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PMIE(1) General Commands Manual PMIE(1)
pmie - inference engine for performance metrics
pmie [-bCdeFfPqvVWxXz?] [-a archive] [-A align] [-c config] [-D
debug] [-h host] [-l logfile] [-m note] [-j stompfile] [-n
pmnsfile] [-o format] [-O offset] [-S starttime] [-t interval] [-T
endtime] [-U username] [-Z timezone] [filename ...]
pmie accepts a collection of arithmetic, logical, and rule
expressions to be evaluated at specified frequencies. The base
data for the expressions consists of performance metrics values
delivered in real-time from any host running the Performance
Metrics Collection Daemon (PMCD), or using historical data from
Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archives.
As well as computing arithmetic and logical values, pmie can
execute actions (popup alarms, write system log messages, and
launch programs) in response to specified conditions. Such
actions are extremely useful in detecting, monitoring and
correcting performance related problems.
The expressions to be evaluated are read from configuration files
specified by one or more filename arguments. In the absence of
any filename, expressions are read from standard input.
Output from pmie is directed to standard output and standard error
as follows:
stdout
Expression values printed in the verbose -v mode and the
output of print actions.
stderr
Error and warning messages for any syntactic or semantic
problems during expression parsing, and any semantic or
performance metrics availability problems during expression
evaluation.
The available command line options are:
-a archive, --archive=archive
archive which is a comma-separated list of names, each of
which may be the base name of an archive or the name of a
directory containing one or more archives written by
pmlogger(1). Multiple instances of the -a flag may appear on
the command line to specify a list of sets of archives. In
this case, it is required that only one set of archives be
present for any one host. Also, any explicit host names
occurring in a pmie expression must match the host name
recorded in one of the archive labels. In the case of
multiple sets of archives, timestamps recorded in the
archives are used to ensure temporal consistency.
-A align, --align=align
Force the initial time window to be aligned on the boundary
of a natural time unit align. Refer to PCPIntro(1) for a
complete description of the syntax for align.
-b, --buffer
Output will be line buffered and standard output is attached
to standard error. This is most useful for background
execution in conjunction with the -l option. The -b option
is always used for pmie instances launched from
pmie_check(1).
-c config, --config=config
An alternative to specifying filename at the end of the
command line.
-C, --check
Parse the configuration file(s) and exit before performing
any evaluations. Any errors in the configuration file are
reported.
-d, --interact
Normally pmie would be launched as a non-interactive process
to monitor and manage the performance of one or more hosts.
Given the -d flag however, execution is interactive and the
user is presented with a menu of options. Interactive mode
is useful mainly for debugging new expressions.
-e, --timestamp
When used with -V, -v or -W, this option forces timestamps to
be reported with each expression. The timestamps are in
ctime(3) format, enclosed in parenthesis and appear after the
expression name and before the expression value, e.g.
expr_1 (Tue Feb 6 19:55:10 2001): 12
-f, --foreground
If the -l option is specified and there is no -a option (i.e.
real-time monitoring) then pmie is run as a daemon in the
background (in all other cases foreground is the default).
The -f (and -F, see below) options force pmie to be run in
the foreground, independent of any other options.
-F, --systemd
Like -f, the -F option runs pmie in the foreground, but also
does some housekeeping (like create a pid file, change user
id and notify systemd(1) when pmie has started or is shutting
down). This is intended for use when pmie is launched from
systemd(1) and the daemonising has already been done. The -f
and -F options are mutually exclusive.
-h host, --host=host
By default performance data is fetched from the local host
(in real-time mode) or the host for the first named set of
archives on the command line (in archive mode). The host
argument overrides this default. It does not override hosts
explicitly named in the expressions being evaluated. The
host argument is interpreted as a connection specification
for pmNewContext, and is later mapped to the remote pmcd's
self-reported host name for reporting purposes. See also the
%h vs. %c substitutions in rule action strings below.
-j file
An alternative STOMP protocol configuration is loaded from
stompfile. If this option is not used, and the stomp action
is used in any rule, the default location
$PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/config/stomp will be used.
