NAME | INTRODUCTION | GENERAL ERRORS | CLIENT-PMCD ERRORS | CLIENT-ARCHIVE ERRORS | TIME CONTROL ERRORS | NAMESPACE ERRORS | PMCD-PMDA ERRORS | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PCPINTRO(3)               Library Functions Manual               PCPINTRO(3)

NAME         top

       PCPIntro - introduction to the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) libraries

INTRODUCTION         top

       Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) is a toolkit designed for monitoring and
       managing system-level performance.
       The PCP libraries support the APIs required to create new performance
       monitoring tools and new agents (or PMDAs) to export performance
       data.  The libpcp library is used in both cases.  The libpcp_pmda
       library is used only for PMDAs.
       Individual library routines are documented in their own manual page
       entries.
       Most routines return an integer value; greater than equal to zero for
       success and less than zero for an error.  The error codes have
       symbolic names defined in <pcp/pmapi.h>.  Other negative values are
       used to encode errors that can be mapped to the traditional errno
       values defined in <errno.h>, with the value negated.  To translate
       all PCP error codes into useful messages use either pmerr(1) or
       pmErrStr(3); the latter may also be used to decode the -errno cases.

GENERAL ERRORS         top

       These common errors may occur in various PCP interactions.
       PM_ERR_TIMEOUT
           Timeout waiting for a response from PMCD
           Many interactions between PCP applications involve synchronous
           message passing, and these are subject to timeout constraints.
           These errors are most frequently encountered when using network
           connections with slow data rates or long latencies.
           For client-pmcd timeouts, refer to PCPIntro(1) for environment
           variables that may be used to modify the timeout thresholds.  For
           pmcd-PMDA timeouts refer to the -t and -q options of pmcd(1) and
           the PCP metric pmcd.control.timeout that can be dynamically
           changed with pmstore(1).
       PM_ERR_APPVERSION
           Metric not supported by this version of monitored application
           Some performance metrics are unavailable from specific versions
           of the associated PMDA, or may be unavailable because the
           underlying instrumentation has changed or is not installed or is
           not enabled.  This error is used in results from pmFetch(3) to
           indicate these situations.
       PM_ERR_IPC
           IPC protocol failure
           Generic protocol failure on a pipe or socket connecting two PCP
           applications, eg. client-pmcd, or client-pmtime, or PMDA-pmcd or
           pmlc-pmlogger.
       PM_ERR_TEXT
           Oneline or help text is not available
           Set by a PMDA, and passed back to a PCP client, to indicate that
           the PMDA is unable to supply the requested metric or instance
           domain help text.
       PM_ERR_VALUE
           Missing metric value(s)
           This error is used for a number of conditions in which the value
           of a performance metric is inappropriate for the context in which
           it is being used, eg.
           (a) Bad value for the metric pmcd.timezone when trying to set the
               timezone via pmNewContextZone(3) for a remote or archive
               context.
           (b) Attempting to interpolate values for a metric with non-
               numeric data type from a set of PCP archives.
           (c) A bad result data structure passed to pmStore(3).
       PM_ERR_NAME
           Unknown metric name
           Just what the message says.
       PM_ERR_PMID
           Unknown or illegal metric identifier
           Just what the message says.
       PM_ERR_INDOM
           Unknown or illegal instance domain identifier
           A request nominates an instance domain that is unknown or
           PM_INDOM_NULL.  May occur as a consequence of the instance domain
           identifier passed by a PCP client to pmGetInDom(3),
           pmLookupInDom(3), pmNameInDom(3), pmGetInDomArchive(3),
           pmLookupInDomArchive(3), pmNameInDomArchive(3) or a request
           passed from pmcd(1) to a PMDA.
       PM_ERR_EOF
           IPC channel closed
           End of file on a pipe or socket connecting two PCP applications,
