PMLOGGER_DAILY

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

pmlogger_daily , pmlogger_check , and pmlogger_merge are equivalent to the scripts cron.pmdaily, cron.pmcheck and cron.pmlogmerge which are deprecated but preserved on IRIX for backward compatibility.

pmlogger_daily is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to aggregate and rotate one or more sets of PCP archives. After some period, old PCP archives are discarded. This period is 14 days by default, but may be changed using the -k option. Two special values are recognized for the period (discard), namely 0 to keep no archives beyond the current one, and forever to prevent any archives being discarded.

Archive data files can optionally be compressed after some period (compress), to conserve disk space. This is particularly useful for large numbers of pmlogger processes under the control of pmlogger_check. The -x option specifies the number of days after which to compress archive data files, and the -X option specifies the program to use for compression - by default this is bzip2(1). Use of the -Y option allows a regular expression to be specified causing files in the set of files matched for compression to be omitted - this allows only the data file to be compressed, and also prevents the program from attempting to compress it more than once. The default regex is ".meta$|.index$|.Z$|.gz$|.bz2|.zip$" - such files are filtered using the -v option to egrep(1).

In addition, if the PCP ``notices'' file ($PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES) is larger than 20480 bytes, pmlogger_daily will rename the file with a ``.old'' suffix, and start a new ``notices'' file. The rotate threshold may be changed from 20480 to size bytes using the -s option.

Use of the -m option causes pmlogger_daily to construct a summary of the ``notices'' file entries which were generated in the last 24 hours, and e-mail that summary to the set of space-separated addresses. This daily summary is stored in the file $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES.daily, which will be empty when no new ``notices'' entries were made in the previous 24 hour period.

pmlogger_check may be run at any time, and is intended to check that the desired set of pmlogger(1) processes are running, and if not to re-launch any failed loggers.

pmlogger_merge is a wrapper script for pmlogmerge(1) that merges all of the archive logs matching the input-basename arguments, and creates a new archive using output-name as the base name for the physical files that constitute an archive log. The input-basename arguments may contain meta characters in the style of sh(1). If specified, the -f option causes all of the input files to be removed once the output archive has been created.

pmlogger_merge is used by pmlogger_daily.

To assist with debugging or diagnosing intermittent failures the -t option may be used. This will turn on very verbose tracing (-VV) and capture the trace output in a file named $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/daily.datestamp.trace, where datestamp is the time pmlogger_daily was run in the format YYYYMMDD.HH.MM. In addition, the want argument will ensure that trace files created with -t will be kept for want days and then discarded.

Both pmlogger_daily and pmlogger_check are controlled by a PCP logger control file that specifies the pmlogger instances to be managed. The default control file is $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH, but an alternate may be specified using the -c option.

The control file should be customized according to the following rules that define for the current version (1.1) of the control file format.

1.

Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments.

2.

Lines beginning with a ``$'' are assumed to be assignments to environment variables in the style of sh(1), and all text following the ``$'' will be eval'ed by the script reading the control file, and the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is particularly useful to set and export variables into the environment of the administrative scripts, e.g.

$ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20

Warning: The $PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH file is a potential security risk and should not be writable by any user other than root.

3.

There must be a version line of the form:

$ version=1.1

4.

There should be one line in the control file for each pmlogger instance of the form:

host y|n y|n directory args

5.

Fields within a line of the control file are separated by one or more spaces or tabs.

6.

The first field is the name of the host that is the source of the performance metrics for this pmlogger instance.

7.

The second field indicates if this is a primary pmlogger instance (y) or not (n). Since the primary logger must run on the local host, and there may be at most one primary logger for a particular host, this field can be y for at most one pmlogger instance, in which case the host name must be the name of the local host.

8.

The third field indicates if this pmlogger instance needs to be started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd through a firewall (y or n).

9.

The fourth field is a directory name. All files associated with this pmlogger instance will be created in this directory, and this will be the current directory for the execution of any programs required in the maintenance of those archives. A useful convention is that primary logger archives for the local host with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/myhost (this is where the default pmlogger start-up script in $PCP_RC_DIR/pcp will create the archives), while archives for the remote host mumble are maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/mumble.

10.

All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to pmlogger(1) and/or pmnewlog(1). Most typically this would be the -c option.

The following sample control lines specify a primary logger on the local host (bozo), and a non-primary logger to collect and log performance metrics from the host boing.

$version=1.1
bozo   y  n  $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/bozo   -c config.default
boing  n  n  $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/boing  -c ./pmlogger.config

Typical crontab(5) entries for periodic execution of pmlogger_daily and pmlogger_check are given in $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/crontab and shown below. Due to the file permissions involved, these should be added to the crontab for root if automated PCP archive log maintenance is desired.

# daily processing of archive logs
14      0       *       *       *       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily
# every 30 minutes, check pmlogger instances are running
28,58   *       *       *       *       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_check

Alternate redirection of the output from the cron(1) execution of the scripts may be controlled as follows:

(1)

The -V option to the scripts will enable verbose tracing of their activity. By default the scripts generate no output unless some error or warning condition is encountered.

(2)

To redirect the e-mail from cron(1) away from the root login,

+

Instead of using the ``root'' login, create a special IRIX login with uid equal to 0, e.g. su_pcp. The password may be locked and/or the shell invalid to prevent login or su (1), but the home directory should exist. For example the following entry in /etc/passwd:

    

su_pcp:x:0:0:PCP Housekeeping:/usr/people/su_pcp:/dev/null

+

Create a $HOME/.forward for su_pcp, else an entry in /usr/lib/aliases for su_pcp, redirecting the e-mail to a real user or user(s).

+

Add the ``crontab'' entries above to the crontab file for su_pcp not root, e.g. in the file /usr/spool/cron/crontabs/su_pcp

The -N option enables a ``show me'' mode, where the actions are echoed, but not executed, in the style of ``make -n''. Using -N in conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging.

By default all possible archives will be merged. The -o option reinstates the old behaviour in which only yesterday's archives will be considered as merge candidates.

The -T option provides a terser form of output for pmlogger_check that is most suitable for a pmlogger ``farm'' where many instances of pmlogger are expected to be running.

The script $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmlogger_daily could be copied and modified to implement a site-specific procedure for end-of-week and/or end-of-month management for a set of PCP archives.  

FILES

$PCP_PMLOGGERCONTROL_PATH

the PCP logger control file
Warning: this file is a potential security risk and should not be writable by any user other than root.

$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/crontab

sample crontab for automated script execution by root

$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.default

default pmlogger configuration file for the local primary logger

$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.*

other pmlogger configuration files suited for particular PCP monitoring tools, add-on products and application environments

$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname

default location for archives of performance information collected from the host hostname

$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname/lock

transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmlogger administration for the host hostname - if present, can be safely removed if neither pmlogger_daily nor pmlogger_check are running

$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/hostname/Latest

PCP archive folio created by mkaf(1) for the most recently launched archive containing performance metrics from the host hostname

$PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES

PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends

PCP ENVIRONMENT

SEE ALSO

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

FILES

PCP ENVIRONMENT

SEE ALSO