-l logfile, --logfile=logfile
Standard error is sent to logfile.
-m note, --note=note
Used to indicate where pmie has been launched from, e.g.
pmie_check(1) and pmie_daily(1) use -m pmie_check and this is
used by pmie to determine if it needs to be restarted should
the PMCD hostname change, as described in the HOSTNAME
CHANGES section below.
-n pmnsfile, --namespace=pmnsfile
An alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS) is
loaded from the file pmnsfile.
-o format, --format=format
When precessing performance data from an archive, the -o
option may be used to specify an alternate output format when
a rule action is executed. See the DIFFERENCES IN HOST AND
ARCHIVE MODES section for a description of how the output
format may be constructed.
-O origin, --origin=origin
Specify the origin of the time window. See PCPIntro(1) for
complete description of this option.
-P, --primary
Identifies this as the primary pmie instance for a host. See
the ``AUTOMATIC RESTART'' section below for further details.
-q, --quiet
Suppresses diagnostic messages that would be printed to
standard output by default, especially the "evaluator
exiting" message as this can confuse scripts.
-S starttime, --start=starttime
Specify the starttime of the time window. See PCPIntro(1)
for complete description of this option.
-t interval, --interval=interval
The interval argument follows the syntax described in
PCPIntro(1), and in the simplest form may be an unsigned
integer (the implied units in this case are seconds). The
value is used to determine the sample interval for
expressions that do not explicitly set their sample interval
using the pmie variable delta described below. The default
is 10.0 seconds.
-T endtime, --finish=endtime
Specify the endtime of the time window. See PCPIntro(1) for
complete description of this option.
-U username, --username=username
User account under which to run pmie. The default is the
current user account for interactive use. When run as a
daemon, the unprivileged "pcp" account is used in current
versions of PCP, but in older versions the superuser account
("root") was used by default.
-v Unless one of the verbose options -V, -v or -W appears on the
command line, expressions are evaluated silently, the only
output is as a result of any actions being executed. In the
verbose mode, specified using the -v flag, the value of each
expression is printed as it is evaluated. The values are in
canonical units; bytes in the dimension of ``space'', seconds
in the dimension of ``time'' and events in the dimension of
``count''. See pmLookupDesc(3) for details of the supported
dimension and scaling mechanisms for performance metrics.
The verbose mode is useful in monitoring the value of given
expressions, evaluating derived performance metrics, passing
these values on to other tools for further processing and in
debugging new expressions.
-V, --verbose
This option has the same effect as the -v option, except that
the name of the host and instance (if applicable) are printed
as well as expression values.
-W This option has the same effect as the -V option described
above, except that for boolean expressions, only those names
and values that make the expression true are printed. These
are the same names and values accessible to rule actions as
the %h, %i, %c and %v bindings, as described below.
-x, --secret-agent
Execute in domain agent mode. This mode is used within the
Performance Co-Pilot product to derive values for summary
metrics, see pmdasummary(1). Only restricted functionality
is available in this mode (expressions with actions may not
be used).
-X, --secret-applet
Run in secret applet mode (thin client).
-z, --hostzone
Change the reporting timezone to the timezone of the host
that is the source of the performance metrics, as identified
via either the -h option or the first named set of archives
(as described above for the -a option).
-Z timezone, --timezone=timezone
Change the reporting timezone to timezone in the format of
the environment variable TZ as described in environ(7).
-?, --help
Display usage message and exit.
The following example expressions demonstrate some of the
capabilities of the inference engine.
The directory $PCP_DEMOS_DIR/pmie contains a number of other
annotated examples of pmie expressions.
The variable delta controls expression evaluation frequency.