           eg. client-pmcd, or client-pmtime or PMDA-pmcd.
       PM_ERR_NOCONTEXT
           Attempt to use an illegal context
           Typically caused by a PCP client that tries to make calls before
           calling pmNewContext(3) or after calling pmDestroyContext(3).
       PM_ERR_PERMISSION
           No permission to perform requested operation
           PCP-specific access controls apply to pmcd(1) and pmlogger(1).
           Platform-specific permission errors are returned as -EPERM.
       PM_ERR_CONV
           Impossible value or scale conversion
           Some value conversion requests are illegal, eg. bad debug flag
           symbolic name for -D option, or asking pmExtractValue(3) to
           translate non-numeric data types to numbers and vice versa.
       PM_ERR_TRUNC
           Truncation in value conversion
           Some conversion requests to pmExtractValue(3) cannot be performed
           based on the metric types and values involved, in this case
           conversion would result in loss of precision.
       PM_ERR_SIGN
           Negative value in conversion to unsigned
           Some conversion requests to pmExtractValue(3) cannot be performed
           based on the metric types and values involved, in this case
           converting a negative value to an unsigned value.
       PM_ERR_TYPE
           Unknown or illegal metric type
           The metric type is held in the metric descriptor and sometimes
           encoded in the metric values returned from a call to pmFetch(3).
           Legal values for the metric type are defined by the PM_TYPE_*
           macros in <pcp/pmapi.h>.
       PM_ERR_UNIT
           Illegal pmUnits specification
           Some conversion requests to pmConvScale(3) cannot be performed
           due to illegal or incompatible specifications of the source and
           destination units.
       PM_ERR_PROFILE
           Explicit instance identifier(s) required
           Some PMDAs, especially the proc PMDA, will not return ``all
           instances'' for a pmFetch(3) request due to the cost.  The client
           must explicitly built an instance profile using pmAddProfile(3)
           and/or pmDelProfile(3) before calling pmFetch(3).  See also the
           -F option to pminfo(1).
       PM_ERR_INST
           Unknown or illegal instance identifier
           A request to a PMDA nominates an instance that is unknown.  May
           occur as a consequence of the profile established prior to a
           pmFetch(3) call, or an explicit instance name or identifier to
           pmLookupInDom(3) or pmNameInDom(3).
       PM_ERR_MODE
           Illegal mode specification
           Illegal mode argument to pmSetMode(3).
       PM_ERR_PROFILESPEC
           NULL pmInDom with non-NULL instlist
           Bad arguments passed from a PCP client to pmAddProfile(3).
       PM_ERR_TOOSMALL
           Insufficient elements in list
           Parameter passing error by caller specifying a list with less
           than one element to pmFetch(3), pmLookupName(3) or pmStore(3).
       PM_ERR_THREAD
           Operation not supported for multi-threaded applications
           As documented in PMAPI(3) and elsewhere, some libpcp routines are
           intended solely for use from single-threaded applications.
       PM_ERR_TOOBIG
           Result size exceeded
           Indicates a fatal error in the message (or PDU) passing protocol
           between two PCP applications.  This is an internal error, and
           other than an exotic networking failure, should not occur.
       PM_ERR_RESET
           PMCD reset or configuration change
           Not used.
           Refer to pmFetch(3) for an alternative mechanism that may be used
           to notify a PCP client when pmcd(1) has experienced one or more
           configuration changes since the last request from the client.
           Usually these changes involve a change to the namespace exported
           via pmcd and/or changes to the PMDAs under pmcd's control.
       PM_ERR_FAULT
           QA fault injected
           Used only for PCP Quality Assurance (QA) testing.
       PM_ERR_NYI
           Functionality not yet implemented
           Self explanatory and rarely used.
       PM_ERR_GENERIC
           Generic error, already reported above
           Rarely used, this error may be returned when the error condition
           is a consequent of some earlier returned error and a more precise
           characterization is not possible.

