PMDAPODMAN(1)

💖 PMDAPODMAN 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for pmdapodman, section 1 of the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) manuals — it's a General Commands Manual situation and honestly? iconic. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

pmdapodman — podman container performance metrics domain agent (PMDA) 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

$PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman/pmdapodman [-D debug] [-d domain] [-l logfile]

like, that's the whole vibe. three little flags. so cute. 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so podman(1) is this utility for managing pods, containers and container images, and it follows the whole container pod concept that Kubernetes made popular. you know the one. 👑

and pmdapodman? it's a Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA for short, iykyk) that pulls out performance metrics describing the state of the containers and pods that podman is managing. it's literally the little agent that could. 🫶

the podman PMDA exports metrics that measure info about individual containers and about groups of containers, called pods. both. she does both. 💅

here's a brief description of the pmdapodman command line options, because we're being thorough:

• -d — okay so this one is absolutely crucial, no cap. the performance metrics domain number you put here has to be unique and consistent. like, domain should be different for every single PMDA on one host, and the same domain number should be used for the same PMDA on all hosts. it's giving ✨consistency✨. don't fumble this one bestie.
• -l — where the log file lives. by default, a log file named podman.log gets written in the current directory of pmcd(1) when pmdapodman starts, i.e. $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd. and if the log file can't be created or isn't writable? output goes to standard error instead. she adapts. 🌸

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✨ INSTALLATION ✨

the podman PMDA is installed and available by default on Linux. yes, already. you're welcome. 🎀

if you wanna undo the installation, do this as root:

# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman
# ./Remove

and if you want to establish access to the names, help text and values for the podman performance metrics once more after removal, do this as root:

# cd $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman
# ./Install

pmdapodman 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. so like. don't run it yourself. it's not that kind of girl. 😭

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✨ FILES ✨

• $PCP_PMCDCONF_PATH — command line options used to launch pmdapodman
• $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman/help — default help text file for the podman metrics
• $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman/Install — installation script for the pmdapodman agent
• $PCP_PMDAS_DIR/podman/Remove — undo installation script for the pmdapodman agent
• $PCP_LOG_DIR/pmcd/podman.log — default log file for error messages and other information from pmdapodman

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✨ PCP ENVIRONMENT ✨

environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the file and directory names that PCP uses. 💜 on each installation, the file /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values for these variables. and the $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative configuration file, as described in pcp.conf(5). slay. 🌈

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✨ DEBUGGING OPTIONS ✨

the -D or --debug option enables the output of additional diagnostics on stderr to help triage problems — although ngl, the information is sometimes cryptic 🙈 and is primarily intended to provide guidance for developers rather than for end-users.

debug is a comma separated list of debugging options. use pmdbg(1) with the -l option to obtain a list of the available debugging options and their meaning. go look, it's right there. 👑

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

PCPIntro(1), pmcd(1), podman(1), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5). 💖

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and that's the whole page bestie, we ate and left no crumbs 🍓

Performance Co-Pilot — PCP — PMDAPODMAN(1)

this was brought to you by the Performance Co-Pilot girlies, manual page PMDAPODMAN(1), mwah 💅✨