The performance co-pilot configuration and environment file
/etc/pcp.conf
When using Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) tools and utilities and when calling PCP library functions, a standard set of environment variables are defined in /etc/pcp.conf. These variables are generally used to specify the location of various PCP pieces in the file system and may be loaded into shell scripts by sourcing the /etc/pcp.env(5) shell script and queried by C/C++ programs using the pmGetConfig(3) library function. If a variable is already defined in the environment, the values in pcp.conf do not override those values, i.e. the values in pcp.conf serve as installation defaults only.
Both the pcp.env and pcp.conf files are expected to be found in /etc by default. If required, the pcp.conf file may be relocated and PCP_CONF set in the environment to specify the full path to the new location. The pcp.env file can not be relocated (this is the only hard coded path required by PCP).
The syntax rules for pcp.conf are as follows :
the general syntax is
PCP_VARIABLE_NAME=variable value to end of line
lines that begin with # and all blank lines are ignored.
all variables must be prefixed with PCP_. This is a security issue - variables that do not have this prefix will be silently ignored.
there should be no space between the variable name and the literal = and no space between the = and the variable value (unless the value actually starts with a space). This is required because the pcp.conf file may be sourced directly by Makefiles as well as interpreted by the pcp.env script and the pmGetConfig function.
variable values may contain spaces and should not be quoted. The pcp.env script automatically quotes all variable values from the character immediately following the = through to the end of the line.
For further details and an explanation of the use of each variable, see the comments in the /etc/pcp.conf file itself.
The PCP_CONF environment variable specifies an alternative path to the pcp.conf file.