CLIENT-PMCD ERRORS         top

       These errors may occur in the interactions between a PCP client and
       pmcd(1) providing real-time performance data.
       PM_ERR_NOAGENT
              No PMCD agent for domain of request
              A request sent to pmcd(1) requires information from an agent
              or PMDA that does not exist.  Usually this means the namespace
              being used by the client application contains metric names
              from a previously installed PMDA.
       PM_ERR_CONNLIMIT
              PMCD connection limit for this host exceeded
              The client connection limit for pmcd(1) is controlled by the
              optional access controls in $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH.  By default
              there is no limit imposed by the PCP code, and this error
              would not be seen.
       PM_ERR_AGAIN
              Try again. Information not currently available
              Used to notify a PCP client that the PMDA responsible for
              delivering the information is temporarily unavailable.  See
              also PM_ERR_PMDANOTREADY.
       PM_ERR_NOPROFILE
              Missing profile - protocol botch
              Internal error in the communication between a client
              application and pmcd(1) - should not occur.

CLIENT-ARCHIVE ERRORS         top

       These errors may occur in the interactions between a PCP client and
       the library routines that provide historical performance data from
       PCP archives created by pmlogger(1).
       PM_ERR_LOGFILE
              Missing archive file
              Each PCP archive consists of multiple physical files as
              described in pmlogger(1).  This error occurs when one of the
              physical files is missing or cannot be opened for reading.
       PM_ERR_EOL
              End of PCP archive log
              An attempt is made to read past the end file of the last
              volume of a set of PCP archives, or past the end of the time
              window (as specified with a -T option) for a set of PCP
              archives.
       PM_ERR_NOTHOST
              Operation requires context with host source of metrics
              Operations involving help text (ie. pmLookupText(3) and
              pmLookupInDomText(3)) or calls to pmStore(3) require a host
              context and are not supported for PCP archives.
       PM_ERR_LOGREC
              Corrupted record in a PCP archive log
              PCP archives can become corrupted for a variety of reasons,
              but the most common is premature termination of pmlogger(1)
              without flushing its output buffers.
       PM_ERR_LABEL
              Illegal label record at start of a PCP archive log file
              Each physical file in a PCP archive should begin with a common
              label record.  This is a special case of PM_ERR_LOGREC errors.
       PM_ERR_NODATA
              Empty archive log file
              An empty physical file can never be part of a valid PCP
              archive (at least the label record should be present).  This
              is a special case of PM_ERR_LOGREC errors.
       PM_ERR_NOTARCHIVE
              Operation requires context with archive source of metrics
              A call to one of the archive variant routines, i.e.
              pmFetchArchive(3), pmGetInDomArchive(3),
              pmLookupInDomArchive(3) or pmNameInDomArchive(3), when the
              current context is not associated with a set of PCP archives.
       PM_ERR_PMID_LOG
              Metric not defined in the PCP archive log
              A PCP client has requested information about a metric, and
              there is no corresponding information in the set of PCP
              archives.  This should not happen for well-behaved PCP
              clients.
       PM_ERR_INDOM_LOG
              Instance domain identifier not defined in the PCP archive log
              A PCP client has requested information about an instance
              domain for one or more performance metrics, and there is no
              corresponding information in the set of PCP archives.  If the
              client is using metric descriptors from the set of archives to
              identify the instance domain, this is less likely to happen.
              Because instance domains may vary over time, clients may need
              to use the variant routines pmGetInDomArchive(3) or
              pmLookupInDomArchive(3) or pmNameInDomArchive(3) to manipulate
              the union of the instances in an instance domain over the life
              of an archive.
       PM_ERR_INST_LOG
              Instance identifier not defined in the PCP archive log
              A PCP client has requested information about a specific
              instance of a performance metric, and there is no
              corresponding information in the set of PCP archives.  If the
              client is using instance names from the instance domain in the
              set of archives (rather than hard-coded instance names) and
              instance identifiers from the results returned by pmFetch(3)
              or pmFetchArchive(3) this is less likely to happen.
              Because instance domains may vary over time, clients may need
              to use the variant routines pmLookupInDomArchive(3) or
              pmNameInDomArchive(3) to manipulate the union of the instances
              in an instance domain over the life of an archive.
       PM_ERR_LOGOVERLAP
              Archives overlap in time
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              archives in the set may not overlap in time.
       PM_ERR_LOGHOST
              Archives differ by host
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              archives in the set must all have been generated on the same
              host.
       PM_ERR_LOGTIMEZONE
              Archives differ by time zone
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              archives in the set must all have been generated using the
              same time zone.
       PM_ERR_LOGCHANGETYPE
              The type of a metric differs among archives
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              type of each metric must be same in all of the archives.
       PM_ERR_LOGCHANGESEM
              The semantics of a metric differs among archives
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              semantics of each metric must be same in all of the archives.
       PM_ERR_LOGCHANGEINDOM
              The instance domain of a metric differs among archives
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              instance domain of each metric must be same in all of the
              archives.
       PM_ERR_LOGCHANGEUNITS
              The units of a metric differs among archives
              When using a context associated with a set of archives, the
              units of each metric must be same in all of the archives.

