pmproxy(1) — Linux manual page
PMPROXY(1) General Commands Manual PMPROXY(1)
NAME
pmproxy - proxy for performance metrics collector and querying
SYNOPSIS
pmproxy [-AdfFt?] [-c conffile] [-h host[,host ...] [-i
ipaddress] [-l logfile] [-L bytes] [-p port[,port ...] [-r
port[,port ...] [-s sockname] [-U username] [-x outfile]
DESCRIPTION
pmproxy acts as a protocol proxy, allowing Performance Co-Pilot
(PCP) monitoring clients to connect to one or more pmcd(1) and/or
redis-server(1) instances via pmproxy.
In its default mode of operation pmproxy provides the REST API
for PCP services (see PMWEBAPI(3) for details). This includes
provision of an Open Metrics - https://openmetrics.io - text
interface for PCP metrics at /metrics, real-time access to PCP
metrics through the /pmapi interfaces, and access to the fast,
scalable PCP time series query capabilities offered in
conjunction with a redis-server(1) (see pmseries(1) for details)
via the /query REST interfaces.
pmproxy can be deployed in a firewall domain, or on a cluster
``head'' node where the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the
hosts where pmcd and/or redis-server are running may be unknown
to the PCP monitoring clients, but where the IP address of the
host running pmproxy is known to these clients. Similarly, the
clients may have network connectivity only to the host where
pmproxy is running, while there is network connectivity from that
host to the hosts of interest where pmcd and/or redis-server are
running.
The behaviour of the PCP monitoring clients is controlled by
either the PMPROXY_HOST environment variable or through the
extended hostname specification (see PCPIntro(1) for details).
If neither of these mechanisms is used, clients will make their
PMAPI(3) connections directly to pmcd. If the proxy hostname
syntax is used or PMPROXY_HOST is set, then this should be the
hostname or IP address of the system where pmproxy is running,
and the clients will connect to pmcd or redis-server indirectly
through the protocol proxy services of pmproxy.
OPTIONS
The available command line options are:
-A Disable service advertisement. By default, pmproxy will
advertise its presence on the network using any available
mechanisms (such as Avahi/DNS-SD), assisting remote
monitoring tools with finding it. These mechanisms are
disabled with this option.
-c conffile, --config=conffile
Specify the path to an optional configuration conffile, with
format as described in the ``CONFIGURATION'' section. This
option implies pmproxy is running in timeseries mode.
-d, --deprecated
By default pmproxy prefers to run in the new timeseries
mode, providing REST APIs, asynchronous network I/O,
scalable time series, and secure connections using OpenSSL.
However, legacy deployments may wish to use the original
synchronous pmproxy implementation using libpcp networking;
this can be achieved using this option. Note that the -d
and -t options are mutually exclusive.
-f, --foreground
By default pmproxy is started as a daemon. The -f option
indicates that it should run in the foreground. This is
most useful when trying to diagnose problems with
establishing connections.
-F, --systemd
Like -f, the -F option runs pmproxy in the foreground, but
also does some housekeeping (like create a ``pid'' file and
change user id). This is intended for use when pmproxy is
launched from systemd(1) and the daemonising has already
been done by systemd(1) and does not need to be done again
by pmproxy, which is the case when neither -f nor -F is
specified.
At most one of -f and -F may be specified.
-h host, --redishost=host
Specify an alternate Redis host to connect to for time
series querying, overriding any configuration file settings.
This option implies pmproxy is running in timeseries mode.
-i ipaddress, --interface=ipaddress
This option is usually only used on hosts with more than one
network interface (very common for firewall and ``head''
node hosts where pmproxy is likely to be deployed to
arbitrate access to an internal network). If no -i options
are specified pmproxy accepts PCP client connections on any
of its host's IP addresses. The -i option is used to
specify explicitly an IP address that PCP client connections
should be accepted on. ipaddress should be in the standard
dotted form (e.g. 100.23.45.6). The -i option may be used
multiple times to define a list of IP addresses. When one
or more -i options is specified, attempted connections made
on any other IP addresses will be refused.
