pmdanetcheck(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION | INSTALLATION | FILES | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMDANETCHECK(1)          General Commands Manual         PMDANETCHECK(1)

NAME         top

       pmdanetcheck - netcheck PMDA

DESCRIPTION         top

       pmdanetcheck is a Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) Performance Metrics
       Domain Agent (PMDA) which does basic network checks on the local
       host by using simple Python modules and, in some cases, external
       utilities such as ping(1).

       pmdanetcheck loads and acts as a bridge for any number of
       configured, separate PCP netcheck PMDA Python modules running
       Python code or external programs.  Existing Python modules and
       programs should be possible to be utilized with PCP netcheck PMDA
       modules with minimal effort.

       Note that on SELinux enabled systems for pmdanetcheck to be able
       to use the ping(1) command the pcp group must be able to create
       ICMP Echo sockets; please make sure the group id for pcp is
       included in the range at /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ping_group_range and
       refer to icmp(7) for more details on this.

CONFIGURATION         top

       pmdanetcheck reads a mandatory ini-style configuration file:

              $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck/netcheck.conf

       This file must contain a [pmda] section.  The following PMDA
       options are available (their default values are shown in
       parenthesis), options marked with asterisk (*) can be overridden
       in module-specific configuration sections:

       modules (unset)
              The pmdanetcheck PMDA reads module-specific configuration
              for each module listed in the comma-separated list of
              modules (mandatory).

       hosts (DGW,DNS) *
              A comma-separated list of hosts (optional) specifies the
              hosts to run the checks for.  The special values DGW, DNS,
              NTP will be translated to the default gateway, nameservers
              listed in /etc/resolv.conf, and timeservers listed in
              /etc/chrony.conf, respectively, on PMDA startup.

       background_check (True) *
              A boolean value for background_check (optional) controls
              whether to run checks constantly in the background or only
              on demand.  Refer to the default configuration file for
              more discussion about this.

       check_hosts_parallel (True) *
              check_hosts_parallel (optional) controls whether modules
              should check hosts one by one or in parallel.

       check_interval (1m) *
              check_interval (optional) specifies the time interval
              between two consecutive checks for hosts when checks are
              done in the background.  Refer to PCPIntro(1) for a
              complete description of the syntax for the time interval.

       align_interval (True) *
              align_interval (optional) specifies whether to take the
              previous check duration into account when pausing between
              checks.

       module_failure_fatal (True)
              A boolean value for module_failure_fatal (optional)
              controls whether a module failing to initialize should
              cause the whole PMDA to abort (this is the default) or to
              start up with possibly remaining functional modules.
              Module configuration errors and internal errors (such as
              failing to register the provided PMNS metrics, see
              pmns(5)) will always cause the PMDA to fail to start.

       For each module listed in modules a corresponding [module]
       section must be defined.  Each [module] section can contain at
       least the following options (their default values are shown in
       parenthesis):

       timeout (1)
              Force a hard timeout (optional) for each individual
              network check operation.

       debug (False)
              Enable logging of internal debug messages (rarely used).

       The module-specific options modules accept are described in the
       default configuration file.

       Modules expect basic network functionality to be present on the
       system, for example the localhost address being reachable.

INSTALLATION         top

       To install, the following must be done as root:

           # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck
           # ./Install

       To uninstall, the following must be done as root:

           # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck
           # ./Remove

       pmdanetcheck is launched by pmcd(1) and should never be executed
       directly.  The Install and Remove scripts notify pmcd(1) when the
       agent is installed or removed.

       In case module_failure_fatal is set to False, the PMDA
       installation will be considered successful if some (but not all)
       configured modules fail to load, in such cases metrics provided
       by the failing modules will not be available.  The pmdanetcheck
       agent log file (see below) will contain detailed information
       about activation of each module.

       Modules will provide real values only after having collected
       data.  For example, for the ping module the metric value is the
       exit value of the ping(1) command and for ping_latency the
       average packet latency as reported by ping(1).  For metrics
       indicating status, 0 denotes success.  In case a check has not
       finished yet its metric value is -1.  If a check was terminated
       during execution due to timeout the value is -2.

FILES         top

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck/netcheck.conf
            configuration file for the pmdanetcheck agent

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck/netcheck/*.{py,python}
            PCP netcheck PMDA Python modules for the pmdanetcheck agent

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck/Install
            installation script for the pmdanetcheck agent

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/netcheck/Remove
            undo installation script for the pmdanetcheck agent

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/netcheck.log
            default log file for messages from the pmdanetcheck agent

       Note that the usual/default value for $PCP_PMDAS_DIR is
       /var/lib/pcp/pmdas and the default for $PCP_LOG_DIR is
       /var/log/pcp but these settings are platform dependent.

PCP ENVIRONMENT         top

       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).

SEE ALSO         top

       PCPIntro(1), ping(1), pmcd(1), getaddrinfo(3), resolver(3),
       gai.conf(5), resolv.conf(5), resolver(5), icmp(7) and ip(8).

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 2023-12-22.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2023-12-16.)  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               PCP                   PMDANETCHECK(1)