--- name: "pmlogger_daily" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "pcp" version: "7.2.2-2" release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/pmlogger_daily" --- # pmlogger\_daily(1) administration of Performance Co-Pilot archive files ## NAME **pmlogger\_daily** - administration of Performance Co-Pilot archive files ## SYNOPSIS **$PCP\_BINADM\_DIR/pmlogger\_daily** \[**-DEfKMNnoPpQrRVzZ?**\] \[**-c** *control*\] \[**-d** *fssize*\] \[**-k** *time*\] \[**-l** *logfile*\] \[**-m** *addresses*\] \[**-s** *size*\] \[**-t** *want*\] \[**-x** *time*\] \[**-X** *program*\] \[**-Y** *regex*\] ## DESCRIPTION **pmlogger\_daily** and the related [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md) tools along with associated control files (see [**pmlogger.control**(5)](/pmlogger.control/5.md)) may be used to create a customized regime of administration and management for historical archives of performance data within the Performance Co-Pilot (see [**PCPIntro**(1)](/PCPIntro/1.md)) infrastructure. **pmlogger\_daily** is intended to be run once per day, preferably in the early morning, as soon after midnight as practicable. Its task is to aggregate, rotate and perform general housekeeping one or more sets of PCP archives. To accommodate the evolution of PMDAs and changes in production logging environments, **pmlogger\_daily** is integrated with [**pmlogrewrite**(1)](/pmlogrewrite/1.md) to allow optional and automatic rewriting of archives before merging. If there are global rewriting rules to be applied across all archives mentioned in the control file(s), then create the directory *$PCP\_SYSCONF\_DIR/pmlogrewrite* and place any [**pmlogrewrite**(1)](/pmlogrewrite/1.md) rewriting rules in this directory. For rewriting rules that are specific to only one family of archives, use the directory name from the control file(s) - i.e. the *fourth* field - and create a file, or a directory, or a symbolic link named *pmlogrewrite* within this directory and place the required rewriting rule(s) in the *pmlogrewrite* file or in files within the *pmlogrewrite* subdirectory. **pmlogger\_daily** will choose rewriting rules from the archive directory if they exist, else rewriting rules from *$PCP\_SYSCONF\_DIR/pmlogrewrite* if that directory exists, else no rewriting is attempted. As an alternate mechanism, if the file *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/.NeedRewrite* exists when **pmlogger\_daily** starts then this is treated the same as specifying **-R** on the command line and *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/.NeedRewrite* will be removed once all the rewriting has been done. ## OPTIONS - **-c** *control*, **--control**=*control* Both **pmlogger\_daily** and [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md) are controlled by PCP logger control file(s) that specifies the [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instances to be managed. The default *control* file is *$PCP\_PMLOGGERCONTROL\_PATH*, but an alternate may be specified using the **-c** option. If the directory *$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). - **-D**, **--noreport** Do not perform the conditional [**pmlogger\_daily\_report**(1)](/pmlogger_daily_report/1.md) processing as described below. - **-d** *fssize*, **--disk**=*fssize* This option enforces a maximum total file system space usage per host directory for PCP archive files stored under each *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\* and *$PCP\_REMOTE\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\* location. The *fssize* must be specified as an integer with a suffix **K** or **k** for kilobytes, **M** or **m** for megabytes, **G** or **g** for gigabytes (e.g. 500m or 10G). As a special case, *fssize* may be the keyword **unlimited** to prevent any file system space limit enforcement (this is the default behaviour). Alternatively, the file system space limit may be set by exporting the **$PCP\_SPACELIMIT** environment variable, which is handled analogously to **$PCP\_CULLAFTER**. If both **$PCP\_SPACELIMIT** and **-d** are provided and specify different values then the value from the environment variable is used and a warning is issued. After normal daily log processing (compression, merging, culling by age, etc.) completes, if the total file system space consumed by any [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instance exceeds *fssize*, then additional archive files will be purged (i.e. removed), oldest first, until the file system usage is reduced to be not more than *fssize*. This purging operation never deletes archive files with today's date, and so always preserves the most recent archives required by active [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) processes. Enforcement is only performed when **pmlogger\_daily** runs (typically once a day), not continuously. As a result, the total file system usage for any [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instance may exceed a specified maximum between **pmlogger\_daily** executions (for example, as new archives are created or when