Provided by: pcp_3.8.12ubuntu1_amd64 bug

NAME

       pmsocks - shell wrapper for performance monitoring across firewalls

SYNOPSYS

       pmsocks path [args ...]

DESCRIPTION

       pmsocks allows Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) clients running on hosts located on the internal
       side of a TCP/IP firewall to monitor remote hosts on the other side of the firewall.  This
       assumes  the  firewall has been configured with a compliant sockd daemon and the necessary
       access controls are satisfied.

CONFIGURATION

       pmsocks uses the tsocks(5) library, which is not included with PCP.  You  can  get  tsocks
       from http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~delius/.

IRIX CONFIGURATION

       On IRIX, pmsocks is simply a shell wrapper that sets the appropriate environment variables
       and then executes the path program with args arguments (if any).  pmsocks works by setting
       the  _RLD_LIST  environment  variable  (see  rld(1)) to load a dynamic shared library (see
       dso(5)) containing stubs for ``socksified'' network library functions; This ``socksified''
       library is installed at /usr/pcp/lib/libpcp_socks.so.

       There  are  a  number  of  conditions  required  for this to be successful and the user is
       strongly advised to read this whole manual page (in particular the CAVEAT  section  below)
       before attempting to use pmsocks.

       When  pmsocks  is  installed, the /etc/pcp_socks.conf configuration file is also installed
       with minimum default settings.  These settings specify  that  socket  connections  to  the
       local  host  should be made directly, without contacting any socks server daemon.  This is
       necessary so that PCP clients will be able to establish a local  connection  to  the  X(1)
       server, and use PCP connections, possibly via a sockd daemon, to monitor remote hosts.  In
       the present implementation of pmsocks, non-direct connections to the X(1)  server  do  not
       work, hence if the display is remote, then the remote host must be on the same side of the
       firewall and /etc/pcp_socks.conf must be configured to connect directly to that host.

       The format of /etc/pcp_socks.conf is identical to /etc/socks.conf  as  documented  in  the
       CSTC-4.2  socks distribution.  This distribution may be obtained via information contained
       in the socks FAQ at
                            ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/socks/

       If  other  socks  clients  are  being  used,  then  it  is  generally   safe   to   remove
       /etc/pcp_socks.conf and instead make a symbolic link to /etc/socks.conf.  The file formats
       are identical.

       The default configuration should be customized to  suit  the  local  environment  so  that
       connections to hosts located on the same side of the firewall as the local host do not use
       the socks daemon unnecessarily.  The default configuration is

          direct LOCALHOSTNAME 255.255.255.255 # direct localhost
          sockd 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 # contact sockd everywhere else

       Note that the string LOCALHOSTNAME is dynamically substituted at run time with the name of
       the  local host, as obtained by a call to gethostname(2).  Assuming the real IP address of
       the local host is 1.2.3.4 and that a normal class-c  subnet  is  used  locally,  the  most
       common  customization  would  be  to specify direct connections for all hosts on the local
       subnet, by inserting another ``direct'' line as follows:

          direct LOCALHOSTNAME 255.255.255.255 # direct localhost
          direct 1.2.3.0 255.255.255.0 # direct on local subnet
          sockd 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 # contact sockd everywhere else

       The order of lines is important - the first line matching  the  requested  destination  IP
       address  during  a  connect(2) call (after the requested IP address has been masked by the
       third parameter of the  /etc/pcp_socks.conf  line),  specifies  via  the  first  parameter
       whether to contact the socks daemon or whether to attempt a direct connection.

IRIX ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       There are several environment variables used by pmsocks as follows:

       SOCKS_SERVER
                 Specifies  the  host  name  or  IP address of the host running the sockd daemon.
                 Usually this is the name of the firewall host.

       SOCKS_PORT
                 The TCP/IP port to use when contacting sockd  on  the  SOCKS_SERVER  host.   The
                 default is 1080.

       SOCKS_NS  The  host  name  of the name server to use, usually to resolve the IP address of
                 SOCKS_SERVER.

       SOCKS_DEBUG
                 If present in the environment, libpcp_socks will print debugging information  to
                 the  stderr stream.  There are only two levels of debugging, on or off.  This is
                 only really useful for the developers because the debugging information  assumes
                 knowledge of the libpcp_socks source code.

       SOCKS_BANNER
                 If  this  is set, whenever a client calls libpcp_socks it will echo a message to
                 stdout containing version information.  This can be useful to check libpcp_socks
                 is working in the absence of verbose logging.

       _RLD_LIST pmsocks sets this to exactly /usr/pcp/lib/libpcp_socks.so:DEFAULT
                 It  is  strongly  recommended  this NOT be set in the environment of interactive
                 shells.

       PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT
                 Specifies the time-out, in seconds, for  connections  to  pmcd(1).   When  using
                 pmsocks,  this  may need to be increased from the default (5 seconds) due to the
                 additional delays introduced as a result  of  using  sockd.   See  PMAPI(3)  for
                 further details about this variable.

CAVEAT

       The following notes should be considered carefully:

       0)   Because sockd can only handle TCP/IP sockets, pmsocks never attempts to use sockd for
            sockets of type SOCK_DGRAM or if the domain parameter  in  a  call  to  socket(2)  is
            PF_UNIX (unix domain sockets should never need to use sockd anyway).

       1)   Some  firewall  products  do  not  support  ``socksified'' applications, and in these
            cases, pmsocks cannot be used.  In this case, it will be necessary to  configure  the
            firewall  to allow connections through the firewall for the PMCD communications port,
            typically tcp/4321.

       2)   The PCP protocol is TPC/IP-based and works with the socks protocol,  but  connections
            which  use UDP/DATAGRAM sockets or remote X11 connections via sockd may not work.  If
            the remote display host is on the same side of the firewall as the application,  this
            may  be circumvented by configuring the remote display host to use direct connections
            - see above.  Also, using X11 display options which use shared memory may hang the  X
            server when used with pmsocks.

       3)   If  the  pmsocks  configuration  file  is not present, then pmsocks will exit with an
            error message.

       4)   pmsocks uses the locally configured name server  or  resolver  (see  resolver(5))  to
            resolve host names to IP addresses.  This may or may not be capable of resolving host
            names on the other side of the firewall.

       5)   When used over a WAN, often the sockd daemon will be a long way from the application.
            This  may result in PCP client connections timing out before connecting to the remote
            pmcd.  If this is occurring, set the environment variable PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT  to  a
            higher  value  than  the  default (5 seconds).  Refer to PMAPI(3) for further details
            about this variable.

       6)   When using pmsocks to connect to pmcd(1), but ``Connection Refused''  error  messages
            are returned, it is not immediately obvious whether pmcd(1) is returning the error or
            sockd.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

       tsocks is covered by the GPL license and is copyright Shaun Clowes (delius@progsoc.org).

FILES

       /etc/tsocks.conf
                 configuration file

SEE ALSO

       pmcd(1), pminfo(1), pmlogger(1), pmval(1), X(1), PMAPI(3), resolver(5), and tsocks(5).