pmdatrace(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | C SYNOPSIS | FORTRAN SYNOPSIS | JAVA SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | CAVEAT | DIAGNOSTICS | FILES | ENVIRONMENT | PCP ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMTRACE(3)              Library Functions Manual              PMTRACE(3)

NAME         top

       pmtracebegin, pmtraceend, pmtraceabort, pmtracepoint, pmtraceobs,
       pmtracecounter, pmtracestate, pmtraceerrstr - application-level
       performance instrumentation services

C SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pcp/trace.h>

       int pmtracebegin(const char *tag);
       int pmtraceend(const char *tag);
       int pmtraceabort(const char *tag);
       int pmtracepoint(const char *tag);
       int pmtraceobs(const char *tag, double value);
       int pmtracecounter(const char *tag, double value);
       char *pmtraceerrstr(int code);
       int pmtracestate(int flags);

       cc ... -lpcp_trace

FORTRAN SYNOPSIS         top

       character*(*) tag
       integer code
       integer flags
       integer state
       character*(*) estr
       real*8 value

       code = pmtracebegin(tag)
       code = pmtraceend(tag)
       code = pmtraceabort(tag)
       code = pmtracepoint(tag)
       code = pmtraceobs(tag, value)
       code = pmtracecounter(tag, value)
       pmtraceerrstr(code, estr)
       state = pmtracestate(flags)

       f77 ... -lpcp_trace  or  f90 ... -lpcp_trace

JAVA SYNOPSIS         top

       import sgi.pcp.trace;

       int trace.pmtracebegin(String tag);
       int trace.pmtraceend(String tag);
       int trace.pmtraceabort(String tag);
       int trace.pmtracepoint(String tag);
       int trace.pmtraceobs(String tag, double value);
       int trace.pmtracecounter(String tag, double value);
       String trace.pmtraceerrstr(int code);
       int trace.pmtracestate(int flags);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The pcp_trace library functions provide a mechanism for
       identifying sections of a program as transactions or events for
       use by the trace Performance Metrics Domain Agent (refer to
       pmdatrace(1) and PMDA(3)).

       The monitoring of transactions using the Performance Co-Pilot
       (PCP) infrastructure is initiated through a call to pmtracebegin.
       Time will be recorded from the end of each pmtracebegin call to
       the start of the following call to pmtraceend, where the same tag
       identifier is used in both calls.  Following from this, no
       visible recording will occur until at least one call to
       pmtraceend is made referencing a tag previously used in a call to
       pmtracebegin.

       A transaction which is currently in progress can be cancelled by
       calling pmtraceabort.  No transaction data gathered for that
       particular transaction will be exported, although data from
       previous and subsequent successful transactions with that tag
       name are still exported.  This is most useful when an error
       condition arises during transaction processing and the
       transaction does not run to completion.

       The tag argument to pmtracebegin, pmtraceend and pmtraceabort is
       used to uniquely identify each transaction within the pcp_trace
       library and later by the trace PMDA as the instance domain
       identifiers for the transaction performance metrics which it
       exports.  These routines are most useful when used around blocks
       of code which are likely to be executed a number of times over
       some relatively long time period (in a daemon process, for
       example).

       pmtracebegin has two distinct roles - firstly as the initiator of
       a new transaction, and secondly as a mechanism for setting a new
       start time.  Similarly, pmtraceend is used to register a new tag
       and its initial state with the trace PMDA, or alternatively to
       update the statistics which the PMDA currently associates with
       the given tag.

       A second form of program instrumentation can be obtained from
       pmtracepoint.  This is a simpler form of monitoring as it exports
       only the number of times that a particular point in a program has
       been passed.  This differs to the transaction monitoring offered
       by pmtracebegin and pmtraceend, which exports a running count of
       successful transaction completions as well as statistics on the
       time interval between the start and end points of each
       transaction.  This function is most useful when start and end
       points are not well defined.  Examples of this would be when the
       code branches in such a way that a transaction cannot be clearly
       identified, or when processing does not follow a transactional
       model, or the desired instrumentation is akin to event rates
       rather than event service times.

       The pmtraceobs and pmtracecounter functions have similar
       semantics to pmtracepoint, but also allow an arbitrary numeric
       value to be passed to the trace PMDA.  The most recent value for
       each tag is then immediately available from the PMDA.  The only
       difference between pmtraceobs and pmtracecounter is that the
       value exported via pmtracecounter is assumed to be a
       monotonically increasing counter value (e.g. the number of bytes
       read from a socket), whereas the value exported via pmtraceobs
       can be any value at all.

       pmtracestate allows the application to set state flags which are
       honoured by subsequent calls to the pcp_trace library routines.
       There are currently two types of flag - debugging flags and the
       asynchronous protocol flag.  A single call may specify a number
       of flags together, combined using a (bitwise) logical OR
       operation, and overrides the previous state setting.

