NAME
pmcd - performance metrics collector daemon
SYNOPSIS
pmcd [-f] [-i ipaddress] [-l logfile] [-L bytes] [-n pmnsfile] [-p
port[,port ...] [-q timeout] [-T traceflag] [-t timeout] [-x file]
DESCRIPTION
pmcd is the collector used by the Performance Co-Pilot (see
PCPIntro(1)) to gather performance metrics on a system. As a rule,
there must be an instance of pmcd running on a system for any
performance metrics to be available to the PCP.
pmcd accepts connections from client applications running either on the
same machine or remotely and provides them with metrics and other
related information from the machine that pmcd is executing on. pmcd
delegates most of this request servicing to a collection of Performance
Metrics Domain Agents (or just agents), where each agent is responsible
for a particular group of metrics, known as the domain of the agent.
For example the environ agent is responsible for reporting information
relating to the environment of a Challenge system, such as the cabinet
temperature and voltage levels of the power supply.
The agents may be processes started by pmcd, independent processes or
Dynamic Shared Objects (DSOs, see dso(5)) attached to pmcd’s address
space. The configuration section below describes how connections to
agents are specified.
The options to pmcd are as follows.
-f By default pmcd is started as a daemon. The -f option indicates
that it should run in the foreground. This is most useful when
trying to diagnose problems with misbehaving agents.
-i ipaddress
This option is usually only used on hosts with more than one
network interface. If no -i options are specified pmcd accepts
connections made to any of its host’s IP (Internet Protocol)
addresses. The -i option is used to specify explicitly an IP
address that connections should be accepted on. ipaddress
should be in the standard dotted form (e.g. 100.23.45.6). The
-i option may be used multiple times to define a list of IP
addresses. Connections made to any other IP addresses the host
has will be refused. This can be used to limit connections to
one network interface if the host is a network gateway. It is
also useful if the host takes over the IP address of another
host that has failed. In such a situation only the standard IP
addresses of the host should be given (not the ones inherited
from the failed host). This allows PCP applications to
determine that a host has failed, rather than connecting to the
host that has assumed the identity of the failed host.
-l logfile
By default a log file named pmcd.log is written in the directory
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd. The -l option causes the log file to be
written to logfile instead of the default. If the log file
cannot be created or is not writable, output is written to the
standard error instead.
-L bytes
PDUs received by pmcd from monitoring clients are restricted to
a maximum size of 65536 bytes by default to defend against
Denial of Service attacks. The -L option may be used to change
the maximum incoming PDU size.
-n pmnsfile
Normally pmcd loads the default Performance Metrics Name Space
(PMNS) from $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/root, however if the -n option is
specified an alternative namespace is loaded from the file
pmnsfile.
-q timeout
The pmcd to agent version exchange protocol (new in PCP 2.0 -
introduced to provide backward compatibility) uses this timeout
to specify how long pmcd should wait before assuming that no
version response is coming from an agent. If this timeout is
reached, the agent is assumed to be an agent which does not
understand the PCP 2.0 protocol. The default timeout interval
is five seconds, but the -q option allows an alternative timeout
interval (which must be greater than zero) to be specified. The
unit of time is seconds.
-t timeout
To prevent misbehaving agents from hanging the entire
Performance Metrics Collection System (PMCS), pmcd uses timeouts
on PDU exchanges with agents running as processes. By default
the timeout interval is five seconds. The -t option allows an
alternative timeout interval in seconds to be specified. If
timeout is zero, timeouts are turned off. It is almost
impossible to use the debugger interactively on an agent unless
timeouts have been turned off for its "parent" pmcd.
Once pmcd is running, the timeout may be dynamically modified by
storing an integer value (the timeout in seconds) into the
metric pmcd.control.timeout via pmstore(1).
-T traceflag
To assist with error diagnosis for agents and/or clients of pmcd
that are not behaving correctly, an internal event tracing
mechanism is supported within pmcd. The value of traceflag is
interpreted as a bit field with the following control functions:
1 enable client connection tracing
2 enable PDU tracing
256 unbuffered event tracing
By default, event tracing is buffered using a circular buffer
that is over-written as new events are recorded. The default
buffer size holds the last 20 events, although this number may
be over-ridden by using pmstore(1) to modify the metric
pmcd.control.tracebufs.
Similarly once pmcd is running, the event tracing control may be
dynamically modified by storing 1 (enable) or 0 (disable) into
the metrics pmcd.control.traceconn, pmcd.control.tracepdu and
pmcd.control.tracenobuf. These metrics map to the bit fields
associated with the traceflag argument for the -T option.
