--- name: "pmie_check" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "pcp" version: "7.2.2-2" release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/pmie_check" --- # pmie\_check(1) administration of the Performance Co-Pilot inference engine ## NAME **pmie\_check**, **pmie\_daily** - administration of the Performance Co-Pilot inference engine ## SYNOPSIS **$PCP\_BINADM\_DIR/pmie\_check** \[**-CNPpsTV?**\] \[**-c** *control*\] \[**-l** *logfile*\]\ **$PCP\_BINADM\_DIR/pmie\_daily** \[**-NV?**\] \[**-c** *control*\] \[**-k** *discard*\] \[**-l** *logfile*\] \[**-m** *addresses*\] \[**-x** *compress*\] \[**-X** *program*\] \[**-Y** *regex*\] ## DESCRIPTION This series of shell scripts and associated control files may be used to create a customized regime of administration and management for the Performance Co-Pilot (see [**PCPIntro**(1)](/PCPIntro/1.md)) inference engine, [**pmie**(1)](/pmie/1.md). **pmie\_check** may be run at any time of the day and verifies that a desired set of **pmie** processes is running. If not, it (re-)starts any missing inference engine processes. **pmie\_daily** is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to rotate the log files for the running **pmie** processes - these files may grow without bound if the \`\`print'' action is used, or any other **pmie** action writes to its stdout/stderr streams. After some period, old **pmie** log files are discarded. ## OPTIONS The available command line options are: - **-c** *control*, **--control**=*control* Both **pmie\_check** and **pmie\_daily** are controlled by PCP inference engine control file(s) that specify the **pmie** instances to be managed. The default *control* file is **$PCP\_PMIECONTROL\_PATH** but an alternate may be specified using the **-c** option. If the directory **$PCP\_PMLOGGERCONTROL\_PATH**.d (or *control*.d from the **-c** option) exists, then the contents of any additional *control* files therein will be appended to the main control file (which must exist). - **-C** This option causes **pmie\_check** to query the system service runlevel information for **pmie**, and use that to determine whether to start processes or not. - **-k** *period*, **--discard**=*period* The log retention *period* is 14 days by default, but this may be changed using this option. Two special values are recognized for the discard *period*, namely **0** to keep no log files beyond the current one, and **forever** to prevent any log files being discarded. - **-l** *file*, **--logfile**=*file* In order to ensure that mail is not unintentionally sent when these scripts are run from [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md) diagnostics are always sent to log files. By default, these files are **$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/pmie\_daily.log** and **$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/pmie\_check.log** but this can be changed using the **-l** option. If this log *file* already exists when the script starts, it will be renamed with a *.prev* suffix (overwriting any log file saved earlier) before diagnostics are generated to the new log file. - **-m** *addresses*, **--mail**=*addresses* Use of this option causes **pmie\_daily** to construct a summary of the log files generated for all monitored hosts in the last 24 hours (lines matching \`\` OK '' are culled), and e-mail that summary to the set of space-separated *addresses*. - **-N**, **--showme** This option enables a \`\`show me'' mode, where the programs actions are echoed, but not executed, in the style of \`\`make -n''. Using **-N** in conjunction with **-V** maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging. - **-s**, **--stop** Use of this option provides the reverse **pmie\_check** functionality, allowing the set of **pmie** processes to be cleanly shutdown. - **-p**, **--skip-primary** If this option is specified for **pmie\_check** then any line from the control files for the *primary* **pmie** will be ignored. This option is intended for environments where some system daemon, like [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md), is responsible for controlling (starting, stopping, restarting, etc.) the *primary* **pmie**. - **-P**, **--only-primary** If this option is specified for **pmie\_check** then only the primary pmie entry in the control files will be processed. This is the logical opposite of the **-p** option described above and is intended for use by RC scripts that start only the primary pmie, such as the **pmie.service** unit. The **-p** and **-P** options to **pmie\_check** are mutually exclusive. - **-T**, **--terse** This option to **pmie\_check** produces less verbose output than the default. This is most suitable for a *pmie* \`\`farm'' where many instances of *pmie* are expected to be running. - **-V**, **--verbose** The output from the **cron** execution of the scripts may be extended using the **-V** option to the scripts which will enable verbose tracing of their activity. By default the scripts generate no output unless some error or warning condition is encountered. Using **-N** in conjunction with **-V** maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging. - **-x** *period*, **--compress-after**=*period* Log files can optionally be compressed after some *period* to conserve disk space. This is particularly useful for large numbers of **pmie** processes under the control of **pmie\_check**. The **-x** option specifies the number of days after which to compress archive data files. - **-X** *program*, **--compressor**=*program* This option specifies the program to use for compression - by default this is [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md). - **-Y** *regex*, **--regex**=*regex* This option allows a regular expression to be specified causing files in the set of files matched for compression to be omitted - this allows only the data file to be compressed, and also prevents the program from attempting to compress it more than once. The default *regex* is\ "\\.(meta\|index\|Z\|gz\|bz2\|zip\|xz\|lzma\|lzo\|lz4\|zst)$"\ \- such files are filtered using the **-v** option to [**egrep**(1)](/egrep/1.md). - **-?