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NAME | DESCRIPTION | PMIECONF-PMIE SYNTAX | PMIECONF-PMIE EXAMPLE | PMIECONF-RULES SYNTAX | PMIECONF-RULES EXAMPLE | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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PMIECONF(5) File Formats Manual PMIECONF(5)
pmieconf - generalized pmie rules and customizations
The pmieconf file formats are used by the pmieconf(1) tool as a
way to generalize pmie(1) rule sets such that they can be easily
configured for different systems and different environments.
There are two completely different (although closely related) file
formats discussed here, namely ``pmieconf-rules'' and ``pmieconf-
pmie''.
The directory $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf contains information
about all the default system pmie generalized rules and variables,
including default values for all variables. These files are in
the pmieconf-rules format. Although new pmieconf-rules files can
be added, the files in this directory should never be changed.
Instead, use the pmieconf utility to change variable values in the
pmie configuration file.
The pmieconf-pmie format allows site specific customizations of
the rules contained in pmieconf-rules files and their associated
variables. The pmieconf-pmie format is generated by pmieconf and
should not be edited by hand. This generated file is in the pmie
format, with some additional information held at the head of the
file - thus, the pmieconf-pmie format is a superset of the pmie
file format (extended to hold customizations to the generalized
rules, but also containing the actual performance rules for pmie
to evaluate) which can also be parsed by pmie (all extensions are
hidden within comments, and are thus meaningless to pmie itself).
The file $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/config.pmie contains local
system settings for pmieconf configurable variables. The variable
settings in this file replace the default values specified in
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/*/*.
All rule customization lines in a valid pmieconf-pmie
specification are prefixed by ``//'' and are located at the head
of the file - this allows files containing a pmieconf-pmie
specification to be successfully parsed by pmie. A pmieconf-pmie
must always have the first line in the form:
// pmieconf-pmie version pmieconf_path
The version specifies which version of the pmieconf-pmie syntax
should be used to parse this file. Currently the only supported
version is 1. The pmieconf_path specifies the path to the
pmieconf-rules files which were used, by pmieconf, to generate
this file. This is discussed in the pmieconf(1) man page (see the
-r option).
The remainder of the specification consists of one line entries
for each of the modified variables. The syntax for each line is:
// rule_version rule_name rule_variable = value
The rule_version and rule_name are used to identify the rule with
which to associate the customization. These are followed by the
rule_variable name (i.e. the variable of rule rule_name which has
been changed) for which the new value is to be used.
A pmieconf-pmie specification must be terminated with the ``end''
keyword. This is used by pmieconf to distinguish where the
customizations ends, and the actual pmie rule component begins.
The following example is a valid pmieconf-pmie format file, as
generated by pmieconf. In order to make changes by hand which are
preserved by pmieconf, see the comments contained in the generated
file (below) as to where such changes should be made.
// pmieconf-pmie 1 $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf
// 1 memory.exhausted delta = "4 minutes"
// 1 memory.exhausted enabled = yes
// 1 memory.exhausted pcplog_action = yes
// end
//
// --- START GENERATED SECTION (do not change this section) ---
// generated by pmieconf on: [DATESTAMP]
//
// 1 memory.exhausted
delta = 4 minutes;
some_host (
( avg_sample (swap.pagesout @0..9 ) ) > 0 &&
30 %_sample swap.pagesout >= 5
) -> shell 10 min "$PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmpost Severe demand for real memory" \
" %vpgsout/s@%h";
// --- END GENERATED SECTION (changes below will be preserved) ---
To see how this all works, you can generate this file as follows:
# cat - | pmieconf -f /tmp/pmieconf.out \
-r $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/memory:$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/global
modify memory.exhausted delta "4 minutes"
modify memory.exhausted enabled yes
modify memory.exhausted pcplog_action yes
^D
#
Then verify that the generated file is a valid pmie configuration
file using:
# pmie -C /tmp/pmieconf.out
This parses the file, and then exits after reporting any syntax
errors. Now replace -C with -v (above), and watch pmie do its
work!
