path: root/man/man1/pmdashping.1

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.TH PMDASHPING 1 "PCP" "Performance Co-Pilot"
.SH NAME
\f3pmdashping\f1 \- "shell-ping" performance metrics domain agent
.SH SYNOPSIS
\f3$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/pmdashping\f1
[\f3\-C\f1]
[\f3\-d\f1 \f2domain\f1]
[\f3\-l\f1 \f2logfile\f1]
[\f3\-I\f1 \f2interval\f1]
[\f3\-t\f1 \f2timeout\f1]
[\f3\-U\f1 \f2username\f1]
\f2configfile\f1
.br
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B pmdashping
is a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) which exports 
quality of service and response time measurements for
arbitrary commands as might be run from a shell such as
.BR sh (1).
.PP
These measurements are intended to be used to quantify service
quality and service availability for those services that are
either mission critical or act as early indicators of adverse
system performance.
.PP
The sample configuration monitors
simple shell commands (\c
.B exit
and
.BR date (1)),
a short computationally intensive task
using
.BR sum (1),
a short C compilation,
DNS lookup via
.BR nslookup (1),
YP lookup via
.BR ypcat (1),
bind/portmapper service using
.BR rpcbind (1),
SMTP by connecting to telnet port 25 and sending an ``expn root''
request,
and
NNTP by connecting to telnet port 119 and running a ``listgroup''
command.
.PP
It is expected that other commands would follow the examples in the
sample configuration file, and most deployments of the
.B pmdashping
PMDA are expected to use a customized configuration file.
.PP
A brief description of the
.B pmdashping
command line options follows:
.TP 5
.B \-C
Parse
.IR configfile ,
reporting any errors and exiting with non-zero status if the file contains
syntactical errors.
.TP 5
.B \-d
It is absolutely crucial that the performance metrics
.I domain
number specified here is unique and consistent.
That is,
.I domain
should be different for every PMDA on the one host, and the same
.I domain
number should be used for the same PMDA on all hosts.
.TP 5
.B \-l
Location of the log file.  By default, a log file named
.I shping.log
is written in the current directory of
.BR pmcd (1)
when
.B pmdashping
is started, i.e.
.BR $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd .
If the log file cannot
be created or is not writable, output is written to the standard error instead.
.TP 5
.B \-I
Amount of time (in seconds) between subsequent executions of the list of
commands provided via the configuration file
.IR configfile .
The default is 2 minutes.
.TP 5
.B \-t
Amount of time (in seconds) to wait before timing out awaiting a response
for a command from
.IR configfile .
The default is 20 seconds.
.TP 5
.B \-U
User account under which to run the agent and all commands.
The default is the unprivileged "pcp" account in current versions of PCP,
but in older versions the superuser account ("root") was used by default.
.PP
The required
.IR configfile
specifies ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs, each on a separate line.
All of the commands are run one after another, with the whole
group rescheduled to be run once per
.IR interval .
For each command that is run,
.B pmdashping
records information related to the success (or timeout),
exit status, elapsed time and CPU time
(system and user), and this information is exported by the PMDA.
The tags are used to identify the individual commands amongst the values
exported by the PMDA, and form the external instance domain identifiers
for the
.B pmdashping
metrics which relate to each command.
.PP
.SH INSTALLATION
In order for a host to export the names, help text and values for the shping
performance metrics, do the following as root:
.PP
.ft CW
.nf
.in +0.5i
# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
# ./Install
.in
.fi
.ft 1
.PP
The set of ``tag'' and ``command'' pairs may be specified from
a default (sample) configuration file, a customized file or entered
interactively as part of the
.B Install
script.
.PP
If you want to undo the installation, do the following as root:
.PP
.ft CW
.nf
.in +0.5i
# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping
# ./Remove
.in
.fi
.ft 1
.PP
.B pmdashping
is launched by
.BR pmcd (1)
and should never be executed directly.
The Install and Remove scripts notify
.BR pmcd (1)
when the agent is installed or removed.
.SH FILES
.PD 0
.TP 10
.B $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
command line options used to launch
.B pmdashping
.TP 10
.B $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/help
default help text file for the shping metrics
.TP 10
.B $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/sample.conf
example configuration file with a number of common commands
.TP 10
.B $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Install
installation script for the
.B pmdashping
agent
.TP 10
.B $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/shping/Remove
undo installation script for
.B pmdashping
.TP 10
.B $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/shping.log
default log file for error messages and other information from
.B pmdashping
.PD
.SH "PCP ENVIRONMENT"
Environment variables with the prefix
.B PCP_
are used to parameterize the file and directory names
used by PCP.
On each installation, the file
.B /etc/pcp.conf
contains the local values for these variables.
The
.B $PCP_CONF
variable may be used to specify an alternative
configuration file,
as described in
.BR pcp.conf (5).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR pmcd (1)
and
.BR pmgshping (1).