**, **--help** Display usage message and exit. ## CONFIGURATION **Warning**: The **$PCP\_PMIECONTROL\_PATH** and **$PCP\_PMIECONTROL\_PATH**.d files must not be writable by any user other than root. The control file(s) should be customized according to the following rules that define for the current version (1.1) of the control file format. - 1\. Lines beginning with a \`\`#'' are comments. - 2\. Lines beginning with a \`\`$'' are assumed to be assignments to environment variables in the style of [**sh**(1)](/sh/1.md), and all text following the \`\`$'' will be **eval**'ed by the script reading the control file, and the corresponding variable exported into the environment. This is particularly useful to set and export variables into the environment of the administrative script, e.g.\ ``` $ PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=20 ``` - 3\. There **must** be a version line in the initial control file of the form:\ ``` $ version=1.1 ``` - 4\. There should be one line in the control file(s) for each **pmie** instance of the form: ``` host y|n y|n logfile args ``` - 5\. Fields within a line of the control file(s) are separated by one or more spaces or tabs. - 6\. The *first* field is the name of the host that is the default source of the performance metrics for this **pmie** instance. - 7\. The *second* field indicates if this is a *primary* **pmie** instance (**y**) or not (**n**). Since the primary inference engine must run on the local host, and there may be at most one primary for a particular host, this field can be **y** for at most one **pmie** instance, in which case the host name must be the name of the local host. When generating **pmie** configuration files, the primary clause indicates that [**pmieconf**(1)](/pmieconf/1.md) should enable all rules in the primary group, in addition to all other default rules. - 8\. The *third* field indicates whether this **pmie** instance needs to be started under the control of [**pmsocks**(1)](/pmsocks/1.md) to connect to a **pmcd** through a firewall (**y** or **n**). - 9\. The *fourth* field is the name of the **pmie** activity log file. A useful convention is that **pmie** instances monitoring the local host with hostname *myhost* are maintained in the directory **$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/***myhost,* while activity logs for the remote host *mumble* are maintained in **$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/***mumble.* This is consistent with the way [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) maintains its activity logs and archive files. - 10\. All other fields are interpreted as arguments to be passed to [**pmie**(1)](/pmie/1.md). Most typically this would be the **-c** option. The following sample control lines specify one **pmie** instance monitoring the local host (*wobbly*), and another monitoring performance metrics from the host *splat*. ``` wobbly n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/wobbly -c config.default splat n PCP_LOG_DIR/pmie/splat -c splat/cpu.conf ``` Typical [**crontab**(5)](/crontab/5.md) entries for periodic execution of **pmie\_daily** and **pmie\_check** are given in **$PCP\_SYSCONF\_DIR/pmie/crontab** (unless installed by default in */etc/cron.d* already) and shown below. ``` # daily processing of pmie logs 08 0 * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_daily # every 30 minutes, check pmie instances are running 28,58 * * * * $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check ``` When using [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md) on Linux, no **crontab** entries are needed as the timer mechanism provided by **systemd** is used instead. The [**pmiectl**(1)](/pmiectl/1.md) utility may invoke **pmie\_check** using the **sudo**(1) command to run it under the $PCP\_USER \`\`pcp'' account. If **sudo** is configured with the non-default *requiretty* option (see below), **pmie\_check** may fail to run due to not having a tty configured. This issue can be resolved by adding a second line (expand $PCP\_BINADM\_DIR according to your platform) to the */etc/sudoers* configuration file as follows: ``` Defaults requiretty Defaults!$PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmie_check !requiretty ``` Note that the unprivileged PCP account under which these commands run uses */sbin/nologin* as the shell, so the *requiretty* option is ineffective here and safe to disable in this way. ## FILES - *$PCP\_PMIECONTROL\_PATH* the default PCP inference engine control file\ **Warning**: this file must not be writable by any user other than root. - *$PCP\_PMIECONTROL\_PATH.d* optional directory containing additional PCP inference engine control files, typically one per host\ **Warning**: this files herein must not be writable by any user other than root. - *$PCP\_SYSCONF\_DIR/pmie/crontab* sample crontab for automated script execution by $PCP\_USER (or root) - exists only if the platform does not support the */etc/cron.d* mechanism. - *$PCP\_VAR\_DIR/config/pmie/config.default* default **pmie** configuration file location for a localhost inference engine, typically generated automatically by [**pmieconf**(1)](/pmieconf/1.md). - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/pmie\_check.log* default location for the **pmie\_check** log file. When run as a daemon service, if the **pmie** process failed to start or exited early, there may be error messages in this file, particularly if the daemon could not open it's own log file. - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/pmie\_daily.log* default location for error messages generated during the daily **pmie** service maintenance operations. - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/\* default directory location for the pmie log file for the host *hostname* - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmie/\/lock* transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during **pmie** administration for the host *hostname* - if present, can be safely removed if neither **pmie\_daily** nor **pmie\_check** are running - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/NOTICES* PCP \`\`notices'' file used by [**pmie**(1)](/pmie/1.md) and friends ## PCP ENVIRONMENT Environment variables with the prefix **PCP\_** are used to parameterize the file and directory names used by PCP. On each installation, the file */etc/pcp.conf* contains the local values for these variables. The **$PCP\_CONF** variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration file, as described in [**pcp.conf**(5)](/pcp.conf/5.md). ## SEE ALSO [**egrep**(1)](/egrep/1.md), [**PCPIntro**(1)](/PCPIntro/1.md), [**pmie**(1)](/pmie/1.md), [**pmieconf**(1)](/pmieconf/1.md), [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md), [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) and [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md).