pmtrace - Man Page

pmtrace [-q?] [-c value | -e command | -v value] [-h host] [-S state] tag

pmtrace provides a simple command line interface to the trace Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) and the associated pcp_trace library.

The default pmtrace behavior is to provide point trace data to the trace PMDA, using the tag argument as the identifying name associated with each trace point. The tag then becomes an instance identifier within the set of trace.point metrics.

The available command line options are:

-c value

Allow an arbitrary counter value to be exported through the trace.count metrics.

-e command

Allow an arbitrary command to be executed. This command will be measured as a transaction since it has well defined start and end points. The information is made available through the trace.transact metrics.

-h host

Sent the trace data to the trace PMDA running on host, rather than the localhost. This overrides use of the environment variable PCP_TRACE_HOST.

-q

Suppress messages from a successful trace, so that pmtrace runs quietly.

-S state

Enable internal debugging and tracing. The value of state is a bit-wise combination of debug flags as defined in pmtracestate(3), and may be specified using the decimal or hexadecimal syntax prescribed by strtol(3).

-v value

Allow an arbitrary floating point value to be exported through the trace.observe metrics.

-?

Display usage message and exit.

All are generated on standard error and are intended to be self-explanatory.

The pmtrace exit status is always zero except when the -e option is in use, in which case the exit status of command is returned.

$PCP_DEMOS_DIR/trace/pmtrace.c

source code for pmtrace

Since pmtrace uses the libpcp_trace library routines, the environment variables PCP_TRACE_HOST, PCP_TRACE_PORT, and PCP_TRACE_TIMEOUT are all honored. Refer to pmdatrace(3) for a detailed description of the semantics of each.

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).

pmcd(1), pmdatrace(1), pmprobe(1), PMAPI(3) and pmdatrace(3).

pmdatrace(1), pmtrace(3).