pmdabcc(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION | INSTALLATION | FILES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMDABCC(1)               General Commands Manual              PMDABCC(1)

NAME         top

       pmdabcc - BCC PMDA

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.

CONFIGURATION         top

       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
       evaluates 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.

INSTALLATION         top

       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.

FILES         top

       $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.

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).

SEE ALSO         top

       PCPIntro(1), bcc(1), bpf(1) and pmcd(1).

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 [email protected].  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2024-06-14.)  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
       [email protected]

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP                        PMDABCC(1)

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