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).

Performance Co-Pilot                                   PCP                                         IOSTAT2PCP(1)