-l logfile, --log=logfile
By default a log file named pmproxy.log is written in the
current directory. The -l option causes the log file to be
written to a given logfile instead of the default. If this
logfile cannot be created or is not writable, output is
written to the standard error instead.
-L bytes
PDUs received by pmproxy from PCP monitoring clients are
restricted to a maximum size of 65536 bytes by default to
defend against Denial of Service attacks. The -L option may
be used to change the maximum incoming PDU size.
-p port, --port=port
Specify an alternate port number to listen on for client
connections. The default value is 44322.
-r port, --redisport=port
Specify an alternate Redis port number to connect to for
time series querying, overriding any configuration file
settings. This option implies pmproxy is running in
timeseries mode.
-s sockname, --socket=sockname
Specify the path to a local unix domain socket (for
platforms supporting this socket family only). The default
value is $PCP_RUN_DIR/pmproxy.socket. This option implies
pmproxy is running in timeseries mode.
-t, --timeseries
Operate in automatic archive timeseries discovery mode.
This mode of operation will enable the PMWEBAPI(3) REST
APIs, dynamically and automatically detect active system
archives being written by pmlogger(1) and import them into a
redis-server(1), for fast, scalable time series querying
described in pmseries(1). Note that in this mode of
operation, pmproxy only "log-tails" and ingests actively
growing archives, e.g. as written by one or more pmlogger(1)
instances. When an archive is first discovered (usually but
not limited to pmproxy startup), all metadata is loaded and
sent to the configured redis-server(1) however note that
only new archive metric value data from the tail end of each
archive is ingested. Compressed archives never grow and so
are ignored. See the --load option to pmseries(1) for a
supported mechanism for manually loading all of the metric
value data from previously collected (inactive) archives,
whether compressed or not. It would be normal, though not
mandated, for a set of archives being manually loaded to
cover the same time period, e.g. archive data for a
particular week for one or more hosts in the same data-
centre.
-U username, --username=username
Assume the identity of the given username before starting to
accept incoming packets from PCP monitoring clients.
-x outfile
Before the pmproxy logfile can be opened, pmproxy may
encounter a fatal error which prevents it from starting. By
default the output describing this error is sent to /dev/tty
but it may redirected to outfile.
-?, --help
Display usage message and exit.
CONFIGURATION
When running in the timeseries mode of operation, runtime
configuration is relatively complex and typically handled via the
$PCP_SYSCONF_DIR/pmproxy/pmproxy.conf file. This file is in the
common ``ini'' format, with section headers and individual
variables and values with each section. The configuration file
installed as part of PCP documents every available section and
option.
At a high level, the [pmproxy] section can be used to explicitly
enable or disable each of the different protocols.
The [redis] section allows connection information for one or more
backing redis-server processes to be configured (hostnames and
ports). Note to access multiple (scalable) Redis servers, the
servers variable in this section can be a comma-separated list of
hostname:port pairs. Alternatively, it can be a single redis-
server host that will be queried using the "CLUSTER INFO" command
to automatically configure multiple backing hosts, described at
https://redis.io/topics/cluster-spec .
In earlier versions of PCP (before 6) an alternative
configuration setting section was used for this purpose - Redis
servers were specified in the [pmseries] section and this is
still accepted as a fallback for backwards compatibility.
STARTING AND STOPPING PMPROXY
Normally, pmproxy is started automatically at boot time and
stopped when the system is being brought down. Under certain
circumstances it is necessary to start or stop pmproxy manually.
To do this one must become superuser and type
# $PCP_RC_DIR/pmproxy start
to start pmproxy, or
# $PCP_RC_DIR/pmproxy stop
to stop pmproxy. Starting pmproxy when it is already running is
the same as stopping it and then starting it again.