A pmieconf-rules specification consists of a number of separate
data objects which together form a complete rule specification
(note that a specification may span multiple files and even
multiple subdirectories). Each object must have an identifier
string and a data type, followed by an (optional) list of
attributes.
The generic specification of a pmieconf-rules object is thus:
type identifier [ attribute = value ]* ;
The set of valid types is: "rule" (rule definition), "string"
(arbitrary, double-quote enclosed string), "double", "integer",
"unsigned", "percent" (real number between 0 and 100), "hostlist"
(space separated list of host names), "instlist" (space separated
list of metric instance names), and the four pmie action types,
namely "print", "shell", "alarm", and "syslog".
Rule names use the ``.'' character to introduce the concept of a
rule group, e.g. "memory.exhausted" associates this rule with the
"memory" group. pmieconf can operate at either the level of rule
groups or individual rules. The group name "global" is reserved
and may not be used with any rule.
Usually when an object is created it is associated with the
current rule. However, if an object's name is preceded by the
reserved group name "global", then that object is visible to all
rules.
The set of valid attributes is: "help" (descriptive text about
this object), "modify" (value is yes/no, flags whether pmieconf
should allow changes), "enabled" (value is yes/no, flags whether
this is on or off - only meaningful for rules and actions),
"display" (yes/no - flags whether pmieconf should show this
object), "default" (value determined by type, and is the default
value for this object), and specific to objects of rule type are
the "version", "predicate", and "enumerate" attributes. "version"
and "predicate" are fairly self explanatory ("predicate" must
equate to a valid pmie rule when expanded), but "enumerate"
requires further discussion.
The "enumerate" clause is useful when you wish to generate
multiple, similar pmie rules from a single predicate. This is
most useful for rule definitions wishing to use the "some_inst"
clause in the pmie language across multiple hosts. For a rule to
use these together, it must be certain that the instance list is
the same on all of the monitored hosts. This is rarely true, so
the "enumerate" attribute allows us to generate multiple rules,
expanded over variables of either type "instlist" or "hostlist".
These variables make up the value for the "enumerate" attribute -
which is a space-separated list of "instlist" or "hostlist"
variable names.
Objects can be incorporated into other object definitions using
the $identifier$ syntax. See the example later for more insight
into how this is useful.
When pmieconf is generating the pmie configuration file, it looks
at each enabled rule with N enabled actions (where N > 0) and
expands the string:
// "version" identifier
delta = $delta$;
"predicate" -> $threshold$ $action1$ & ... & $actionN$ ;
The delta, threshold, and action variables are defined globally
(using the "global" keyword) for all rules, but can, of course, be
changed at the level of an individual rule or rule group.
The following is an example of a single pmieconf-rules
specification, showing a number of different aspects of the
language discussed above. The example defines a rule
("memory.exhausted") and a string ("rule").
rule memory.exhausted
default = "$rule$"
predicate =
"some_host (
( avg_sample (swap.pagesout $hosts$ @0..9 ) ) > 0 &&
$pct$ %_sample swap.pagesout $hosts$ @0..9 >= $threshold$
)"
enabled = yes
version = 1
help =
"The system is swapping modified pages out of main memory to the
swap partitions, and has been doing this on at least pct of the
last 10 evaluations of this rule.
There appears to be insufficient main memory to meet the resident
demands of the current workload.";
string rule
default = "Severe demand for real memory"
modify = no
display = no;
Note that for the above rule to be complete, "threshold" and "pct"
would also need to be defined - for the full expression of this
rule, refer to $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/memory/exhausted.
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/*/*
generalized system resource monitoring rules
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmieconf/config.pmie
default super-user settings for system resource monitoring
rules
$HOME/.pcp/pmie/config.pmie
default user settings for system resource monitoring rules
pmie(1) and pmieconf(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 [email protected]. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
in the repository was 2025-08-11.) 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
[email protected]
Performance Co-Pilot PCP PMIECONF(5)
Pages that refer to this page: pcpintro(1), pmieconf(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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