       The debugging flags to pmtracestate cause pcp_trace to print
       diagnostic messages on the standard output stream at important
       processing points.  The default protocol used between the trace
       PMDA and individual pcp_trace client applications is a
       synchronous protocol, which allows for dropped connections to be
       reestablished at a later stage should this become possible.  An
       asynchronous protocol is also available which does not provide
       the reconnection capability, but which does away with much of the
       overhead inherent in synchronous communication.  This behaviour
       can be toggled using the pmtracestate call, but must be called
       before other calls to the library.  This differs to the debugging
       state behaviour, which can be altered at any time.  pmtracestate
       returns the previous state (setting prior to being called).

       The following table describes each of the pmtracestate flags -
       examples of the use of these flags in each supported language are
       given in the demo applications (refer to the ``FILES'' section
       below).
       ┌─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │ State Flags │                   Semantics                   │
       ├─────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │ 0  NONE     │ Synchronous PDUs and no diagnostics (default) │
       │ 1  API      │ Shows processing just below the API (debug)   │
       │ 2  COMMS    │ Shows network-related activity (debug)        │
       │ 4  PDU      │ Shows app<->PMDA IPC traffic (debug)          │
       │ 8  PDUBUF   │ Shows internal IPC buffer management (debug)  │
       │ 16 NOAGENT  │ No PMDA communications at all (debug)         │
       │ 32 ASYNC    │ Use the asynchronous PDU protocol (control)   │
       └─────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

       Should any of the pcp_trace library functions return a negative
       value, an error has occurred.  This can be diagnosed further
       using the pmtraceerrstr routine, which takes the negative return
       value as its code argument, and in the C-callable interface
       returns a pointer to the associated error message.  This points
       into a static error table, and should therefore not be passed to
       free(3).  The Fortran-callable interface has a slightly different
       syntax, requiring the destination character array to be passed in
       as the second argument.  The Java-callable interface returns a
       UTF-8 string, created using the JNI (Java Native Interface)
       routine NewStringUTF.

NOTES         top

       The pcp_trace Java class interface has been developed and
       verified using version 1.1 of the Java Native Interface (JNI)
       specification.

CAVEAT         top

       Applications that use gethostbyname(3) should exercise caution
       because the static fields in struct hostent may not be preserved
       across some pcp_trace calls.  In particular, pmtracebegin,
       pmtraceend, pmtracepoint, pmtracecounter, and pmtraceobs may all
       call gethostbyname(3) internally.

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       A negative return value from a pcp_trace function indicates that
       an error has occurred - if this is the case, the return value can
       be passed to pmtraceerrstr to obtain the associated error
       message.

       Success is indicated by a return value of zero.

       pmtracestate also returns an integer representing the state flags
       which were set prior to the call.

FILES         top

       $PCP_DEMOS_DIR/trace/*.c
              Sample C programs and source for pmtrace(1).  Use make(1)
              to build these programs.

       $PCP_DEMOS_DIR/trace/fapp1.f
              Sample Fortran program.  Call `make fortran77' or `make
              fortran90' to build this program.

       $PCP_DEMOS_DIR/trace/japp1.java
              Sample Java program.  `make java' builds the java class
              file.

       /usr/java/classes/sgi/pcp/trace.java
              Java trace class definition.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       The pcp_trace routines communicate with the trace PMDA via a
       socket connection, which by default uses TCP/IP port number 4323.
       This can be over-ridden by setting PCP_TRACE_PORT to a different
       port number when the application is started.  The host where the
       trace PMDA is running is by default the localhost, but this can
       be changed using PCP_TRACE_HOST.  When attempting to connect to a
       remote trace PMDA, after some specified time interval has
       elapsed, the connection attempt will be aborted and an error
       status will be returned.  The default timeout interval is 3
       seconds, and this can be modified by setting PCP_TRACE_TIMEOUT in
       the environment to a real number of seconds for the desired
       timeout.  This is most useful in cases where the remote host is
       at the end of a slow network, requiring longer latencies to
       establish the connection correctly.

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).  Values for these variables may be obtained
       programmatically using the pmGetConfig(3) function.

SEE ALSO         top

       file:$PCP_DOC_DIR/Tutorial/trace.html, pcp.man.tutorial, Provided
       the, make(1), pmcd(1), pmdatrace(1), pmprobe(1), pmtrace(1),
       Relevant information is also available from the on-line PCP
       Tutorial.

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                        PMTRACE(3)

Pages that refer to this page: pmdatrace(1)pmtrace(1)