pmdabpftrace(1) — Linux manual page

PMDABPFTRACE(1)          General Commands Manual          PMDABPFTRACE(1)

NAME         top

       pmdabpftrace - bpftrace PMDA

DESCRIPTION         top

       pmdabpftrace is a Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) Performance Metrics
       Domain Agent (PMDA) which exports metrics from bpftrace(8)
       scripts.

CONFIGURATION         top

       pmdabpftrace reads an optional ini-style configuration file:

              $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace/bpftrace.conf

       This file may contain [bpftrace] and [dynamic_scripts] sections.
       If you enable the dynamic scripts functionality, please refer to
       https://pcp.io/docs/lab.auth.html on how to setup authentication.
       This is highly recommended, as otherwise anyone could run any
       bpftrace(8) script as root.

       [bpftrace] section specifies values for the following settings
       (their default values are shown in parenthesis):

       bpftrace_path (bpftrace)
              Path to the bpftrace(8) executable.

       script_expiry_time (60)
              Unnamed scripts are removed after this period of time (in
              seconds) in case there has been no requests for their
              values.

       max_throughput (2097152)
              Maximum throughput of bpftrace scripts in bytes.

       [dynamic_scripts] section specifies values for the following
       settings (their default values are shown in parenthesis):

       enabled (false)
              A boolean value to specify whether script should be started
              on demand, by executing pmStore (3)
              bpftrace.control.register.  This feature needs to be
              enabled for the PCP bpftrace datasource in grafana-pcp.

       auth_enabled (true)
              A boolean value to specify whether authentication is
              required or not.  Please see the note above on
              authentication setup.

       allowed_users (root)
              A comma-separated list of usernames which are allowed to
              register bpftrace(8) scripts.

INSTALLATION         top

       To install, the following must be done as root:

           # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace
           # ./Install

       To uninstall, the following must be done as root:

           # cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace
           # ./Remove

       pmdabpftrace 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.

FILES         top

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace/bpftrace.conf
            configuration file for the pmdabpftrace agent

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace/Install
            installation script for the pmdabpftrace agent

       $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/bpftrace/Remove
            undo installation script for the pmdabpftrace agent

       $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/bpftrace.log
            default log file for messages from the pmdabpftrace 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), pmcd(1) and bpftrace(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 2025-08-11.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2025-08-11.)  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                    PMDABPFTRACE(1)

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