Ubuntu Manpage: pmlogextract - reduce, extract, concatenate and merge Performance Co-Pilot archives

NAME

       pmlogextract - reduce, extract, concatenate and merge Performance Co-Pilot archives

SYNOPSIS

       pmlogextract  [-dfwz]  [-c  configfile]  [-S  starttime]  [-s  samples]  [-T endtime] [-v volsamples] [-Z
       timezone] input [...] output

DESCRIPTION

       pmlogextract reads one or more Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive logs identified by input and creates  a
       temporally  merged  and/or reduced PCP archive log in output.  The nature of merging is controlled by the
       number of input archive logs, while the nature of data  reduction  is  controlled  by  the  command  line
       arguments.   The input(s) must be PCP archive logs created by pmlogger(1) with performance data collected
       from the same host, but usually over different time periods and  possibly  (although  not  usually)  with
       different performance metrics being logged.

       If  only  one input is specified, then the default behavior simply copies the input PCP archive log, into
       the output PCP archive log.  When two or more PCP archive logs are  specified  as  input,  the  logs  are
       merged (or concatenated) and written to output.

       In  the  output archive log a ``mark'' record will be inserted at a time just past the end of each of the
       input archive logs to indicate a possible temporal discontinuity between the end of one input archive log
       and  the  start  of the next input archive log.  See the MARK RECORDS section below for more information.
       There is no ``mark'' record after the end of the last (in temporal order) of the input archive logs.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

The command line options for pmlogextract are as follows:

-c configfile
Extract only the metrics specified in configfile from the input PCP archive log(s). The
configfile syntax accepted by pmlogextract is explained in more detail in the Configuration File
Syntax section.

-d Desperate mode. Normally if a fatal error occurs, all trace of the partially written PCP archive
output is removed. With the -d option, the output archive log is not removed.

-f For most common uses, all of the input archive logs will have been collected in the same timezone.
But if this is not the case, then pmlogextract must choose one of the timezones from the input
archive logs to be used as the timezone for the output archive log. The default is to use the
timezone from the last input archive log. The -f option forces the timezone from the first input
archive log to be used.

-S starttime
Define the start of a time window to restrict the samples retrieved or specify a ``natural''
alignment of the output sample times; refer to PCPIntro(1). See also the -w option.

-s samples
The argument samples defines the number of samples to be written to output. If samples is 0 or -s
is not specified, pmlogextract will sample until the end of the PCP archive log, or the end of the
time window as specified by -T, whichever comes first. The -s option will override the -T option
if it occurs sooner.

-T endtime
Define the termination of a time window to restrict the samples retrieved or specify a ``natural''
alignment of the output sample times; refer to PCPIntro(1). See also the -w option.

-v volsamples
The output archive log is potentially a multi-volume data set, and the -v option causes
pmlogextract to start a new volume after volsamples log records have been written to the archive
log.

Independent of any -v option, each volume of an archive is limited to no more than 2^31 bytes, so
pmlogextract will automatically create a new volume for the archive before this limit is reached.

-w Where -S and -T specify a time window within the same day, the -w flag will cause the data within
the time window to be extracted, for every day in the archive log. For example, the options -w -S
@11:00 -T @15:00 specify that pmlogextract should include archive log records only for the periods
from 11am to 3pm on each day. When -w is used, the output archive log will contain ``mark''
records to indicate the temporal discontinuity between the end of one time window and the start of
the next.

-Z timezone
Use timezone when displaying the date and time. Timezone is in the format of the environment
variable TZ as described in environ(5).

-z Use the local timezone of the host from the input archive logs. The default is to initially use
the timezone of the local host.

CONFIGURATION FILE SYNTAX

       The configfile contains metrics of interest, listed one per line.  Instances may also be  specified,  but
       they are optional.  The format for each metric name is

               metric [[instance[,instance...]]]

       where  metric  may be a leaf or a non-leaf node in the Performance Metrics Namespace (PMNS, see pmns(5)).
       If a metric refers to a non-leaf node in the PMNS, pmlogextract will recursively  descend  the  PMNS  and
       include all metrics corresponding to descendent leaf nodes.  Instances are optional, and may be specified
       as a list of one or more space (or comma) separated names, numbers or strings.  Elements in the list that
       are numbers are assumed to be external instance identifiers - see pmGetInDom(3) for more information.  If
       no instances are given, then the logging specification is applied to  all  instances  of  the  associated
       metric(s).

CONFIGURATION FILE EXAMPLE

       This is an example of a valid configfile:

               #
               # config file for pmlogextract
               #

               kernel.all.cpu
               kernel.percpu.cpu.sys ["cpu0","cpu1"]
               disk.dev ["dks0d1"]

MARK RECORDS

When more than one input archive log contributes performance data to the output archive log, then
``mark'' records are inserted to indicate a possible discontinuity in the performance data.

A ``mark'' record contains a timestamp and no performance data and is used to indicate that there is a
time period in the PCP archive log where we do not know the values of any performance metrics, because
there was no pmlogger(1) collecting performance data during this period. Since these periods are often
associated with the restart of a service or pmcd(1) or a system, there may be considerable doubt as to
the continuity of performance data across this time period.

The rationale behind ``mark'' records may be demonstrated with an example. Consider one input archive
log that starts at 00:10 and ends at 09:15 on the same day, and another input archive log that starts at
09:20 on the same day and ends at 00:10 the following morning. The would be a very common case for
archives managed and rotated by pmlogger_check(1) and pmlogger_daily(1).

The output archive log would contain:
00:10.000 first record from first input archive log
...
09:15.000 last record from first input archive log
09:15.001 <mark record>
09:20.000 first record from second input archive log
...
01:10.000 last record from second input archive log

The time period where the performance data is missing starts just after 09:15 and ends just before 09:20.
When the output archive log is processed with any of the PCP reporting tools, the ``mark'' record is used
to indicate a period of missing data. For example in the archive above, if one was reporting the average
I/O rate at 30 minute intervals, aligned on the hour, then there would be data for the intervals ending
at 09:00 and 10:00 but no data reported for the interval ending at 09:30 as this spans a ``mark'' record.

The presence of ``mark'' records in a PCP archive log can be established using pmdumplog(1) where a
timestamp and the annotation <mark> is used to indicate a ``mark'' record.

FILES

       For each of the input and output archive logs, several physical files are used.
       archive.meta
                 metadata (metric descriptions, instance domains, etc.) for the archive log
       archive.0 initial volume of metrics values (subsequent volumes have suffixes 1, 2, ...) - for input these
                 files  may  have  been  previously  compressed  with  bzip2(1)  or gzip(1) and thus may have an
                 additional .bz2 or .gz suffix.
       archive.index
                 temporal index to support rapid random access to the other files in the archive log.

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).

DIAGNOSTICS

       All error conditions detected by pmlogextract are reported on stderr with textual  (if  sometimes  terse)
       explanation.

       Should  one  of the input archive logs be corrupted (this can happen if the pmlogger instance writing the
       log suddenly dies), then pmlogextract will detect and report the position of the corruption in the  file,
       and any subsequent information from that archive log will not be processed.

       If any error is detected, pmlogextract will exit with a non-zero status.

CAVEATS

       The  preamble  metrics  (pmcd.pmlogger.archive,  pmcd.pmlogger.host,  and  pmcd.pmlogger.port), which are
       automatically recorded by pmlogger at the start of the archive, may not be present in the archive  output
       by  pmlogextract.   These  metrics  are  only  relevant  while  the archive is being created, and have no
       significance once recording has finished.