Specify that subsequent expressions be evaluated once a second,
until further notice:
delta = 1 sec;
If the total context switch rate exceeds 10000 per second per CPU,
then display an alarm notifier:
kernel.all.pswitch / hinv.ncpu > 10000 count/sec
-> alarm "high context switch rate %v";
If the high context switch rate is sustained for 10 consecutive
samples, then launch top(1) in an xterm(1) window to monitor
processes, but do this at most once every 5 minutes:
all_sample (
kernel.all.pswitch @0..9 > 10 Kcount/sec * hinv.ncpu
) -> shell 5 min "xterm -e 'top'";
The following rules are evaluated once every 20 seconds:
delta = 20 sec;
If any disk is performing more than 60 I/Os per second, then print
a message identifying the busy disk to standard output and launch
dkvis(1):
some_inst (
disk.dev.total > 60 count/sec
) -> print "busy disks:" " %i" &
shell 5 min "dkvis";
Refine the preceding rule to apply only between the hours of 9am
and 5pm, and to require 3 of 4 consecutive samples to exceed the
threshold before executing the action:
$hour >= 9 && $hour <= 17 &&
some_inst (
75 %_sample (
disk.dev.total @0..3 > 60 count/sec
)
) -> print "disks busy for 20 sec:" " [%h]%i";
The following two rules are evaluated once every 10 minutes:
delta = 10 min;
If either the / or the /usr filesystem is more than 95% full,
display an alarm popup, but not if it has already been displayed
during the last 4 hours:
filesys.free #'/dev/root' /
filesys.capacity #'/dev/root' < 0.05
-> alarm 4 hour "root filesystem (almost) full";
filesys.free #'/dev/usr' /
filesys.capacity #'/dev/usr' < 0.05
-> alarm 4 hour "/usr filesystem (almost) full";
The following rule requires a machine that supports the lmsensors
metrics. If the machine environment temperature rises more than 2
degrees over a 10 minute interval, write an entry in the system
log:
lmsensors.coretemp_isa.temp1 @0 - lmsensors.coretemp_isa.temp1 @1 > 2
-> alarm "temperature rising fast" &
syslog "machine room temperature rise alarm";
And something interesting if you have performance problems with
your Oracle database:
// back to 30sec evaluations
delta = 30 sec;
sid = "ptg1"; # $ORACLE_SID setting
lid = "223"; # latch ID from v$latch
lru = "#'$sid/$lid cache buffers lru chain'";
host = ":moomba.melbourne.sgi.com";
gets = "oracle.latch.gets $host $lru";
total = "oracle.latch.gets $host $lru +
oracle.latch.misses $host $lru +
oracle.latch.immisses $host $lru";
$total > 100 && $gets / $total < 0.2
-> alarm "high lru latch contention in database $sid";
The following ruleset will emit exactly one message depending on
the availability and value of the 1-minute load average.
delta = 1 minute;
ruleset
kernel.all.load #'1 minute' > 10 * hinv.ncpu ->
print "extreme load average %v"
else kernel.all.load #'1 minute' > 2 * hinv.ncpu ->
print "moderate load average %v"
unknown ->
print "load average unavailable"
otherwise ->
print "load average OK"
;
The following rule will emit a message when some filesystem is
more than 75% full and is filling at a rate that if sustained
would fill the filesystem to 100% in less than 30 minutes.
some_inst (
100 * filesys.used / filesys.capacity > 75 &&
filesys.used + 30min * (rate filesys.used) > filesys.capacity
) -> print "filesystem will be full within 30 mins:" " %i";
If the metric mypmda.errors counts errors then the following rule
will emit a message if the rate of errors exceeds 1 per second
provided the error count is less than 100.
mypmda.errors > 1 && instant mypmda.errors < 100
-> print "high error rate: %v";
The pmie specification language is powerful and large.
To expedite rapid development of pmie rules, the pmieconf(1) tool
provides a facility for generating a pmie configuration file from
a set of generalized pmie rules. The supplied set of rules covers
a wide range of performance scenarios.
The Performance Co-Pilot User's and Administrator's Guide provides
a detailed tutorial-style chapter covering pmie.
This description is terse and informal. For a more comprehensive
description see the Performance Co-Pilot User's and
Administrator's Guide.
A pmie specification is a sequence of semicolon terminated
expressions.
Basic operators are modeled on the arithmetic, relational and
Boolean operators of the C programming language. Precedence rules
are as expected, although the use of parentheses is encouraged to
enhance readability and remove ambiguity.