TIME CONTROL ERRORS         top

       These errors may occur in the interactions between a GUI PCP client
       and the time control services provided by pmtime(1).
       PM_ERR_ISCONN
              Already Connected
              A PCP client application called pmTimeConnect(3) when already
              connected to a pmtime(1) instance.
       PM_ERR_NOTCONN
              Not Connected
              A PCP client application called one of the time control
              routines pmTime*(3) when not currently connected to any
              pmtime(1) instance.
       PM_ERR_NEEDPORT
              A non-null port name is required
              If a shared pmtime(1) instance is being created the port
              argument to pmTimeConnect(3) must not be invalid.

NAMESPACE ERRORS         top

       These errors may occur in the processing of PCP namespace operations.
       A PCP namespace, see pmns(5), provides the external names and the
       internal identifiers for the available performance metrics.
       PM_ERR_NONLEAF
              Metric name is not a leaf in PMNS
              The metric name passed to pmLookupName(3) names a non-terminal
              path in the namespace, i.e. a group of metrics rather than a
              single metric.
       PM_ERR_DUPPMNS
              Attempt to reload the PMNS
              When using an explicit local namespace, it is illegal to call
              either of pmLoadNameSpace(3) or pmLoadASCIINameSpace(3) more
              than once.
       PM_ERR_PMNS
              Problems parsing PMNS definitions
              Only occurs when an ASCII namespace is explicitly loaded.
       PM_ERR_NOPMNS
              PMNS not accessible
              Only occurs when an ASCII namespace is explicitly loaded.

PMCD-PMDA ERRORS         top

       These error codes are used in the interactions between pmcd(1) and
       the PMDAs that provide the performance data.
       PM_ERR_PMDANOTREADY
              PMDA is not yet ready to respond to requests
              Some PMDAs have long initialization or reset times, and will
              respond to pmcd(1) with this error if they are busy at the
              moment.  This error translates to PM_ERR_AGAIN for the PCP
              client who made the request to pmcd which caused the initial
              request to the PMDA.  At some later time the PMDA will inform
              pmcd (see PM_ERR_PMDAREADY) that it is now ready to process
              requests, and client requests will begin to succeed.
       PM_ERR_PMDAREADY
              PMDA is now responsive to requests
              Used by PMDAs to asynchronously inform pmcd(1) that they are
              now willing to resume processing requests.  See also
              PM_ERR_PMDANOTREADY.

PCP ENVIRONMENT         top

       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).  Values for these
       variables may be obtained programmatically using the pmGetConfig(3)
       function.

SEE ALSO         top

       pmerr(1), PMAPI(3), pmErrStr(3), pmGetConfig(3), pcp.conf(5) and
       pcp.env(5).

COLOPHON         top

       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
       pcp@oss.sgi.com.  This page was obtained from the project's upstream
       Git repository ⟨git://git.pcp.io/pcp⟩ on 2017-07-05.  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 man-pages@man7.org
Performance Co-Pilot                 PCP                         PCPINTRO(3)

Pages that refer to this page: pmapi(3)pmierrstr(3)pmwebapi(3)pcp.conf(5)pcp.env(5)pmns(5)