When operating in buffered mode, the event trace buffer will be
dumped whenever an agent connection is terminated by pmcd, or
when any value is stored into the metric pmcd.control.dumptrace
via pmstore(1).
In unbuffered mode, every event will be reported when it occurs.
-x file
Before the pmcd logfile can be opened, pmcd may encounter a
fatal error which prevents it from starting. By default, the
output describing this error is sent to /dev/tty but it may
redirected to file.
If a PDU exchange with an agent times out, the agent has violated the
requirement that it delivers metrics with little or no delay. This is
deemed a protocol failure and the agent is disconnected from pmcd. Any
subsequent requests for information from the agent will fail with a
status indicating that there is no agent to provide it.
It is possible to specify host-level access control to pmcd. This
allows one to prevent users from certain hosts from accessing the
metrics provided by pmcd and is described in more detail in the Section
on ACCESS CONTROL below.
CONFIGURATION
On startup pmcd looks for a configuration file named
$PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH. This file specifies which agents cover which
performance metrics domains and how pmcd should make contact with the
agents. An optional section specifying host-based access controls may
follow the agent configuration data.
Warning: pmcd is usually started as part of the boot sequence and runs
as root. The configuration file may contain shell commands to create
agents, which will be executed by root. To prevent security breaches
the configuration file should be writable only by root. The use of
absolute path names is also recommended.
The case of the reserved words in the configuration file is
unimportant, but elsewhere, the case is preserved.
Blank lines and comments are permitted (even encouraged) in the
configuration file. A comment begins with a ‘‘#’’ character and
finishes at the end of the line. A line may be continued by ensuring
that the last character on the line is a ‘‘\’’ (backslash). A comment
on a continued line ends at the end of the continued line. Spaces may
be included in lexical elements by enclosing the entire element in
double quotes (there must be whitespace before the opening and after
the closing quote). A double quote preceded by a backslash is always a
literal double quote. A ‘‘#’’ in double quotes or preceded by a
backslash is treated literally rather than as a comment delimiter.
Lexical elements and separators are described further in the following
sections.
AGENT CONFIGURATION
Each line of the agent configuration section of the configuration file
contains details of how to connect pmcd to one of its agents and
specifies which metrics domain the agent deals with. An agent may be
attached as a DSO, or via a socket, or a pair of pipes.
Each line of the agent configuration section of the configuration file
must be either an agent specification, a comment, or a blank line.
Lexical elements are separated by whitespace characters, however a
single agent specification may not be broken across lines unless a \
(backslash) is used to continue the line.
Each agent specification must start with a textual label (string)
followed by an integer in the range 1 to 510. The label is a tag used
to refer to the agent and the integer specifies the domain for which
the agent supplies data. This domain identifier corresponds to the
domain portion of the PMIDs handled by the agent. Each agent must have
a unique label and domain identifier.
For DSO agents a line of the form:
label domain-no dso entry-point path
should appear. Where,
label is a string identifying the agent
domain-no is an unsigned integer specifying the agent’s domain in
the range 1 to 510
entry-point is the name of an initialization function which will be
called when the DSO is loaded
path designates the location of the DSO. This field is treated
differently on Irix and on Linux. Later expects it to be
an absolute pathname, while former uses some heuristics
to find an agent. If path begins with a / it is taken as
an absolute path specifying the DSO. If path is relative,
pmcd will expect to find the agent in a file with the
name mips_simabi.path, where simabi is either o32, n32 or
64. pmcd is only able to load DSO agents that have the
same simabi (Subprogram Interface Model ABI, or calling
conventions) as it does (i.e. only one of the simabi
versions will be applicable). The simabi version of a
running pmcd may be determined by fetching pmcd.simabi.
Alternatively, the file(1) command may be used to
determine the simabi version from the pmcd executable.
For a relative path the environment variable PMCD_PATH
defines a colon (:) separated list of directories to
search when trying to locate the agent DSO. The default
search path is $PCP_SHARE_DIR/lib:/usr/pcp/lib.