Operands are performance metric names (see PMNS(5)) and the normal
literal constants.
Operands involving performance metrics may produce sets of values,
as a result of enumeration in the dimensions of hosts, instances
and time. Special qualifiers may appear after a performance
metric name to define the enumeration in each dimension. For
example,
kernel.percpu.cpu.user :foo :bar #cpu0 @0..2
defines 6 values corresponding to the time spent executing in user
mode on CPU 0 on the hosts ``foo'' and ``bar'' over the last 3
consecutive samples. The default interpretation in the absence of
: (host), # (instance) and @ (time) qualifiers is all instances at
the most recent sample time for the default source of PCP
performance metrics.
Host and instance names that do not follow the rules for variables
in programming languages, i.e. alphabetic optionally followed by
alphanumerics, should be enclosed in single quotes.
Expression evaluation follows the law of ``least surprises''.
Where performance metrics have the semantics of a counter, pmie
will automatically convert to a rate based upon consecutive
samples and the time interval between these samples. All numeric
expressions are evaluated in double precision, and where
appropriate, automatically scaled into canonical units of
``bytes'', ``seconds'' and ``counts''.
A rule is a special form of expression that specifies a condition
or logical expression, a special operator (->) and actions to be
performed when the condition is found to be true.
The following table summarizes the basic pmie operators:
┌─────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Operators │ Explanation │
├─────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ + - * / │ Arithmetic │
│ < <= == >= > != │ Relational (value comparison) │
│ ! && || │ Boolean │
│ -> │ Rule │
│ rising │ Boolean, false to true transition │
│ falling │ Boolean, true to false transition │
│ rate │ Explicit rate conversion (rarely required) │
│ instant │ No automatic rate conversion (rarely required) │
└─────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
All operators are supported for numeric-valued operands and
expressions. For string-valued operands, namely literal string
constants enclosed in double quotes or metrics with a data type of
string (PM_TYPE_STRING), only the operators == and != are
supported.
The rate and instant operators are the logical inverse of one
another, so an arithmetic expression expr is equal to rate instant
expr. The more useful cases involve using rate with a metric that
is not a counter to determine the rate of change over time or
instant with a metric that is a counter to determine if the
current value is above or below some threshold.
Aggregate operators may be used to aggregate or summarize along
one dimension of a set-valued expression. The following aggregate
operators map from a logical expression to a logical expression of
lower dimension.
┌──────────────────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Operators │ Type │ Explanation │
├──────────────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ some_inst │ Existential │ True if at least one set │
│ some_host │ │ member is true in the │
│ some_sample │ │ associated dimension │
├──────────────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ all_inst │ Universal │ True if all set members │
│ all_host │ │ are true in the │
│ all_sample │ │ associated dimension │
├──────────────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ N%_inst │ Percentile │ True if at least N │
│ N%_host │ │ percent of set members │
│ N%_sample │ │ are true in the │
│ │ │ associated dimension │
└──────────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────────────┘
The following instantial operators may be used to filter or limit
a set-valued logical expression, based on regular expression
matching of instance names. The logical expression must be a set
involving the dimension of instances, and the regular expression
is of the form used by egrep(1) or the Extended Regular
Expressions of regcomp(3).
┌──────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Operators │ Explanation │
├──────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ match_inst │ For each value of the logical expression │
│ │ that is ``true'', the result is ``true'' │
│ │ if the associated instance name matches │
│ │ the regular expression. Otherwise the │
│ │ result is ``false''. │
├──────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ nomatch_inst │ For each value of the logical expression │
│ │ that is ``true'', the result is ``true'' │
│ │ if the associated instance name does not │
│ │ match the regular expression. Otherwise │
│ │ the result is ``false''. │
└──────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┘
For example, the expression below will be ``true'' for disks
attached to controllers 2 or 3 performing more than 20 operations
per second:
match_inst "^dks[23]d" disk.dev.total > 20;
The following aggregate operators map from an arithmetic
expression to an arithmetic expression of lower dimension.
