of
administration and management for Performance Co-Pilot (see PCPintro(1)) archive log files.

pmlogger_daily is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early morning, as soon after
midnight as practicable. Its task is to aggregate and rotate one or more sets of PCP archives. After
some period, old PCP archives are discarded. This period is 14 days by default, but may be changed using
the -k option. Two special values are recognized for the period (discard), namely 0 to keep no archives
beyond the current one, and forever to prevent any archives being discarded.

Archive data files can optionally be compressed after some period (compress), to conserve disk space.
This is particularly useful for large numbers of pmlogger processes under the control of pmlogger_check.
The -x option specifies the number of days after which to compress archive data files, and the -X option
specifies the program to use for compression - by default this is bzip2(1). Use of the -Y option allows
a regular expression to be specified causing files in the set of files matched for compression to be
omitted - this allows only the data file to be compressed, and also prevents the program from attempting
to compress it more than once. The default regex is ".meta$|.index$|.Z$|.gz$|.bz2|.zip$" - such files
are filtered using the -v option to egrep(1).

In addition, if the PCP ``notices'' file ($PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES) is larger than 20480 bytes,
pmlogger_daily will rename the file with a ``.old'' suffix, and start a new ``notices'' file. The rotate
threshold may be changed from 20480 to size bytes using the -s option.

Use of the -m option causes pmlogger_daily to construct a summary of the ``notices'' file entries which
were generated in the last 24 hours, and e-mail that summary to the set of space-separated addresses.
This daily summary is stored in the file $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES.daily, which will be empty when no new
``notices'' entries were made in the previous 24 hour period.

pmlogger_check may be run at any time, and is intended to check that the desired set of pmlogger(1)
processes are running, and if not to re-launch any failed loggers. Use of the -s option provides the
reverse functionality, allowing the set of pmlogger processes to be cleanly shutdown. Use of the -C
option queries the system service runlevel information for pmlogger, and uses that to determine whether
to start or stop processes.

pmlogger_merge is a wrapper script for pmlogmerge(1) that merges all of the archive logs matching the
input-basename arguments, and creates a new archive using output-name as the base name for the physical
files that constitute an archive log. The input-basename arguments may contain meta characters in the
style of sh(1). If specified, the -f option causes all of the input files to be removed once the output
archive has been created.

pmlogger_merge is used by pmlogger_daily.

To assist with debugging or diagnosing intermittent failures the -t option may be used. This will turn
on very verbose tracing (-VV) and capture the trace output in a file named
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/daily.datestamp.trace, where datestamp is the time pmlogger_daily was run in the
format YYYYMMDD.HH.MM. In addition, the want argument will ensure that trace files created with -t will
be kept for want days and then discarded.

Both pmlogger_daily and pmlogger_check are controlled by a PCP logger control file that specifies the
pmlogger instances to be managed. The default control file is $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH, but an
alternate may be specified using the -c option.

The control file should be customized according to the following rules that define for the current
version (1.1) of the control file format.

1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments.
2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to environment variables in the style
of sh(1), and all text following the ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the control file,
and the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is particularly useful to set
and export variables into the environment of the administrative scripts, e.g.
$ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20
Warning: The $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH file must not be writable by any user other than root.
3. There must be a version line of the form:
$ version=1.1
4. There should be one line in the control file for each pmlogger instance of the form:

host y|n y|n directory args

5. Fields within a line of the control file are separated by one or more spaces or tabs.
6. The first field is the name of the host that is the source of the performance metrics for this
pmlogger instance.
7. The second field indicates if this is a primary pmlogger instance (y) or not (n). Since the
primary logger must run on the local host, and there may be at most one primary logger for a
particular host, this field can be y for at most one pmlogger instance, in which case the host
name must be the name of the local host.
8. The third field indicates if this pmlogger instance needs to be started under the control of
pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd through a firewall (y or n).
9. The fourth field is a directory name. All files associated with this pmlogger instance will be
created in this directory, and this will be the current directory for the execution of any
programs required in the maintenance of those archives. A useful convention is that primary
logger archives for the local host with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/myhost (this is where the default pmlogger start-up script in
$PCP_RC_DIR/pcp will create the archives), while archives for the remote host mumble are
maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/mumble.
10. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to pmlogger(1) and/or pmnewlog(1).
Most typically this would be the -c option.

The following sample control lines specify a primary logger on the local host (bozo), and a non-primary
logger to collect and log performance metrics from the host boing.

$version=1.1
bozo y n $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/bozo -c config.default
boing n n $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/boing -c ./pmlogger.config

Typical crontab(5) entries for periodic execution of pmlogger_daily and pmlogger_check are given in
$PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogger/crontab (unless installed by default in /etc/cron.d already) and shown below.

# daily processing of archive logs
14 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily
# every 30 minutes, check pmlogger instances are running
25,55 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_check

The output from the cron(1) execution of the scripts may be extended using the -V option to the scripts
which will enable verbose tracing of their activity. By default the scripts generate no output unless
some error or warning condition is encountered.

The -N option enables a ``show me'' mode, where the actions are echoed, but not executed, in the style of
``make -n''. Using -N in conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging.

By default all possible archives will be merged. The -o option reinstates the old behaviour in which
only yesterday's archives will be considered as merge candidates.

The -T option provides a terser form of output for pmlogger_check that is most suitable for a pmlogger
``farm'' where many instances of pmlogger are expected to be running.

To accommodate the evolution of PMDAs and changes in production logging environments, pmlogger_daily is
integrated with pmlogrewrite(1) to allow optional and automatic rewriting of archives before merging. If
there are global rewriting rules to be applied across all archives mentioned in the control file, then
create the directory $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogrewrite and place any pmlogrewrite(1) rewriting rules in this
directory. For rewriting rules that are specific to only one family of archives, use the directory name
from the control file (the fourth field) and create a file, or a directory, or a symbolic link named
pmlogrewrite within this directory and place the required rewriting rule(s) in the pmlogrewrite file or
in files within the pmlogrewrite subdirectory. pmlogger_daily will choose rewriting rules from the
archive directory if they exist, else rewriting rules from $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogrewrite if that
directory exists, else no rewriting is attempted.

The -r command line option acts as an over-ride and prevents all archive rewriting with pmlogrewrite(1)
independent of the presence of any rewriting rule files or directories.

The script $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily could be copied and modified to implement a site-specific
procedure for end-of-week and/or end-of-month management for a set of PCP archives.

FILES

       $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH
                 the PCP logger control file
                 Warning: this file must not be writable by any user other than root.

       $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogger/crontab
                 sample crontab for automated script execution by $PCP_USER  (or  root).   Exists  only  if  the
                 platform does not support the /etc/cron.d mechanism.

       $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmlogger/config.default
                 default  pmlogger configuration file location for the local primary logger, typically generated
                 automatically by pmlogconf(1).

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname
                 default location for archives of performance information collected from the host hostname

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname/lock
                 transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmlogger administration for  the  host
                 hostname  -  if present, can be safely removed if neither pmlogger_daily nor pmlogger_check are
                 running

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname/Latest
                 PCP archive folio created  by  mkaf(1)  for  the  most  recently  launched  archive  containing
                 performance metrics from the host hostname

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES
                 PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends

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).

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

FILES

PCP ENVIRONMENT

SEE ALSO