For agents providing socket connections, a line of the form
label domain-no socket addr-family address [ command ]
should appear. Where,
label is a string identifying the agent
domain-no is an unsigned integer specifying the agent’s domain in
the range 1 to 510
addr-family designates whether the socket is in the AF_INET or
AF_UNIX domain, and the corresponding values for this
parameter are inet and unix respectively.
address specifies the address of the socket within the previously
specified addr-family. For unix sockets, the address
should be the name of an agent’s socket on the local host
(a valid address for the UNIX domain). For inet sockets,
the address may be either a port number or a port name
which may be used to connect to an agent on the local
host. There is no syntax for specifying an agent on a
remote host as a pmcd deals only with agents on the same
machine.
command is an optional parameter used to specify a command line
to start the agent when pmcd initializes. If command is
not present, pmcd assumes that the specified agent has
already been created. The command is considered to start
from the first non-white character after the socket
address and finish at the next newline that isn’t
preceded by a backslash. After a fork(2) the command is
passed unmodified to execve(2) to instantiate the agent.
For agents interacting with the pmcd via stdin/stdout, a line of the
form:
label domain-no pipe protocol command
should appear. Where,
label is a string identifying the agent
domain-no is an unsigned integer specifying the agent’s domain
protocol The value for this parameter should be binary.
Additionally, the protocol can include the notready
keyword to indicate that the agent must be marked as not
being ready to process requests from pmcd. The agent will
explictily notify the pmcd when it is ready to process
the requests by sending PM_ERR_PMDAREADY PDU.
command specifies a command line to start the agent when pmcd
initializes. Note that command is mandatory for pipe-
based agents. The command is considered to start from
the first non-white character after the protocol
parameter and finish at the next newline that isn’t
preceded by a backslash. After a fork(2) the command is
passed unmodified to execve(2) to instantiate the agent.
ACCESS CONTROL CONFIGURATION
The access control section of the configuration file is optional, but
if present it must follow the agent configuration data. The case of
reserved words is ignored, but elsewhere case is preserved. Lexical
elements in the access control section are separated by whitespace or
the special delimiter characters: square brackets (‘‘[’’ and ‘‘]’’),
braces (‘‘{’’ and ‘‘}’’), colon (‘‘:’’), semicolon (‘‘;’’) and comma
(‘‘,’’). The special characters are not treated as special in the
agent configuration section.
The access control section of the file must start with a line of the
form:
[access]
Leading and trailing whitespace may appear around and within the
brackets and the case of the access keyword is ignored. No other text
may appear on the line except a trailing comment.
Following this line, the remainder of the configuration file should
contain lines that allow or disallow operations from particular hosts
or groups of hosts.
There are two kinds of operations that occur via pmcd:
fetch allows retrieval of information from pmcd. This may be
information about a metric (e.g. its description,
instance domain or help text) or a value for a metric.
store allows pmcd to be used to store metric values in agents
that permit store operations.
Access to pmcd is granted at the host level, i.e. all users on a host
are granted the same level of access. Permission to perform the store
operation should not be given indiscriminately; it has the potential to
be abused by malicious users.
Hosts may be identified by name, IP address or a wildcarded IP address
with the single wildcard character ‘‘*’’ as the last-given component of
the IP address. Host names may not be wildcarded. The following are
all valid host identifiers:
boing
localhost
giggle.melbourne.sgi.com
129.127.112.2
129.127.114.*
129.*
*
The following are not valid host identifiers:
*.melbourne
129.127.*.*
129.*.114.9
129.127*
The first example is not allowed because only (numeric) IP addresses
may contain a wildcard. The second example is not valid because there
is more than one wildcard character. The third contains an embedded
wildcard, the fourth has a wildcard character that is not the last
component of the IP address (the last component is 127*).
The name localhost is given special treatment to make the behavior of
host wildcarding consistent. Rather than being 127.0.0.1, it is mapped
to the primary IP address associated with the name of the host on which
pmcd is running. Beware of this when running pmcd on multi-homed
hosts.
Access for hosts are allowed or disallowed by specifying statements of
the form:
allow hostlist : operations ;
disallow hostlist : operations ;
hostlist is a comma separated list of host identifiers.
operations is a comma separated list of the operation types
described above, all (which allows/disallows all
operations), or all except operations (which
allows/disallows all operations except those listed).
Where no specific allow or disallow statement applies to an operation
for some host, the default is to allow the operation from that host.
In the trivial case when there is no access control section in the
configuration file, all operations from all hosts are permitted.
If a new connection to pmcd is attempted from a host that is not
permitted to perform any operations, the connection will be closed
immediately after an error response PM_ERR_PERMISSION has been sent to
the client attempting the connection.