┌──────────────────────────┬───────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Operators │ Type │ Explanation │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ min_inst │ Extrema │ Minimum value across all │
│ min_host │ │ set members in the │
│ min_sample │ │ associated dimension │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ max_inst │ Extrema │ Maximum value across all │
│ max_host │ │ set members in the │
│ max_sample │ │ associated dimension │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ sum_inst │ Aggregate │ Sum of values across all │
│ sum_host │ │ set members in the │
│ sum_sample │ │ associated dimension │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ avg_inst │ Aggregate │ Average value across all │
│ avg_host │ │ set members in the │
│ avg_sample │ │ associated dimension │
└──────────────────────────┴───────────┴──────────────────────────┘
The aggregate operators count_inst, count_host and count_sample
map from a logical expression to an arithmetic expression of lower
dimension by counting the number of set members for which the
expression is true in the associated dimension.
For action rules, the following actions are defined:
┌───────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Operators │ Explanation │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ alarm │ Raise a visible alarm with xconfirm(1) │
│ print │ Display on standard output │
│ shell │ Execute with sh(1) │
│ stomp │ Send a STOMP message to a JMS server │
│ syslog │ Append a message to system log file │
└───────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘
Multiple actions may be separated by the & and | operators to
specify respectively sequential execution (both actions are
executed) and alternate execution (the second action will only be
executed if the execution of the first action returns a non-zero
error status.
Arguments to actions are an optional suppression time, and then
one or more expressions (a string is an expression in this
context). Strings appearing as arguments to an action may include
the following special selectors that will be replaced at the time
the action is executed.
%h Host name(s) that make the left-most top-level expression in
the condition true.
%c Connection specification string(s) or files for a PCP tool to
reach the hosts or archives that make the left-most top-level
expression in the condition true.
%i Instance(s) that make the left-most top-level expression in
the condition true.
%v One value from the left-most top-level expression in the
condition for each host and instance pair that makes the
condition true.
Note that expansion of the special selectors is done by repeating
the whole argument once for each unique binding to any of the
qualifying special selectors. For example if a rule were true for
the host mumble with instances grunt and snort, and for host
fumble the instance puff makes the rule true, then the action
...
-> shell myscript "Warning: %h:%i busy ";
will execute myscript with the argument string "Warning:
mumble:grunt busy Warning: mumble:snort busy Warning: fumble:puff
busy".
By comparison, if the action
...
-> shell myscript "Warning! busy:" " %h:%i";
were executed under the same circumstances, then myscript would be
executed with the argument string "Warning! busy: mumble:grunt
mumble:snort fumble:puff".
The semantics of the expansion of the special selectors leads to a
common usage pattern in an action, where one argument is a
constant (contains no special selectors) the second argument
contains the desired special selectors with minimal separator
characters, and an optional third argument provides a constant
postscript (e.g. to terminate any argument quoting from the first
argument). If necessary post-processing (e.g. in myscript) can
provide the necessary enumeration over each unique expansion of
the string containing just the special selectors.
For complex conditions, the bindings to these selectors is not
obvious. It is strongly recommended that pmie be used in the
debugging mode (specify the -W command line option in particular)
during rule development.
pmie expressions that have the semantics of a Boolean, e.g.
foo.bar > 10 or some_inst ( my.table < 0 ) are assigned the values
true or false or unknown. A value is unknown if one or more of
the underlying metric values is unavailable, e.g. pmcd(1) on the
host cannot be contacted, the metric is not in the PCP archive, no
values are currently available, insufficient values have been
fetched to allow a rate converted value to be computed or
insufficient values have been fetched to instantiate the required
number of samples in the temporal domain.