Normally pmproxy listens for PCP client connections on TCP/IP
port number 44322 (as well as 44323 with timeseries enabled)
registered at https://www.iana.org/ . Either the environment
variable PMPROXY_PORT or the -p command line option may be used
to specify alternative port number(s) when pmproxy is started; in
each case, the specification is a comma-separated list of one or
more numerical port numbers. Should both methods be used or
multiple -p options appear on the command line, pmproxy will
listen on the union of the set of ports specified via all -p
options and the PMPROXY_PORT environment variable. If non-
default ports are used with pmproxy care should be taken to
ensure that PMPROXY_PORT is also set in the environment of any
client application that will connect to pmproxy, or that the
extended host specification syntax is used (see PCPIntro(1) for
details).
DIAGNOSTICS
If pmproxy is already running the message "Error:
OpenRequestSocket bind: Address already in use" will appear.
This may also appear if pmproxy was shutdown with an outstanding
request from a client. In this case, a request socket has been
left in the TIME_WAIT state and until the system closes it down
(after some timeout period) it will not be possible to run
pmproxy.
In addition to the standard PCP debugging options, see pmdbg(1),
pmproxy currently supports the debugging option context for
tracing client connections and disconnections.
FILES
$PCP_PMPROXYOPTIONS_PATH
command line options for pmproxy when launched from
$PCP_RC_DIR/pmproxy All the command line option lines should
start with a hyphen as the first character.
$PCP_SYSCONFIG_DIR/pmproxy
Environment variables that will be set when pmproxy
executes. Only settings of the form
"PMPROXY_VARIABLE=value" will be honoured.
./pmproxy.log
(or $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmproxy/pmproxy.log when started
automatically)
All messages and diagnostics are directed here
/etc/pki/tls
default OpenSSL certificate database directory, optionally
used for Secure Socket Layer connection in timeseries mode
of operation. These certificates can be created and queried
using the openssl tool, amongst others.
ENVIRONMENT
In addition to the PCP environment variables described in the PCP
ENVIRONMENT section below, there are several environment
variables that influence the interactions between a PCP
monitoring client, pmproxy and pmcd.
PMCD_PORT
For the PCP monitoring client this (or the default port
number) is passed to pmproxy and used to connect to pmcd.
In the environment of pmproxy PMCD_PORT is not used.
PMPROXY_HOST
For the PCP monitoring client this is the hostname or IP
address of the host where pmproxy is running. In recent
versions of PCP (since version 3) this has been superseded
by the extended hostname syntax (see PCPIntro(1) for
details).
PMPROXY_PORT
For the PCP monitoring client this is the port on which
pmproxy will accept connections. The default is 44322, as
well as 44323 with timeseries enabled.
PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, PMCD_RECONNECT_TIMEOUT and
PMCD_REQUEST_TIMEOUT
(see PCPIntro(1)) For the PCP monitoring client, setting
these environment variables will modify the timeouts used
for interactions between the client and pmproxy
(independent of which pmcd is being used). For pmproxy
these same environment variables control the timeouts
between pmproxy and all pmcd(1) instances (independent of
which monitoring client is involved).
If set to the value 1, the PMPROXY_LOCAL environment variable
will cause pmproxy to run in a localhost-only mode of operation,
where it binds only to the loopback interface.
The PMPROXY_MAXPENDING variable can be set to indicate the
maximum length to which the queue of pending client connections
may grow.
PCP ENVIRONMENT
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).
For environment variables affecting PCP tools, see
pmGetOptions(3).
SEE ALSO
PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), pmdbg(1), pmlogger(1), pmseries(1),
redis-server(1), PMAPI(3), PMWEBAPI(3), pmGetOptions(3),
pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).
COLOPHON
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 PCP PMPROXY(1)
Pages that refer to this page: pcp-check(1), pcpcompat(1), pcpintro(1), pcp-kube-pods(1), pmfind(1), pmsearch(1), pmseries(1), pmsocks(1), pmdiscoverservices(3), pmdiscoversetup(3), pmnewcontext(3), pmparsehostattrsspec(3), pmparsehostspec(3), pmsearchinfo(3), pmsearchsetup(3), pmsearchtextindom(3), pmsearchtextquery(3), pmsearchtextsuggest(3), pmseriesdescs(3), pmseriesquery(3), pmseriessetup(3), pmwebapi(3), pmwebtimerregister(3), labels.conf(5)