Statements with the same level of wildcarding specifying identical
hosts may not contradict each other. For example if a host named clank
had an IP address of 129.127.112.2, specifying the following two rules
would be erroneous:
allow clank : fetch, store;
disallow 129.127.112.2 : all except fetch;
because they both refer to the same host, but disagree as to whether
the fetch operation is permitted from that host.
Statements containing more specific host specifications override less
specific ones according to the level of wildcarding. For example a
rule of the form
allow clank : all;
overrides
disallow 129.127.112.* : all except fetch;
because the former contains a specific host name (equivalent to a fully
specified IP address), whereas the latter has a wildcard. In turn, the
latter would override
disallow * : all;
It is possible to limit the number of connections from a host to pmcd.
This may be done by adding a clause of the form
maximum n connections
to the operations list of an allow statement. Such a clause may not be
used in a disallow statement. Here, n is the maximum number of
connections that will be accepted from hosts matching the host
identifier(s) used in the statement.
An access control statement with a list of host identifiers is
equivalent to a group of access control statements, with each
specifying one of the host identifiers in the list and all with the
same access controls (both permissions and connection limits). A
wildcard should be used if you want hosts to contribute to a shared
connection limit.
When a new client requests a connection, and pmcd has determined that
the client has permission to connect, it searches the matching list of
access control statements for the most specific match containing a
connection limit. For brevity, this will be called the limiting
statement. If there is no limiting statement, the client is granted a
connection. If there is a limiting statement and the number of pmcd
clients with IP addresses that match the host identifier in the
limiting statement is less than the connection limit in the statement,
the connection is allowed. Otherwise the connection limit has been
reached and the client is refused a connection.
The wildcarding in host identifiers means that once pmcd actually
accepts a connection from a client, the connection may contribute to
the current connection count of more than one access control statement
(the client’s host may match more than one access control statement).
This may be significant for subsequent connection requests.
Note that because most specific match semantics are used when checking
the connection limit, priority is given to clients with more specific
host identifiers. It is also possible to exceed connection limits in
some situations. Consider the following:
allow clank : all, maximum 5 connections;
allow * : all except store, maximum 2 connections;
This says that only 2 client connections at a time are permitted for
all hosts other than "clank", which is permitted 5. If a client from
host "boing" is the first to connect to pmcd, its connection is checked
against the second statement (that is the most specific match with a
connection limit). As there are no other clients, the connection is
accepted and contributes towards the limit for only the second
statement above. If the next client connects from "clank", its
connection is checked against the limit for the first statement. There
are no other connections from "clank", so the connection is accepted.
Once this connection is accepted, it counts towards both statements’
limits because "clank" matches the host identifier in both statements.
Remember that the decision to accept a new connection is made using
only the most specific matching access control statement with a
connection limit. Now, the connection limit for the second statement
has been reached. Any connections from hosts other than "clank" will
be refused.
If instead, pmcd with no clients saw three successive connections
arrived from "boing", the first two would be accepted and the third
refused. After that, if a connection was requested from "clank" it
would be accepted. It matches the first statement, which is more
specific than the second, so the connection limit in the first is used
to determine that the client has the right to connect. Now there are 3
connections contributing to the second statement’s connection limit.
Even though the connection limit for the second statement has been
exceeded, the earlier connections from "boing" are maintained. The
connection limit is only checked at the time a client attempts a
connection rather than being re-evaluated every time a new client
connects to pmcd.
This gentle scheme is designed to allow reasonable limits to be imposed
on a first come first served basis, with specific exceptions.
As illustrated by the example above, a client’s connection is honored
once it has been accepted. However, pmcd reconfiguration (see the next
section) re-evaluates all the connection counts and will cause client
connections to be dropped where connection limits have been exceeded.
RECONFIGURING PMCD
If the configuration file has been changed or if an agent is not
responding because it has terminated or the PMNS has been changed, pmcd
may be reconfigured by sending it a SIGHUP, as in
# pmsignal -a -s HUP pmcd
When pmcd receives a SIGHUP, it checks the configuration file for
changes. If the file has been modified, it is reparsed and the
contents become the new configuration. If there are errors in the
configuration file, the existing configuration is retained and the
contents of the file are ignored. Errors are reported in the pmcd log
file.
It also checks the PMNS file for changes. If the PMNS file has been
modified, then it is reloaded. Use of tail(1) on the log file is
recommended while reconfiguring pmcd.
If the configuration for an agent has changed (any parameter except the
agent’s label is different), the agent is restarted. Agents whose
configurations do not change are not restarted. Any existing agents
not present in the new configuration are terminated. Any deceased
agents are that are still listed are restarted.