archives are uncompressed for merging or prior to asynchronous archive compression). - **-E**, **--expunge** This option causes **pmlogger\_daily** to pass the **-E** flag to [**pmlogger\_merge**(1)](/pmlogger_merge/1.md) in order to expunge metrics with metadata inconsistencies and continue rather than fail. This is intended for automated daily archive rotation where it is highly desirable for unattended daily archive merging, rewriting and compression to succeed. For further details, see [**pmlogger\_merge**(1)](/pmlogger_merge/1.md) and description for the **-x** flag in [**pmlogextract**(1)](/pmlogextract/1.md). - **-f**, **--force** This option forces **pmlogger\_daily** to attempt compression actions. Using this option in production is not recommended. - **-k** *time*, **--discard**=*time* After some period, old PCP archives are discarded. *time* is a time specification in the syntax of [**find-filter**(1)](/find-filter/1.md), so *DD*\[**:***HH*\[**:***MM*\]\]. The optional *HH* (hours) and *MM* (minutes) parts are 0 if not specified. By default the *time* is **14:0:0** or 14 days, but may be changed using this option. Some special values are recognized for the *time*, namely **0** to keep no archives beyond the the ones being currently written by [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md), and **forever** or **never** to prevent any archives being discarded. The *time* can also be set using the **$PCP\_CULLAFTER** variable, set in either the environment or in a control file. If both **$PCP\_CULLAFTER** and **-k** specify different values for *time* then the environment variable value is used and a warning is issued, i.e. if **$PCP\_CULLAFTER** is set in the *control* file, it overrides **-k** given on the command line. Note that the semantics of *time* are that it is measured from the time of last modification of each archive, and not from the original archive creation date. This has subtle implications for compression (see below) - the compression process results in the creation of new archive files which have new modification times. In this case, the *time* period (re)starts from the time of compression. - **-K** When this option is specified for **pmlogger\_daily** then only the compression tasks are attempted, so no **pmlogger** rotation, no culling, no rewriting, etc. When **-K** is used and a *period* of **0** is in effect (from **-x** on the command line or **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** in the environment or via the *control* file) this is intended for environments where compression of archives is desired before the scheduled daily processing happens. To achieve this, once [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md) has completed regular processing, it calls **pmlogger\_daily** with just the **-K** option. Provided **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** is set to **0** along with any other required compression options to match the scheduled invocation of **pmlogger\_daily**, then this will compress all volumes except the ones being currently written by [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md). If **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** is set to a value greater than zero, then manually running **pmlogger\_daily** with the **-x** option may be used to compress volumes that are younger than the **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** time. This may be used to reclaim filesystem space by compressing volumes earlier than they would have otherwise been compressed. Note that since the default value of **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** is 0 days, the **-x** option has no effect unless the *control* file has been edited and **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** has been set to a value greater than **0**. The default value of **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** is **0** if [**zstd**(1)](/zstd/1.md) is installed, or if [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) is installed and the *lzma* library is available (as reported for the **transparent\_decompress** option by [**pmconfig**(1)](/pmconfig/1.md)). Otherwise the default value of **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** is **never**. - **-l** *file*, **--logfile**=*file* In order to ensure that mail is not unintentionally sent when these scripts are run from [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md) or [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md) diagnostics are always sent to log files. By default, this file is *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/pmlogger\_daily.