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PMIE(1)                    General Commands Manual                   PMIE(1)

NAME         top

       pmie - inference engine for performance metrics

SYNOPSIS         top

       pmie [-bCdefHqVvWxz] [-A align] [-a archive] [-c filename] [-h host]
       [-l logfile] [-j stompfile] [-n pmnsfile] [-O offset] [-S starttime]
       [-T endtime] [-t interval] [-U username] [-Z timezone] [filename ...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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) archive logs.
       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.
       A description of the command line options specific to pmie follows:
       -a   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.
       -b   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   Parse the configuration file(s) and exit before performing any
            evaluations.  Any errors in the configuration file are reported.
       -c   An alternative to specifying filename at the end of the command
            line.
       -d   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   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   If the -l option is specified and there is no -a option (ie.
            real-time monitoring) then pmie is run as a daemon in the
            background (in all other cases foreground is the default).  The
            -f option forces pmie to be run in the foreground, independent
            of any other options.
       -h   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.
       -l   Standard error is sent to logfile.
       -j   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.
       -n   An alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS) is loaded
            from the file pmnsfile.
       -q   Suppresses diagnostic messages that would be printed to standard
            output by default, especially the "evaluator exiting" message as
            this can confuse scripts.
       -t   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.
       -U 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   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   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).
       -Z   Change the reporting timezone to timezone in the format of the
            environment variable TZ as described in environ(7).
       -z   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).
       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.
       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.

EXAMPLES         top

       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 PCP
       environment metrics.  If the machine environment temperature rises
       more than 2 degrees over a 10 minute interval, write an entry in the
       system log:
            environ.temp @0 - environ.temp @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";

QUICK START         top

       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.

EXPRESSION SYNTAX         top

       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, ie. 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 (eg. 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.

BOOLEAN EXPRESSIONS         top

       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 │
                                └────────┴─────────┘

RULESETS         top

       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         top

       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         top

       Macros are defined using expressions of the form:
            name = constexpr;
       Where name follows the normal rules for variables in programming
       languages, ie. 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).

AUTOMATIC RESTART         top

       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.

EVENT MONITORING         top

       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.

FILES         top

       $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

BUGS         top

       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 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).
       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:/usr/sbin") 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.

UNIX SEE ALSO         top

       logger(1).

WINDOWS SEE ALSO         top

       pcp-eventlog(1).

SEE ALSO         top

       PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmconfirm(1), pmdumplog(1), pmieconf(1),
       pmie_check(1), pminfo(1), pmlogger(1), pmval(1), PMAPI(3),
       pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).

USER GUIDE         top

       For a more complete description of the pmie language, refer to the
       Performance Co-Pilot Users and Administrators Guide.  This is
       available online from:
           http://www.pcp.io/doc/pcp-users-and-administrators-guide.pdf

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                             PMIE(1)

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