Sometimes it is necessary to restart an agent that is still running,
but malfunctioning. Simply stop the agent (e.g. using SIGTERM from
pmsignal(1)), then send pmcd a SIGHUP, which will cause the agent to be
restarted.
STARTING AND STOPPING PMCD
Normally, pmcd is started automatically at boot time and stopped when
the system is being brought down (see rc2(1M) and rc0(1M)). Under
certain circumstances it is necessary to start or stop pmcd manually.
To do this one must become superuser and type
# $PCP_RC_DIR/pcp start
to start pmcd, or
# $PCP_RC_DIR/pcp stop
to stop pmcd. Starting pmcd when it is already running is the same as
stopping it and then starting it again.
Sometimes it may be necessary to restart pmcd during another phase of
the boot process. Time-consuming parts of the boot process are often
put into the background to allow the system to become available sooner
(e.g. mounting huge databases). If an agent run by pmcd requires such
a task to complete before it can run properly, it is necessary to
restart or reconfigure pmcd after the task completes. Consider, for
example, the case of mounting a database in the background while
booting. If the PMDA which provides the metrics about the database
cannot function until the database is mounted and available but pmcd is
started before the database is ready, the PMDA will fail (however pmcd
will still service requests for metrics from other domains). If the
database is initialized by running a shell script, adding a line to the
end of the script to reconfigure pmcd (by sending it a SIGHUP) will
restart the PMDA (if it exited because it couldn’t connect to the
database). If the PMDA didn’t exit in such a situation it would be
necessary to restart pmcd because if the PMDA was still running pmcd
would not restart it.
Normally pmcd listens for client connections on one or more well-known
TCP/IP port numbers (historically 4321 and more recently the officially
registered port 44321; in the current release, pmcd listens on only
port 44321 by default). Either the environment variable PMCD_PORT or
the -p command line option may be used to specify alternative port
number(s) when pmcd is started; in each case, the specficiation is a
comma-separated list of one or more numerical port numbers. Should
both methods be used or multiple -p options appear on the command line,
pmcd will listen on the union of the set of ports specified via all -p
options and the PMCD_PORT environment variable. If non-default ports
are used with pmcd care should be taken to ensure that PMCD_PORT is
also set in the environment of any client application that will connect
to pmcd.
FILES
$PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH
default configuration file
$PCP_PMCDOPTIONS_PATH
command line options to pmcd when launched from
$PCP_RC_DIR/pcp All the command line option lines should
start with a hyphen as the first character. This file can
also contain environment variable settings of the form
"VARIABLE=value".
./pmcd.log
(or $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/pmcd.log when started automatically)
$PCP_RUN_DIR/pmcd.pid
contains an ascii decimal representation of the process ID of
pmcd , when it’s running.
All messages and diagnostics are directed here
ENVIRONMENT
In addition to the PCP environment variables described in the PCP
ENVIRONMENT section below, the PMCD_PORT variable is also recognised as
the TCP/IP port for incoming connections (default 44321).
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(4).
SEE ALSO
PCPIntro(1), pmdbg(1), pmerr(1), pmgenmap(1), pminfo(1), pmstat(1),
pmstore(1), pmval(1), pcp.conf(4), and pcp.env(4).
DIAGNOSTICS
If pmcd is already running the message "Error: OpenRequestSocket bind:
Address may already be in use" will appear. This may also appear if
pmcd was shutdown with an outstanding request from a client. In this
case, a request socket has been left in the TIME_WAIT state and until
the system closes it down (after some timeout period) it will not be
possible to run pmcd.
In addition to the standard PCP debugging flags, see pmdbg(1), pmcd
currently uses DBG_TRACE_APPL0 for tracing I/O and termination of
agents, DBG_TRACE_APPL1 for tracing host access control (see below) and
DBG_TRACE_APPL2 for tracing the configuration file scanner and parser.
CAVEATS
pmcd does not explicitly terminate its children (agents), it only
closes their pipes. If an agent never checks for a closed pipe it may
not terminate.
The configuration file parser will only read lines of less than 1200
characters. This is intended to prevent accidents with binary files.
The timeouts controlled by the -t option apply to IPC between pmcd and
the PMDAs it spawns. This is independent of settings of the
environment variables PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT and PMCD_REQUEST_TIMEOUT
(see PCPIntro(1)) which may be used respectively to control timeouts
for client applications trying to connect to pmcd and trying to receive
information from pmcd.