NAME pmie_check - administration of the Performance Co-Pilot inference engine SYNOPSIS $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check [-NsV] [-c control] DESCRIPTION This shell script and associated control file may be used to create a customized regime of administration and management for the Performance Co-Pilot (see PCPintro(1)) inference engine, pmie(1). pmie_check may be run at any time, and is intended to check that the desired set of pmie(1) processes are running, and if not to re-launch any failed inference engines. Use of the -s option provides the reverse functionality, allowing the set of pmie processes to be cleanly shutdown. pmie_check is controlled by a PCP inference engine control file that specifies the pmie instances to be managed. The default control file is $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/control (where $PCP_VAR_DIR is normally /var/pcp) but an alternate may be specified using the -c option. The control file should be customized according to the following rules. 1. Lines beginning with a ``#'' are comments. 2. Lines beginning with a ``$'' 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 script, e.g. $ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20 Warning: The $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/control file is a potential security risk if it is writable by any user other than root. 3. There should be one line in the control file for each pmie instance of the form: host y|n logfile args 4. Fields within a line of the control file are separated by one or more spaces or tabs. 5. The first field is the name of the host that is the default source of the performance metrics for this pmie instance. 6. The second field indicates whether this pmie instance needs to be started under the control of pmsocks(1) to connect to a pmcd through a firewall (y or n). Note that pmsocks is part of the pcp product distribution, rather than the pcp_eoe distribution, and as such may not be installed on your system. Refer to PCPintro (1) for full details. 8. The third field is the name of the pmie activity log file. A useful convention is that pmie instances monitoring the local host with hostname myhost are maintained in the directory $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/myhost, while activity logs for the remote host mumble are maintained in $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/mumble. This is consistent with the way pmlogger(1) maintains its activity logs and archive files. 1 PMIE_CHECK(1) PMIE_CHECK(1) 9. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to pmie(1). Most typically this would be the -c option. The following sample control lines specify one pmie instance monitoring the local host (wobbly), and another monitoring performance metrics from the host splat. wobbly n $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/wobbly -c $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/config.default splat n $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat -c $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat/cpu.conf A typical crontab(5) entry for periodic execution of pmie_check is given in $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/crontab and shown below. # every 30 minutes, check pmie instances are running 25,55 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check Alternate redirection of the output from the cron(1) execution of the script may be controlled as follows: (1) The -V option to the script will enable verbose tracing of their activity. By default the script generates 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 account 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. FILES $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/control the default PCP inference engine control file Warning: this file is a potential security risk if it is writable by any user other than root. $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmie/crontab sample crontab for automated script execution by root logfile.lock transient lock file which is named using the control-specified pmie logfile names, and is used to guarantee mutual exclusion during pmie_check execution - if present, can be safely removed if pmie_check is not running $PCP_LOG_DIR/NOTICES PCP ``notices'' file used by pmie(1) and friends 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 chkconfig(1), cron(1), PCPintro(1), pmie(1) and pmsocks(1). Page 3