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 log file. The **-l** and **-t** options cannot be used together. - **-m** *addresses*, **--mail**=*addresses* Use of this option causes **pmlogger\_daily** to construct a summary of the \`\`notices'' file entries which were generated in the last 24 hours, and e-mail that summary to the set of space-separated *addresses*. This daily summary is stored in the file *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/NOTICES.daily*, which will be empty when no new \`\`notices'' entries were made in the previous 24 hour period. - **-M** This option may be used to disable archive merging (or renaming) and rewriting (**-M** implies **-r**). This is most useful in cases where the archives are being incrementally copied to a remote repository, e.g. using [**rsync**(1)](/rsync/1.md). Merging, renaming and rewriting all risk an increase in the synchronization load, especially immediately after **pmlogger\_daily** has run, so **-M** may be useful in these cases. - **-N**, **--showme** This option enables a \`\`show me'' mode, where the programs actions are echoed, but not executed, in the style of \`\`make -n''. Using **-N** in conjunction with **-V** maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging. - **-n**, **--noerror** Force the exit status to be 0 other than for catastrophic errors. Useful when called from a [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md) service or timer unit so that the associated unit is not marked as failed in a way that would prevent subsequent execution from [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md). - **-o** By default all possible archives will be merged. This option reinstates the old behaviour in which only yesterday's archives will be considered as merge candidates. In the special case where only a single input archive needs to be merged, [**pmlogmv**(1)](/pmlogmv/1.md) is used to rename the archive, otherwise [**pmlogger\_merge**(1)](/pmlogger_merge/1.md) is used to merge all of the archives for a single host and a single day into a new PCP archive and the individual archives are removed. - **-P**, **--noproxy** By default, in addition to the archives created by local [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instances below the *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\* directories **pmlogger\_daily** will also process the archives that have been \`\`pushed'' from a remote [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) via the local [**pmproxy**(1)](/pmproxy/1.md) and stored below the *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmproxy/\* directories. The **-P** option prevents the processing of the archives from [**pmproxy**(1)](/pmproxy/1.md). - **-p** If this option is specified for **pmlogger\_daily** then the status of the daily processing is polled and if the daily [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) rotation, culling, rewriting, compressing, etc. has not been done in the last 24 hours then it is done now. The intent is to have **pmlogger\_daily** called regularly with the **-p** option (at 30 mins past the hour, every hour in the default [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md) set up) to ensure daily processing happens as soon as possible if it was missed at the regularly scheduled time (which is 00:10 by default), e.g. if the system was down or suspended at that time. With this option **pmlogger\_daily** simply exits if the previous day's processing has already been done. Note that this option is not used on platforms supporting [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md) because the **pmlogger\_daily.timer** service unit specifies a timer setting with **Persistent=true**. The **-K** and **-p** options to **pmlogger\_daily** are mutually exclusive. - **-Q**, **--proxyonly** The inverse of **-P** described above, namely only process the archives that have been \`\`pushed'' from a remote [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) via the local [**pmproxy**(1)](/pmproxy/1.md) and ignore all archives created by local [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instances below the *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\* directories. - **-r**, **--norewrite** This command line option acts as an override and prevents all archive rewriting with [**pmlogrewrite**(1)](/pmlogrewrite/1.md) independent of the presence of any rewriting rule files or directories. - **-R**, **--rewriteall** Sometimes PMDA changes require *all* archives to be rewritten, not just the ones involved in any current merging. This is required for example after a PCP upgrade where a new version of an existing PMDA has revised metadata. The **-R** command line forces this universal-style of rewriting. The **-R** option to **pmlogger\_daily** is mutually exclusive with both the **-r** and **-M** options. - **-s** *size*, **--rotate**=*size* If the PCP \`\`notices'' file (*$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/NOTICES*) is larger than 20480 bytes, **pmlogger\_daily** will rename the file with a \`\`.old'' suffix, and start a new \`\`notices'' file. The rotate threshold may be changed from 20480 to *size* bytes using the **-s** option. - **-t** *period* To assist with debugging or diagnosing intermittent failures the **-t** option may be used. This will turn on very verbose tracing (**-VV**) and capture the trace output in a file named *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/daily.datestamp.trace*, where *datestamp* is the time **pmlogger\_daily** was run