Ubuntu Manpage: pmprobe - lightweight probe for performance metrics

NAME

       pmprobe - lightweight probe for performance metrics

SYNOPSIS

       pmprobe  [-fIiLVvz]  [-a  archive]  [-h  hostname]  [-K  spec] [-n pmnsfile] [-O time] [-Z
       timezone] [metricname ...]

DESCRIPTION

pmprobe determines the availability of performance metrics exported through the facilities
of the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP).

The metrics of interest are named in the metricname arguments. If metricname is a non-
leaf node in the Performance Metrics Name Space (pmns(5)), then pmprobe will recursively
descend the PMNS and report on all leaf nodes. If no metricname argument is given, the
root of the namespace is used.

The output format is spartan and intended for use in wrapper scripts creating
configuration files for other PCP tools. By default, there is one line of output per
metric, with the metric name followed by a count of the number of available values. Error
conditions are encoded as a negative value count (as per the PMAPI(3) protocols, but may
be decoded using pmerr(1)) and followed by a textual description of the error.

Unless directed to another host by the -h option, pmprobe will contact the Performance
Metrics Collector Daemon (PMCD) on the local host.

The -a option causes pmprobe to use the specified archive rather than connecting to a
PMCD. The -a and -h options are mutually exclusive.

The -L option causes pmprobe to use a local context to collect metrics from PMDAs on the
local host without PMCD. Only some metrics are available in this mode. The -a,-h and -L
options are mutually exclusive.

Normally pmprobe operates on the distributed Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS),
however, if the -n option is specified an alternative local PMNS file is loaded from the
file pmnsfile.

Other options control the output of additional information when one or more values is
available.

-f When used with -i or -I the set of instances reported will be all of those known at
the source of the performance data. By default the set of reported instances are
those for which values are currently available, which may be smaller than the set
reported with -f.

-I Report the external identifiers for each instance. The literal string PM_IN_NULL is
reported for singular metrics.

-i Report the internal identifiers for each instance. The values are in decimal and
prefixed by ``?''. As a special case, the literal string PM_IN_NULL is reported for
singular metrics.

-K When using the -L option to fetch metrics from a local context, the -K option may be
used to control the DSO PMDAs that should be made accessible. The spec argument
conforms to the syntax described in __pmSpecLocalPMDA(3). More than one -K option
may be used.

-O When used in conjunction with an archive source of metrics and the -v option the time
argument defines a time origin at which the metrics should be fetched from the
archive. Refer to PCPIntro(1) for a complete description of this option, and the
syntax for the time argument.

When the ``ctime'' format is used for the time argument in a -O option, the timezone
becomes an issue. The default is to use the local timezone on the system where
pmprobe is run. The -Z option changes the timezone to timezone in the format of the
environment variable TZ as described in environ(7). The -z option changes the
timezone to the local timezone at the host that is the source of the performance
metrics, as identified via the -a option.

-v Report the value for each instance, as per the formatting rules of pmPrintValue(3).
When fetching from an archive, only those instances present in the first archive
record for a metric will be displayed; see also the -O option.

The -v option is mutually exclusive with either the -I or -i options.

The -V option provides a cryptic summary of the number of messages sent and received
across the PMAPI interface.

EXAMPLES

       $ pmprobe disk.dev
       disk.dev.read 2
       disk.dev.write 2
       disk.dev.total 2
       disk.dev.blkread 2
       disk.dev.blkwrite 2
       disk.dev.blktotal 2
       disk.dev.active 2
       disk.dev.response 2

       $ pmprobe -I disk.dev.read disk.dev.write disk.all.total
       disk.dev.read 2 "dks0d1" "dks0d2"
       disk.dev.write 2 "dks0d1" "dks0d2"
       disk.all.total 1 PM_IN_NULL

       $ pmprobe -v pmcd.numagents pmcd.version pmcd.control.timeout
       pmcd.numagents 1 9
       pmcd.version 1 "2.0 beta-1"
       pmcd.control.timeout 1 5

       $ pmprobe -v disk.dev.total disk.all.total
       disk.dev.total -1012 Unknown metric name
       disk.all.total 1 4992466

FILES

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
                 default PMNS specification files

PCP ENVIRONMENT