Boolean operators follow the normal rules of Kleene logic (aka
3-valued logic) when combining values that include unknown:
┌─────────────┬───────────────────────────┐
│ │ B │
│ A and B ├─────────┬───────┬─────────┤
│ │ true │ false │ unknown │
├───┬─────────┼─────────┼───────┼─────────┤
│ │ true │ true │ false │ unknown │
│ ├─────────┼─────────┼───────┼─────────┤
│ A │ false │ false │ false │ false │
│ ├─────────┼─────────┼───────┼─────────┤
│ │ unknown │ unknown │ false │ unknown │
└───┴─────────┴─────────┴───────┴─────────┘
┌─────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ │ B │
│ A or B ├──────┬─────────┬─────────┤
│ │ true │ false │ unknown │
├───┬─────────┼──────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ │ true │ true │ true │ true │
│ ├─────────┼──────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ A │ false │ true │ false │ unknown │
│ ├─────────┼──────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ │ unknown │ true │ unknown │ unknown │
└───┴─────────┴──────┴─────────┴─────────┘
┌─────────┬─────────┐
│ A │ not A │
├─────────┼─────────┤
│ true │ false │
├─────────┼─────────┤
│ false │ true │
├─────────┼─────────┤
│ unknown │ unknown │
└─────────┴─────────┘
The ruleset clause is used to define a set of rules and actions
that are evaluated in order until some action is executed, at
which point the remaining rules and actions are skipped until the
ruleset is again scheduled for evaluation. The keyword else is
used to separate rules. After one or more regular rules (with a
predicate and an action), a ruleset may include an optional
unknown -> action
clause, optionally followed by a
otherwise -> action
clause.
If all of the predicates in the rules evaluate to unknown and an
unknown clause has been specified then action associated with the
unknown clause will be executed.
If no rule predicate is true and the unknown action is either not
specified or not executed and an otherwise clause has been
specified, then the action associated with the otherwise clause
will be executed.
Scale factors may be appended to arithmetic expressions and force
linear scaling of the value to canonical units. Simple scale
factors are constructed from the keywords: nanosecond, nanosec,
nsec, microsecond, microsec, usec, millisecond, millisec, msec,
second, sec, minute, min, hour, byte, Kbyte, Mbyte, Gbyte, Tbyte,
count, Kcount and Mcount, and the operator /, for example ``Kbytes
/ hour''.
Macros are defined using expressions of the form:
name = constexpr;
Where name follows the normal rules for variables in programming
languages, i.e. alphabetic optionally followed by alphanumerics.
constexpr must be a constant expression, either a string (enclosed
in double quotes) or an arithmetic expression optionally followed
by a scale factor.
Macros are expanded when their name, prefixed by a dollar ($)
appears in an expression, and macros may be nested within a
constexpr string.
The following reserved macro names are understood.
minute Current minute of the hour.
hour Current hour of the day, in the range 0 to 23.
day Current day of the month, in the range 1 to 31.
month Current month of the year, in the range 0 (January) to 11
(December).
year Current year.
day_of_week
Current day of the week, in the range 0 (Sunday) to 6
(Saturday).
delta Sample interval in effect for this expression.
Dates and times are presented in the reporting time zone (see
description of -Z and -z command line options above).
It is often useful for pmie processes to be started and stopped
when the local host is booted or shutdown, or when they have been
detected as no longer running (when they have unexpectedly exited
for some reason). Refer to pmie_check(1) for details on
automating this process.
Optionally, each system running pmcd(1) may also be configured to
run a ``primary'' pmie instance. This pmie instance is launched
by $PCP_RC_DIR/pmie, and is affected by the files
$PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/control, $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmie/control.d
(use chkconfig(8), systemctl(1) or similar platform-specific
commands to activate or disable the primary pmie instance) and
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/config.default (the default initial
configuration file for the primary pmie).
The primary pmie instance is identified by the -P option. There
may be at most one ``primary'' pmie instance on each system. The
primary pmie instance (if any) must be running on the same host as
the pmcd(1) to which it connects (if any), so the -h and -P
options are mutually exclusive.
It is common for production systems to be monitored in a central
location. Traditionally on UNIX systems this has been performed
by the system log facilities - see logger(1), and syslogd(1). On
Windows, communication with the system event log is handled by
pcp-eventlog(1).
pmie fits into this model when rules use the syslog action. Note
that if the action string begins with -p (priority) and/or -t
(tag) then these are extracted from the string and treated in the
same way as in logger(1) and pcp-eventlog(1).