in the format YYYYMMDD.HH.MM. In addition, the *period* argument will ensure that trace files created with **-t** will be kept for *period* days and then discarded. - **-V**, **--verbose** The output from the [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md) 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. A second **-V** increases the verbosity. Using **-N** in conjunction with **-V** maximizes the diagnostic capabilities for debugging. - **-x** *time*, **--compress-after**=*time* Archive data files can optionally be compressed after some period to conserve file system space. This is particularly useful for large numbers of [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) processes under the control of **pmlogger\_daily**. *time* is a time specification in the syntax of [**find-filter**(1)](/find-filter/1.md), so *DD*\[**:***HH*\[**:***MM*\]\]. The optional *HH* (hours) and *MM* (minutes) parts are 0 if not specified. Some special values are recognized for the *time*, namely **0** to apply compression as soon as possible, and **forever** or **never** to prevent any compression being done. If **transparent\_decompress** is enabled when *libpcp* was built (can be checked with the [**pmconfig**(1)](/pmconfig/1.md) **-L** option), then the default behaviour is compression \`\`as soon as possible''. Otherwise the default behaviour is to **not** compress files (which matches the historical default behaviour in earlier PCP releases). The *time* can also be set using the **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** variable, set in either the environment or in a *control* file. If both **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** and **-x** specify different values for *time* then the environment variable value is used and a warning is issued. For important other detailed notes concerning volume compression, see the **-K** and **-k** options (above). - **-X** *program*, **--compressor**=*program* This option specifies the program to use for compression - by default this is [**pmlogcompress**(1)](/pmlogcompress/1.md). The environment variable **$PCP\_COMPRESS** may be used as an alternative mechanism to define *program*. If both **$PCP\_COMPRESS** and **-X** specify different compression programs then the environment variable value is used and a warning is issued. - **-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\ "\\.(index\|Z\|gz\|bz2\|zip\|xz\|lzma\|lzo\|lz4\|zst)$"\ \- such files are filtered using the **-v** option to [**egrep**(1)](/egrep/1.md). The environment variable **$PCP\_COMPRESSREGEX** may be used as an alternative mechanism to define *regex*. If both **$PCP\_COMPRESSREGEX** and **-Y** specify different values for *regex* then the environment variable value is used and a warning is issued. - **-z** This option causes **pmlogger\_daily** to **not** \`\`re-exec'', see [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md), when it would otherwise choose to do so and is intended only for QA testing. - **-Z** This option causes **pmlogger\_daily** to \`\`re-exec'', see [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md), whenever that is possible and is intended only for QA testing. - **-?**, **--help** Display usage message and exit. ## CALLBACKS Additionally **pmlogger\_daily** supports the following \`\`hooks'' to allow auxiliary operations to be performed at key points in the daily processing of the archives. These callbacks are controlled via variables that may be set in the environment or via the *control* file. Note that merge callbacks and autosaving described below are **not** enabled when only compression tasks are being attempted, i.e. when **-K** command line option is used. All of the callback script execution and the autosave file moving will be executed as the non-privileged user \`\`pcp'' and group \`\`pcp'', so appropriate permissions may need to have been set up in advance. - **$PCP\_MERGE\_CALLBACK** As each day's archive is created by merging and before any compression takes place, if **$PCP\_MERGE\_CALLBACK** is defined, then it is assumed to be a script that will be called with one argument being the name of the archive (stripped of any suffixes), so something of the form */some/directory/path/YYYYMMDD*. The script needs to be either a full pathname, or something that will be found on the shell's **$PATH .