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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | DIAGNOSTICS | CAVEATS | COLOPHON |
PMVAL(1) General Commands Manual PMVAL(1)
pmval, pmevent - arbitrary performance metrics value dumper
pmval [-dgLrvz] [-A align] [-a archive] [-f N] [-h host] [-i
instances] [-K spec] [-n pmnsfile] [-O offset] [-p port] [-S
starttime] [-s samples] [-T endtime] [-t interval] [-U archive] [-w
width] [-x pattern] [-Z timezone] metricname
pmval prints current or archived values for the nominated performance
metric. The metric of interest is named in the metricname argument,
subject to instance qualification with the -i flag as described
below.
Unless directed to another host by the -h option, or to a set of
archives by the -a or -U options, pmval will contact the Performance
Metrics Collector Daemon (PMCD) on the local host to obtain the
required information.
The metricname argument may also be given in the metric specification
syntax, as described in PCPIntro(1), where the source, metric and
instance may all be included in the metricname, e.g.
thathost:kernel.all.load["1 minute"]. When this format is used, none
of the -h or -a or -U options may be specified.
When using the metric specification syntax, the ``hostname'' @ is
treated specially and causes pmval to use a local context to collect
metrics from PMDAs on the local host without PMCD. Only some metrics
are available in this mode.
When processing a set of archives, pmval may relinquish its own
timing control, and operate as a ``slave'' of a pmtime(1) process
that uses a GUI dialog to provide timing control. In this case,
either the -g option should be used to start pmval as the sole slave
of a new pmtime(1) instance, or -p should be used to attach pmval to
an existing pmtime(1) instance via the IPC channel identified by the
port argument.
The -S, -T, -O and -A options may be used to define a time window to
restrict the samples retrieved, set an initial origin within the time
window, or specify a ``natural'' alignment of the sample times; refer
to PCPIntro(1) for a complete description of these options.
The other options which control the source, timing and layout of the
information reported by pmval are as follows:
-a Performance metric values are retrieved from the set of
Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive logs identified. The argument
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. See also -U.
-d When replaying from a set of archives, this option requests that
the prevailing real-time delay be applied between samples (see
-t) to effect a pause, rather than the default behaviour of
replaying at full speed.
-f Numbers are reported in ``fixed point'' notation, rather than
the default scientific notation. Each number will be up to the
column width determined by the default heuristics, else the -w
option if specified, and include N digits after the decimal
point. So, the options -f 3 -w 8 would produce numbers of the
form 9999.999. A value of zero for N omits the decimal point
and any fractional digits.
-g Start pmval as the slave of a new pmtime(1) process for replay
of archived performance data using the pmtime(1) graphical user
interface.
-h Current performance metric values are retrieved from the
nominated host machine.
-i instances is a list of one or more instance names for the
nominated performance metric - just these instances will be
retrieved and reported (the default is to report all instances).
The list must be a single argument, with elements of the list
separated by commas and/or white space.
The instance name may be quoted with single (') or double (")
quotes for those cases where the instance name contains white
space or commas.
Multiple -i options are allowed as an alternative way of
specifying more than one instance of interest.
As an example, the following are all equivalent:
$ pmval -i "'1 minute','5 minute'" kernel.all.load
$ pmval -i '"1 minute","5 minute"' kernel.all.load
$ pmval -i "'1 minute' '5 minute'" kernel.all.load
$ pmval -i "'1 minute'" -i "'5 minute'" kernel.all.load
$ pmval 'localhost:kernel.all.load["1 minute","5 minute"]'
-K When fetching metrics from a local context, the -K option may be
used to control the DSO PMDAs that should be made accessible.
The spec argument conforms to the syntax described in
__pmSpecLocalPMDA(3). More than one -K option may be used.
-n Normally pmval operates on the default Performance Metrics Name
Space (PMNS), however if the -n option is specified an
alternative namespace is loaded from the file pmnsfile.
-p Attach pmval to an existing pmtime(1) time control process
instance via the IPC channel identified by the port argument.
