libirixpmda(5)

libirixpmda - performance metrics domain agent for IRIX

As shipped in IRIX 6.5.22. Last changed in IRIX 6.5.19.

NAME
     libirixpmda - performance metrics domain agent for IRIX

DESCRIPTION
     libirixpmda is a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) for the
     Performance Co-Pilot (see PCPIntro(1)) which uses system calls to obtain
     performance metrics from the IRIX kernel.  libirixpmda is loaded by
     pmcd(1) as a Dynamically Shared Object (DSO) when pmcd(1) is started.

     libirixpmda exports metrics from many kernel subsystems, including:

     disk          Disks and disk controllers

     filesys       Filesystem usage

     hinv          System configuration

     hub           Origin hub error counts

     hw            R10K and Origin router hardware counters

     ipc           Inter-process communication protocols

     kaio          Kernel asynchronous I/O

     kernel        CPU and system call activity

     mem           Physical and virtual memory usage

     network       Network interface utilization

     nfs           NFS utilization

     node          Origin node memory usage

     numa          Origin page migration activity

     resource      Kernel resources

     rpc           RPC client/server activity

     swap          Memory swap activity

     xbow          Origin xbow I/O throughput

     xfs           XFS file system activity

     xlv           XLV volume activity

     udf           UDF file system activity

     The entire list of metrics exported by libirixpmda can be obtained with
     the pminfo(1) command:

               > pminfo irix hinv hw

     All metrics collected by libirixpmda have a help text entry that can be
     displayed with:

               > pminfo -T irix.kernel.all.cpu.user

     The set of metrics that are available will vary between each IRIX release
     and hardware platform.

ENABLING OF STATISTICS COLLECTION
     Several kernel subsystems (or clusters of metrics) must have their
     statistics gathering explicitly enabled. In the cases where the
     collection process is expensive, we require that the user manually enable
     the collection process, in other cases libirixpmda will automatically
     enable it.

     Manually enabled metrics include the R10k event counters (hw.r10kevctr)
     and the Crossbow metrics (irix.xbow).  The automatically enabled metrics
     include the xlv metrics (irix.xlv).  To activate the system-level
     processor event counters (hw.r10kevctr) you must run ecadmin(1) as root,
     e.g.

          ecadmin -a

     would enable all of the processor event counters.  To activate the
     Crossbow metrics (irix.xbow) see the section below on storing to
     irix.xbow.switch.

     The xlv metrics are enabled at startup if the xlv statistics gathering is
     found to have been turned off. The xlv statistics can be manually turned
     off via

          xlv_mgr -Rxc "change stat off"

     and manually turned on via

          xlv_mgr -Rxc "change stat on"

     If the statistics are manually turned off then when libirixpmda next
     detects this, it will write out a warning message to the log,
     /var/adm/pcplog/pmcd.log.  If the statistics are subsequently turned back
     on, then this fact will also be logged when libirixpmda next detects it.
     Note, however, libirixpmda will only ever turn on the xlv statistics at
     startup or whenever libirixpmda is reset.

STORABLE METRICS
     Several metrics may be altered using the pmstore(1) command to change the
     behavior of libirixpmda.  These metrics are:

     irix.pmda.reset
         Reset the entire libirixpmda causing every cluster to reinitialize
         and probe the system configuration from scratch.  If the system
         configuration has changed in a way that libirixpmda cannot easily
         detect and/or handle, such as adding or removing disks with scsiha(1)
         or scsiadminswap(1), a value should be stored into this metric:

               > pmstore irix.pmda.reset 1

     irix.pmda.debug
         By default, only error messages are dumped by libirixpmda to the
         pmcd(1) log file.  Additional output can be generated by storing any
         combination of these flags into irix.pmda.debug:

         1      General

         2      Instance domains

         4      CPU metrics

         8      Disk metrics

         16     Node metrics

         32     Fetch from pmcd(1)

         64     High precision counters

         128    Xbow metrics

         256    XLV volumes

         512    Mounted EFS, XFS and UDF file systems

         1024   Network interfaces

         2048   Memory Audit

     irix.xbow.switch
         By default, the irix.xbow metrics are turned off as they can affect
         the performance of the XBow hardware on Origin systems.  To turn all
         XBow metrics on, run the command:

               > pmstore irix.xbow.switch 1

         while storing 0 will turn all Xbow monitoring off.  Individual XBows
         can turned on and off by specifying the XBow instances.  For example,
         to monitor only the first two XBows on an Origin system, you may do
         these commands:

               > pmstore irix.xbow.switch 0
               > pmstore -i"xbow0,xbow1" irix.xbow.switch 1

         Every time a Xbow is stopped or started, the irix.xbow.gen generation
         number will increment.  This can be used by specialized clients
         receiving these metrics to detect the re-initialization of the XBow
         counters so that bogus values are not used.

         XBows may also be monitored by xbstat(1).  Only one of xbstat(1) and
         libirixpmda may monitor the same XBow at the same time.

FILES
     /usr/pcp/lib/mips_ABI.libirixpmda.so
          The location of libirixpmda where ABI may be either o32, n32 or 64
          depending on the running kernel.

     /var/pcp/pmdas/irix
          The location of the libirixpmda help text.

     /var/pcp/pmns/root_irix
          the Performance Metrics Namespace (PMNS) for libirixpmda.

     /var/adm/pcplog/pmcd.log
          The default location of the pmcd(1) log file.

SEE ALSO
     PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pminfo(1), pmstore(1), scsiadminswap(1), scsiha(1)
     and xbstat(1).

DIAGNOSTICS
     All diagnostics are reported in the pmcd(1) log file,
     /var/adm/pcplog/pmcd.log.  The verbosity of output may be controlled by
     storing appropriate flags into irix.pmda.debug.