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NAME | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION | INSTALLATION | FILES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
PMDABCC(1) General Commands Manual PMDABCC(1)
pmdabcc - BCC PMDA
pmdabcc is a Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) Performance Metrics Domain
Agent (PMDA) which extracts live performance data from extended BPF
(Berkeley Packet Filter) in-kernel programs by using BCC (BPF
Compiler Collection) Python frontend.
pmdabcc loads and acts as a bridge for any number of configured,
separate PCP BCC PMDA Python modules running BPF programs. Existing
BCC Python tools and programs should be possible to be utilized with
PCP BCC PMDA modules with reasonable effort.
See the BPF and BCC documentation for detailed description of both.
pmdabcc reads a mandatory ini-style configuration file:
$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc/bcc.conf
This file must contain a [pmda] section. The following PMDA options
are available (their default values are shown in parenthesis),
options marked with asterisk (*) can be overridden in module-specific
configuration sections:
modules (unset)
The pmdabcc PMDA reads module-specific configuration
for each module listed in the comma-separated list of
modules (mandatory).
prefix (bcc.) *
By default, all metrics from the modules will appear
under the bcc Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS)
tree, prefix (optional) can be used to change this
generic prefix.
process_refresh (0)
See below.
module_failure_fatal (True)
A boolean value for module_failure_fatal (optional)
controls whether a module failing to compile should
cause the whole PMDA to abort (this is the default) or
to start up with possibly remaining functional
modules. Module configuration errors and internal
errors (such as failing to register the provided PMNS
metrics, see PMNS(5)) will always cause the PMDA to
fail.
Of particular note, the process option accepted by some modules
evalutes the given PIDs and process names at PMDA/module
initialization time and apply filtering for only those processes
found at that stage. This is due to fact that the in-kernel BPF
program is compiled at module initialization time and, even more
importantly, they are often running at performance critical areas
where it is not acceptable to do process name lookups each time a
request is processed by the BPF program. To allow modules to monitor
named processes (say, process = java) even if they restart the
process_refresh should be set to a non-negative integer N to
dynamically refresh monitored processes every N seconds. In case new
processes matching the process filter have appeared, the currently
running BPF is detached and a new BPF program with updated PID
information is installed (and if no PIDs matching the filter are
anymore present, the BPF program will be detach to avoid any needless
overhead).
For each module listed in modules a corresponding [module] section
must be defined containing at least the following options:
module Defines the actual Python module file name to be
loaded during PMDA startup under the modules
subdirectory of the PCP BCC PMDA installation.
cluster Specifies the unique cluster ID (see PMNS(5)) for the
metrics provided by the module under the PMNS path.
All modules accept but not necessarily use the boolean debug option.
Modules may also support additional module-specific configuration
options, refer to the default configuration file for their supported
options.
To install, the following must be done as root:
# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc
# ./Install
To uninstall, the following must be done as root:
# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc
# ./Remove
pmdabcc is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed directly.
The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the agent is
installed or removed.
In case module_failure_fatal is set to False, the PMDA installation
will be considered successful even if some or even all configured
modules fail to load, in such cases metric values provided by the
failing modules will not be available. The pmdabcc agent log file
(see below) will contain detailed information about activation of
each module.
Some modules will start providing values only after having collected
data from related system activity. For instance, the tcpperpid
module will not provide any values unless there are processes
generating TCP traffic on the system.
$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc/bcc.conf
configuration file for the pmdabcc agent
$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc/modules/*.{py,python}
PCP BCC PMDA Python modules available for the pmdabcc agent
$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc/Install
installation script for the pmdabcc agent
$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bcc/Remove
undo installation script for the pmdabcc agent
$PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/bcc.log
default log file for messages from the pmdabcc agent
Note that the usual/default value for $PCP_PMDAS_DIR is
/var/lib/pcp/pmdas and the default for $PCP_LOG_DIR is /var/log/pcp
but these settings are platform dependent.
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), bcc(1), bpf(1) and pmcd(1).
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@groups.io. This page was obtained from the project's upstream
Git repository ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on
2020-08-13. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2020-08-11.) 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 PMDABCC(1)