Run a command or summarize an installation
pcp [pcp options...] pcp-command [command options...]
pcp [-P] [-a archive] [-h host] [-n pmnsfile]
The pcp command is used in one of two modes. By default, it summarizes the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) installation on the local host. This mode can also be used to summarize the installation from a remote host, or a historical installation from a PCP archive.
Alternatively, a command can be passed to pcp to run, again possibly in the context of a remote host or historical archive.
When pcp is invoked with a command to run, it will search for the named command in $PCP_BINADM_DIR and also $HOME/.pcp/bin (these are usually scripts, and are installed with a "pcp-" prefix). This mode of operation allows system performance tools to be implemented using PMAPI(3) services, while still preserving all of their usual command line options. These options are thus (indirectly) augmented with the standard PCP option set, as described in PCPIntro(1).
This provides a convenient mechanism for obtaining retrospective or remote monitoring capabilities while preserving the behaviour of the system tools.
For example, the pcp-free(1) utility can be invoked as follows, for recorded data from host munch:
$ pcp -a $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/munch/20140317 -O 11:35:50am free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 23960 14554 9406 0 176 2137
-/+ buffers/cache: 12240 11720
Swap 12047 0 12047
A complete list of the available and installed tools is provided along with the pcp(1) usage message, but some examples include: pcp-free(1), pcp-uptime(1) and pcp-numastat(1).
The summary report includes: the OS version, a summary of the hardware inventory, the local timezone, the PCP software version, the state of the pmcd(1) process and associated Performance Metrics Domain Agents (PMDAs), as well as information about any PCP archive loggers ( .BR pmlogger (1)) and PCP inference engines ( .BR pmie (1)) that are running.
With no arguments, pcp reports on the local host, however the following options are accepted:
Report the PCP configuration as described in the PCP archive log archive.
Report the PCP configuration on host rather than the local host.
Load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (pmns(5)) from the file pmnsfile.
Display pmie performance information - counts of rules evaluating to true, false, or indeterminate, as well as the expected rate of rule calculation, for each pmie process running on the default host. Refer to the individual metric help text for full details on these values.
All of the displayed values are performance metric values and further information for each can be obtained using the command:
$ pminfo -dtT metric
The complete set of metrics required by pcp to produce its output is contained in $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogconf/tools/pcp-summary.
$HOME/.pcp/bin
Per-user location for command scripts.
$PCP_BINADM_DIR
System location for installed command scripts.
$PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogconf/tools/pcp-summary
pmlogconf(1) configuration file for collecting all of the metrics required by pcp.
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).
pcp will terminate with an exit status of 1 if pmcd on the target host could not be reached or the archive could not be opened, or 2 for any other error.