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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)
PCPIntro - introduction to the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) libraries
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
pmerr(1), PMAPI(3), pmErrStr(3), pmGetConfig(3), pcp.conf(5) and
pcp.env(5).
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)