However, it is common to have other event monitoring frameworks
also, into which you may wish to incorporate performance events
from pmie. You can often use the shell action to send events to
these frameworks, as they usually provide their a program for
injecting events into the framework from external sources.
A final option is use of the stomp (Streaming Text Oriented
Messaging Protocol) action, which allows pmie to connect to a
central JMS (Java Messaging System) server and send events to the
PMIE topic. Tools can be written to extract these text messages
and present them to operations people (via desktop popup windows,
etc). Use of the stomp action requires a stomp configuration file
to be setup, which specifies the location of the JMS server host,
port number, and username/password.
The format of this file is as follows:
host=messages.sgi.com # this is the JMS server (required)
port=61616 # and its listening here (required)
timeout=2 # seconds to wait for server (optional)
username=joe # (required)
password=j03ST0MP # (required)
topic=PMIE # JMS topic for pmie messages (optional)
The timeout value specifies the time (in seconds) that pmie should
wait for acknowledgements from the JMS server after sending a
message (as required by the STOMP protocol). Note that on
startup, pmie will wait indefinitely for a connection, and will
not begin rule evaluation until that initial connection has been
established. Should the connection to the JMS server be lost at
any time while pmie is running, pmie will attempt to reconnect on
each subsequent truthful evaluation of a rule with a stomp action,
but not more than once per minute. This is to avoid contributing
to network congestion. In this situation, where the STOMP
connection to the JMS server has been severed, the stomp action
will return a non-zero error value.
When running in host mode, the delta interval for each rule
determines a real-time delay between rule evaluation, so pmie
spends most if its time sleeping and waiting for the next
scheduled rule evaluation.
When running in archive mode, pmie uses the delta interval for
each rule to determine how frequently the rules are evaluated
against the archive data, but unlike host mode there are no real-
time delays as the archive is ``replayed'' as fast as possible.
In archive mode when a rule predicate evaluates true then the
action is modified, so that rather than posting to syslog or
raising a visible alarm or running a shell command or sending a
stomp message, pmie prints the name of the action, the timestamp
from the archive when the rule predicate triggering the action was
true and all of the arguments that would have been passed to the
real action in host mode.
For example, given the rule:
delta = 10 sec;
kernel.all.nprocs > 10 * hinv.ncpu -> print "lotsaprocs:" "
%v";
when run against an archive, the output appears as:
print Mon Sep 4 00:10:21 2017: lotsaprocs: 1292
print Mon Sep 4 00:10:31 2017: lotsaprocs: 1294
print Mon Sep 4 00:10:41 2017: lotsaprocs: 1291
...
The rationale is that the context in which the action would have
been executed (in host mode) was at a time in the past and the
possibly on a different host (if the archive was collected from
one host, but pmie is being run on a different host). So flooding
syslog with misleading messages or an avalanche visual alarms or a
lot of STOMP messages or a shell command that might not even work
on the host where pmie is being run, are all examples of
``badness'' to be avoided. Rather the output is text in a regular
format suitable for post-processing with a range of filters and
performance analysis tools.
The output format can be changed using the -o option which
consists of literal characters with the following embedded ``meta-
field'' tokens:
%a The name of the action, e.g. print, syslog, etc.
%d The date and time in ctime(3) format when the action would
have been executed.
%f The name of the configuration file containing the action being
executed, else <stdin> if the rules were read from standard
input.
%l The (approximate) line number in the configuration file for
the action being executed.
%m The message component of the action.
%u The date and time when the action would have been executed in
extended ctime(3) format with microsecond precision for the
time.
%% A literal percent character.
The default output format is equivalent to a format of %a %d: %m.
If pmie is sent a SIGHUP signal, the logfile will be closed,
unlinked and re-opened. This is used by pmie_daily(1) to achieve
nightly log rotation.
Most of the time pmie is sleeping, waiting until the next set of
rules needs to be evaluated. Sending pmie a SIGUSR1 signal will
cause the details for the next set of rules to be dumped on
logfile, including how long the current sleep is and how much time
remains. The scheduling of rules is not changed by this action.