This option is normally only used by other tools, e.g.
pmchart(1), when they launch pmval with synchronized time
control.
-r Print raw values for cumulative counter metrics. Normally
cumulative counter metrics are converted to rates. For example,
disk transfers are reported as number of disk transfers per
second during the preceding sample interval, rather than the raw
value of number of disk transfers since the machine was booted.
If you specify this option, the raw metric values are printed.
-s The argument samples defines the number of samples to be
retrieved and reported. If samples is 0 or -s is not specified,
pmval will sample and report continuously (in real time mode) or
until the end of the set of PCP archives (in archive mode).
-t The default update interval may be set to something other than
the default 1 second. 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).
-U Performance metric values are retrieved from the set of
Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) archive logs identified. The argument
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. However, unlike -a every recorded value
in the archive for the selected metric and instances is reported
(so no interpolation mode, and the sample interval (-t option)
is ignored. See also -a.
At most one of the options -a and -U may be specified.
-w Set the width of each column of output to be width columns. If
not specified columns are wide enough to accommodate the largest
value of the type being printed.
-x The given pattern is sent to the performance metric domain agent
for the requested metricname before any values are requested.
This serves two purposes. Firstly, it provides a mechanism for
server-side event filtering that is customisable for individual
event streams. In addition, some performance metrics domain
agents also use the PMCD store mechanism to provide a basic
security model (e.g. for sensitive log files, only a client host
with pmStore(3) access would be able to access the event
stream).
As pattern may be processed by regcomp(3) it should be a non-
empty string. Use . (dot) for a “match all” pattern.
-Z By default, pmval reports the time of day according to the local
timezone on the system where pmval is run. The -Z option
changes the timezone to timezone in the format of the
environment variable TZ as described in environ(7).
-z Change the reporting timezone to the local timezone at the host
that is the source of the performance metrics, as identified via
either the metricname or the -h or -a or -U options.
The following symbols may occasionally appear, in place of a metric
value, in pmval output: A question mark symbol (?) indicates that a
value is no longer available for that metric instance. An
exclamation mark (!) indicates that a 64-bit counter wrapped during
the sample.
The output from pmval is directed to standard output.
$PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/*
default PMNS specification files
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).
PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmchart(1), pmdumplog(1), pmdumptext(1),
pminfo(1), pmlogger(1), pmrep(1), pmtime(1), PMAPI(3), pmStore(3),
__pmSpecLocalPMDA(3), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).
All are generated on standard error and are intended to be self-
explanatory.
By default, pmval attempts to display non-integer numeric values in a
way that does not distort the inherent precision (rarely more than 4
significant digits), and tries to maintain a tabular format in the
output. These goals are sometimes in conflict.
In the absence of the -f option (described above), the following
table describes the formats used for different ranges of numeric
values for any metric that is of type PM_TYPE_FLOAT or
PM_TYPE_DOUBLE, or any metric that has the semantics of a counter
(for which pmval reports the rate converted value):
┌──────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Format │ Value Range │
├──────────┼──────────────────────┤
│ ! │ No values available │
│9.999E-99 │ < 0.1 │
│ 0.0 │ 0 │
│ 9.9999 │ > 0 and <= 0.9999 │
│ 9.999 │ > 0.9999 and < 9.999 │
│ 99.99 │ > 9.999 and < 99.99 │
│ 999.9 │ > 99.99 and < 999.9 │
│9999. │ > 999.9 and < 9999 │
│9.999E+99 │ > 9999 │
└──────────┴──────────────────────┘
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 PMVAL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: pcp2graphite(1), pcp2influxdb(1), pcpintro(1), pmafm(1), pmcd(1), pmchart(1), pmclient(1), pmdabash(1), pmdalogger(1), pmdapapi(1), pmdapipe(1), pmdasystemd(1), pmdumptext(1), pmie(1), pminfo(1), pmlogcheck(1), pmlogsummary(1), pmrep(1), pmsocks(1), pmstore(1), pmtime(1), pmregisterderived(3)