pmsnap(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMSNAP(1)                General Commands Manual               PMSNAP(1)

NAME         top

       pmsnap - generate performance summary snapshot images

SYNOPSIS         top

       $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmsnap [-NV?]  [-c configs] [-C dir] [-f format]
       [-n names] [-o dir]

DESCRIPTION         top

       pmsnap is a shell script that is normally run periodically from
       crontab(1) to generate graphic images of pmchart(1) performance
       charts.  These images can be in any of the supported pmchart
       formats, including png, bmp, and jpeg, and may be incorporated
       into the content offered by the local web server.  By default
       pmsnap generates no textual output unless some error or warning
       condition is encountered.

       pmsnap generates images according to its control file,
       $PCP_PMSNAPCONTROL_PATH (or dir/control if the -C option is
       specified), and uses archives created by pmlogger(1) or PCP
       archive folios created by pmafm(1) and pmlogger_check(1).  Before
       attempting to configure pmsnap, it is strongly recommended that
       pmlogger be configured according to the descriptions in
       pmlogger_daily(1), pmlogger_check(1) and pmlogger(1).

       Once pmlogger has been configured, it is necessary to configure
       pmsnap as follows;

       1.     Edit the control file $PCP_PMSNAPCONTROL_PATH.  The syntax
              of this file is described in the comment at the head of
              the file and an example is supplied for one and twelve
              hour "Summary" performance charts for the local host.
              Suitable arguments for pmchart are also described in the
              comment.  The user should consult pmchart for further
              details.  Note that when pmsnap is run, it globally
              substitutes the string LOCALHOSTNAME with the name of the
              local host in the control file.

       2.     Test the configuration by running
                               $PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmsnap.
              Without any arguments pmsnap will process every non-
              comment line in $PCP_PMSNAPCONTROL_PATH.  The output
              images will be placed in the files named in the first
              field of each line in the control file, with the file
              format appended if necessary.  If these file names do not
              start with / or .  then they are assumed relative to dir,
              as specified with the -o option.  The default dir is the
              current directory.  Note that if pmlogger has only been
              recently started (within about the last 15 minutes),
              snapshot images may not be produced and no error messages
              will be issued - the reason is that pmchart can not use
              very short archives and hence, neither can pmsnap.  For
              debugging purposes the -V flag should be used.

       3.     Add an appropriate entry for pmsnap in the root user's
              crontab.  An example is supplied in
              $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/crontab.

       4.     Incorporate the pmsnap images into the local WWW content.
              Usually, WWW pages use images that are relative to a
              particular document root, so it is often convenient to use
              the -o command line option to specify a sub-directory of
              the local WWW content, and then create a web page in this
              directory that shows the snapshot images with text and
              other content appropriate to the local environment.

       A sample HTML page, suitable for the Summary snapshot may be
       found in $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmsnap/Summary.html.

       Although pmsnap attempts to flush stdio(3) output buffers in the
       relevant pmlogger processes before generating snapshots images,
       this may fail for assorted reasons and no error message will be
       given.

       pmsnap should not be invoked immediately after pmlogger_daily has
       rolled the logs because the new archives will be too short to
       obtain meaningful results.  Note however that pmsnap will not
       report errors from pmchart about not being able to comply with
       the -A option on very short archives.  In these cases no error
       will be reported and no output images will be produced.

OPTIONS         top

       The available command line options are:

       -c config-pattern
            Only process lines in the control file which match the
            config-pattern regular expression in the Config column.

       -C dir
            The control file is located in the directory dir rather than
            in the default $PCP_PMSNAPCONTROL_PATH location.

       -f format
            Set output image format.  The defaults format is png.

       -n name-pattern
            Only process lines in the control file which match the name-
            pattern regular expression (see egrep(1)) in the Name
            column.

       -N   Enable a ``show me'' mode, where the actions are echoed, but
            not executed, in the style of ``make -n''.  Using -N in
            conjunction with -V maximizes the diagnostic capabilities
            for debugging.

       -o dir
            The output images having file names which do not start with
            / or .  will be placed in a directory relative to dir,
            otherwise the output directory is relative to the current
            directory (i.e. the default value for dir is ./).  Note that
            dir must be a writable directory path and may be on an NFS
            or CIFS file system.

       -V   Enable verbose mode.

       -?   Display usage message and exit.

       When either -n or -c are used, pmsnap will only process lines in
       the control file which match all the supplied patterns.  If no
       patterns are given, then all lines will be processed.  These
       arguments allow multiple entries for pmsnap in crontab so that
       different performance summary images can be generated at
       different times or with different frequencies.

FILES         top

       $PCP_PMSNAPCONTROL_PATH
            pmsnap control file

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmsnap/Summary
            summary view for pmchart

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmsnap/Summary.html
            sample HTML page for summary snapshot

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmlogger/<hostname>/Latest
            PCP archive folio for the host hostname, as generated by
            pmlogger_check

       $PCP_VAR_DIR/config/pmlogger/crontab
            example crontab entry

SEE ALSO         top

       cron(1), crontab(1), egrep(1), pmafm(1), pmchart(1), pmlc(1),
       pmlogger(1) and pmlogger_daily(1).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, send it to pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2024-06-14.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot                                           PMSNAP(1)