The hostname of the PMCD that is providing metrics to pmie is used
in several ways.
PMCD's hostname is user internally to provide a value for the %h
substitutions in rule action strings.
For pmie instances using a local PMCD that are launched and
managed by pmie_check(1) and pmie_daily(1), (or the systemd(1) or
cron(8) services that use these scripts), the local hostname may
also be used to construct the name of a directory where the pmie
logs for one host are stored, e.g. $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/<hostname>.
The hostname of the PMCD host may change during boot time when the
system transitions from a temporary hostname to a persistent
hostname, or by explicit administrative action anytime after the
system has been booted. When this happens, pmie may need to take
special action, specifically if the pmie instance was launched
from pmie_check(1) or pmie_daily(1), then pmie must exit. Under
normal circumstances systemd(1) or cron(8) will launch a new pmie
shortly thereafter, and this new pmie instance will be operating
in the context of the new hostname for the host where PMCD is
running.
The lexical scanner and parser will attempt to recover after an
error in the input expressions. Parsing resumes after skipping
input up to the next semi-colon (;), however during this skipping
process the scanner is ignorant of comments and strings, so an
embedded semi-colon may cause parsing to resume at an unexpected
place. This behavior is largely benign, as until the initial
syntax error is corrected, pmie will not attempt any expression
evaluation.
$PCP_DEMOS_DIR/pmie/*
annotated example rules
$PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
default PMNS specification files
$PCP_TMP_DIR/pmie
pmie maintains files in this directory to identify the
running pmie instances and to export runtime information
about each instance - this data forms the basis of the
pmcd.pmie performance metrics
$PCP_PMIECONTROL_PATH
the default set of pmie instances to start at boot time -
refer to pmie_check(1) for details
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).
When executing shell actions, pmie overrides two variables - IFS
and PATH - in the environment of the child process. IFS is set to
"\t\n". The PATH is set to a combination of a default path for
all platforms ("/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin") and several
configurable components. These are (in this order): $PCP_BIN_DIR,
$PCP_BINADM_DIR and $PCP_PLATFORM_PATHS.
When executing popup alarm actions, pmie will use the value of
$PCP_XCONFIRM_PROG as the visual notification program to run.
This is typically set to pmconfirm(1), a cross-platform dialog
box.
logger(1).
pcp-eventlog(1).
The -D or --debug option enables the output of additional
diagnostics on stderr to help triage problems, although the
information is sometimes cryptic and primarily intended to provide
guidance for developers rather end-users. debug is a comma
separated list of debugging options; use pmdbg(1) with the -l
option to obtain a list of the available debugging options and
their meaning.
Debugging options specific to pmie are as follows:
┌────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Option │ Description │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ appl0 │ lexical scanning during parsing of the configuration │
│ │ file │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ appl1 │ configuration file parsing and expression tree │
│ │ construction │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ appl2 │ expression evaluation │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ appl3 │ status file operations │
└────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmconfirm(1), pmie_check(1), pmieconf(1),
pmie_daily(1), pminfo(1), pmlogdump(1), pmlogger(1), pmval(1),
systemd(1), ctime(3), PMAPI(3), pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and
PMNS(5).
For a more complete description of the pmie language, refer to the
Performance Co-Pilot Users and Administrators Guide. This is
available online from:
https://pcp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/UAG/PerformanceMetricsInferenceEngine.html
This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, send it to [email protected]. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
in the repository was 2025-08-11.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMIE(1)
Pages that refer to this page: autofsd-probe(1), ganglia2pcp(1), iostat2pcp(1), mrtg2pcp(1), pcp(1), pcpcompat(1), pcpintro(1), pmdamysql(1), pmdasummary(1), pmfind(1), pmfind_check(1), pmie2col(1), pmie_check(1), pmieconf(1), pmie_dump_stats(1), pmiestatus(1), pmlogger_check(1), pmlogger_daily(1), pmpost(1), sar2pcp(1), sheet2pcp(1), telnet-probe(1), __pmcleanmapdir(3), pmregisterderived(3), pmieconf(5)
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