NAME

       iostat2pcp - import iostat data and create a PCP archive

SYNOPSIS

       iostat2pcp [-v] [-S start] [-t interval] [-Z timezone] infile outfile

DESCRIPTION

       iostat2pcp  reads  a  text file created with iostat(1) (infile) and translates this into a
       Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive with  the  basename  outfile.   If  infile  is  -  then
       iostat2pcp  reads from standard input, allowing easy preprocessing of the iostat(1) output
       with sed(1) or similar.

       The resultant PCP archive 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 iostat2pcp will not overwrite them
       and will exit with an error message.

       The first output sample from iostat(1) contains a statistical summary since boot time  and
       is  ignored  by  iostat2pcp, so the first real data set is the second one in the iostat(1)
       output.

       The best results are obtained when iostat(1) was run with its own -t flag, so each  output
       sample  is  prefixed  with  a timestamp.  Even better is -t with $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO set in
       environment when iostat(1) is run, in which case the timestamp includes the timezone.

       Note that if $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO is not used with the -t option then iostat(1) may  produce
       a  timestamp  controlled  by LC_TIME from the locale that is in a format iostat2pcp cannot
       parse.  The formats for the timestamp that iostat2pcp accepts  are  illustrated  by  these
       examples:

       2013-07-06T21:34:39+1000
           (for the $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO).

       2013-07-06 21:34:39
           (for some of the European formats, e.g. de_AT, de_BE, de_LU and en_DK.utf8).

       06/07/13 21:34:39
           (for  all  of  the  $LC_TIME  settings for English locales outside North America, e.g.
           en_AU, en_GB, en_IE, en_NZ, en_SG and en_ZA, and all the Spanish locales, e.g.  es_ES,
           es_MX and es_AR).

       In  particular,  note that some common North American $LC_TIME settings will not work with
       iostat2pcp (namely, en_US, POSIX and C) because they use the MM/DD  format  which  may  be
       incorrectly  converted with the assumed DD/MM format.  This is another reason to recommend
       setting $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO.

       If there are no timestamps in the input stream, iostat2pcp will try and deduce the  sample
       interval  if  basic Disk data (-d option for iostat(1)) is found.  If this fails, then the
       -t option may be used to specify the sample interval in seconds.  This option  is  ignored
       if timestamps are found in the input stream.

       The  -S  option  may be used to specify as start time for the first real sample in infile,
       where start must have the format HH:MM:SS.  This option is ignored if timestamps are found
       in the input stream.

       The -Z option may be used to specify a timezone.  It must have the format +HHMM (for hours
       and minutes East of UTC) or -HHMM (for hours and minutes West of UTC).  Note in particular
       that  neither the zoneinfo (aka Olson) format, e.g. Europe/Paris, nor the Posix TZ format,
       e.g.  EST+5 is allowed for the -Z option.  This option is ignored if  ISO  timestamps  are
       found  in  the  input  stream.  If the timezone is not specified and cannot be deduced, it
       defaults to UTC.

       Some additional diagnostic output is generated with the -v option.

       iostat2pcp 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.

CAVEAT

       iostat2pcp requires infile  to  have  been  created  by  the  version  of  iostat(1)  from
       <http://freshmeat.net/projects/sysstat>.

       iostat2pcp  handles  the -c (CPU), -d (Disk), -x (eXtended Disk) and -p (Partition) report
       formats (including their -k, -m, -z and ALL variants), but does  not  accommodate  the  -n
       (Network  Filesystem)  report  format  from  iostat(1); this is a demand-driven limitation
       rather than a technical limitation.

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).

SEE ALSO

       iostat(1),  pmchart(1), pmie(1), pmlogger(1), sed(1), Date::Format(3pm), Date::Parse(3pm),
       PCP::LogImport(3pm) and LOGIMPORT(3).