** The callback script will be run in the foreground, so **pmlogger\_daily** will wait for it to complete. If the control file contains more than one **$PCP\_MERGE\_CALLBACK** specification then these will be run serially in the order they appear in the control file. If **$PCP\_MERGE\_CALLBACK** is defined in the environment when **pmlogger\_daily** is run, this is treated as though this option was the first in the control file, i.e. it will be run before any merge callbacks mentioned in the control file. If the *pcp-zeroconf* packages is installed, then a special merge callback is added to call [**pmlogger\_daily\_report**(1)](/pmlogger_daily_report/1.md) first, before any other merge callback options, but **only** for the primary [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) instance. Refer to [**pmlogger\_daily\_report**(1)](/pmlogger_daily_report/1.md) for an explanation of the *pcp-zeroconf* requirements. If **pmlogger\_daily** is in \`\`catch up'' mode (more than one day's worth of archives need to be combined) then each call back is executed once for each day's archive that is generated. A typical use might be to produce daily reports from the PCP archive which needs to wait until the archive has been created, but is more efficient if it is done before any potential compression of the archive. - **$PCP\_COMPRESS\_CALLBACK** If **pmlogger\_daily** is run with **-x** **0** or **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER=0**, then compression is done immediately after merging. As each day's archive is compressed, if **$PCP\_COMPRESS\_CALLBACK** is defined, then it is assumed to be a script that will be called with one argument being the name of the archive (stripped of any suffixes), so something of the form */some/directory/path/YYYYMMDD*. The script needs to be either a full pathname, or something that will be found on the shell's **$PATH .** The callback script will be run in the foreground, so **pmlogger\_daily** will wait for it to complete. If the control file contains more than one **$PCP\_COMPRESS\_CALLBACK** specification then these will be run serially in the order they appear in the control file. If **$PCP\_COMPRESS\_CALLBACK** is defined in the environment when **pmlogger\_daily** is run, this is treated as though this option was the first in the control file, i.e. it will be run first. If **pmlogger\_daily** is in \`\`catch up'' mode (more than one day's worth of archives need to be compressed) then each call back is executed once for each day's archive that is compressed. A typical use might be to keep recent archives in uncompressed form for efficient querying, but move the older archives to some other storage location once the compression has been done. - **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR** Once the merging and possible compression has been done by **pmlogger\_daily**, if **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR** is defined then all of the physical files that make up one day's archive will be moved (autosaved) to the directory specified by **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR.** The basename of the archive is used to set the reserved words **DATEYYYY** (year), **DATEMM** (month) and **DATEDD** (day) and these (along with **LOCALHOSTNAME**) may appear literally in **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR**, and will be substituted at execution time to generate the destination directory name. For example: `$PCP_AUTOSAVE_DIR=/gpfs/LOCALHOSTNAME/DATEYYYY/DATEMM-DATEDD`\ ```Note that these ``date'' reserved words correspond to the date on``` `which the archive data was collected, not the date that` **pmlogger\_daily** `was run.` `If` **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR** `(after` **LOCALHOSTNAME** ```and ``date'' substitution)``` `does not exist then` **pmlogger\_daily** `will attempt to create it (along with any parent directories that` `do not exist).` `Just be aware that this directory creation runs under` ```the uid of the user ``pcp'', so directories along the path``` `to` **$PCP\_AUTOSAVE\_DIR** `may need to be writeable by this non-root user.` ```By ``move'' the archives we mean a paranoid checksum-copy-checksum-remove``` `(using the` **-c** `option for` [**pmlogmv**(1)](/pmlogmv/1.md)) `that will bail if the copy fails or the checksums do not match` `(the archives are important so we cannot risk something like a` `full filesystem or a permissions issue messing with the copy process).` `If` **pmlogger\_daily** ```is in ``catch up'' mode (more than one day's worth of archives``` `need to be combined) then the archives for more than one day could` `be copied in this step.` `A typical use might be to create PCP archives on a local` `filesystem initially, then once all the data for a single` `day has been collected and merged, migrate that day's archive` `to a shared filesystem or a remote filesystem.` `This may allow automatic backup to off-site storage and/or` `reduce the number of I/O operations and filesystem metadata` `operations on the (potentially slower) non-local filesystem.` ## CONFIGURATION `Refer to` [**pmlogger.control**(5)](/pmlogger.control/5.md) `for a description of the contol file(s) that are used to` `control which` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `instances and which archives are managed by` [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md) `and` **pmlogger\_daily**. `Additionally, when` [**pmproxy**(1)](/pmproxy/1.md) `archives are being processed, environment variables like` **$PCP\_CULLAFTER** `or` **$PCP\_COMPRESSAFTER** `can be set either for all remote hosts via the file` *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmproxy/control* `and/or per-host via files named` *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmproxy/\/control*. ## FILES - *$PCP\_VAR\_DIR/config/pmlogger/config.default* `default` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `configuration file location for the local primary logger, typically` `generated automatically by` [**pmlogconf**(1)](/pmlogconf/1.md). - *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\* `default location for archives of performance information collected from the host` *hostname* - *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\/lock* `transient lock file to guarantee mutual exclusion during` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `administration for the host` *hostname* `- if present, can be safely removed if neither` **pmlogger\_daily** `nor` [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md) `are running` - *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\/Latest* `PCP archive folio created by` [**mkaf**(1)](/mkaf/1.md) `for the most recently launched archive containing performance metrics from` `the host` *hostname* - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/NOTICES* ```PCP ``notices'' file used by``` [**pmie**(1)](/pmie/1.md) `and friends` - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/pmlogger\_daily.log* `if the previous execution of` **pmlogger\_daily** `produced any output it is saved here.` `The normal case is no output in which case the file does not exist.` - *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/SaveLogs* `if this directory exists,` `then the log file from the` **-l** `argument for` **pmlogger\_daily** `will be saved in this directory with the name of the format` `-`**pmlogger\_daily**`.`**log**`. or` `-`**pmlogger\_daily-K**`.`**log**`.` `This allows the log file to be inspected at a later time, even if` `several` **pmlogger\_daily** `executions have been launched in the interim.` `Because the PCP archive management tools run under` ```the $PCP_USER account ``pcp'',``` *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/SaveLogs* ```typically needs to be owned by the user ``pcp''.``` - *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\/SaveLogs* `if this directory exists,` `then the log file from the` **-l** `argument` `of a newly launched` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `for` *hostname* `will be saved in this directory with the name` *archive***.log** `where` *archive* `is the basename of the associated` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `PCP archive files.` `This allows the log file to be inspected at a later time, even if` `several` [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md) `instances for` *hostname* `have been launched in the interim.` `Because the PCP archive management tools run under` ```the uid of the user ``pcp'',``` *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR/\/SaveLogs* ```typically needs to be owned by the user ``pcp''.``` - *$PCP\_LOG\_DIR/pmlogger/.NeedRewrite* `if this file exists, then this is treated as equivalent to using` **-R** `on the command line and the file will be removed once all rewriting` `has been done.` ## PCP ENVIRONMENT - **$PCP\_SPACELIMIT** `If set, specifies a maximum allowed total file system space (in kilobytes, or with optional K/M/G suffix as for the -d option) for each per-host archive directory under` *$PCP\_ARCHIVE\_DIR* `or` *$PCP\_REMOTE\_ARCHIVE\_DIR .* `This value is used by` **pmlogger\_daily** `when enforcing archive retention limits for file system space, unless the` **-d** `option is provided in which case the command line flag overrides the environment variable and a warning is issued. Enforcement occurs after each run of` **pmlogger\_daily** `and only applies at that time—not continuously.` `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).` ## COMPATIBILITY ISSUES `Earlier versions of` **pmlogger\_daily** `used` [**find**(1)](/find/1.md) `to locate files for compressing or culling and the` **-k** `and` **-x** ```options took only integer values to mean ``days''.``` `The semantics of this was quite loose given that` [**find**(1)](/find/1.md) `offers different precision and semantics across platforms.` `The current implementation of` **pmlogger\_daily** `uses` [**find-filter**(1)](/find-filter/1.md) `which provides high precision intervals and semantics that are` `relative to the time of execution and are consistent across` `platforms.` ## SEE ALSO [**PCPIntro**(1)](/PCPIntro/1.md), [**egrep**(1)](/egrep/1.md), [**find-filter**(1)](/find-filter/1.md), [**pmconfig**(1)](/pmconfig/1.md), [**pmlc**(1)](/pmlc/1.md), [**pmlogcompress**(1)](/pmlogcompress/1.md), [**pmlogconf**(1)](/pmlogconf/1.md), [**pmlogctl**(1)](/pmlogctl/1.md), [**pmlogextract**(1)](/pmlogextract/1.md), [**pmlogger**(1)](/pmlogger/1.md), [**pmlogger\_check**(1)](/pmlogger_check/1.md), [**pmlogger\_daily\_report**(1)](/pmlogger_daily_report/1.md), [**pmlogger\_merge**(1)](/pmlogger_merge/1.md), [**pmlogmv**(1)](/pmlogmv/1.md), [**pmlogrewrite**(1)](/pmlogrewrite/1.md), [**pmproxy**(1)](/pmproxy/1.md), [**systemd**(1)](/systemd/1.md), [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md), [**zstd**(1)](/zstd/1.md), [**pmlogger.control**(5)](/pmlogger.control/5.md) `and` [**cron**(8)](/cron/8.md).