PMDBG(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

pmdbg — the little tool that reports the Performance Co-Pilot debug options. It's a section 1 manual page (pmdbg(1)), General Commands Manual, and honestly it's giving "short but essential" 💅

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pmdbg [-l]

---

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so here's the vibe: every component of the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) shares one global mechanism for controlling diagnostic and debug output. One system, whole family, no cap 🫶

pmdbg prints out all the available debug options — the name of the option plus some descriptive text for each one. That's the whole tea. ☕

• -l — does absolutely nothing bestie 😭 it's only in there for backwards compatibility with older versions of pmdbg. Iconic of it, honestly.

Most applications that use PCP's facilities support a -D name[,name ...] command-line syntax, which enables debug control using the name(s) of the debug options you want.

Alternatively, the initial value of the debug control flags can be set to a comma-separated list of option name(s) using the environment variable $PCP_DEBUG — but only if the applications use pmGetOptions(3) to process command line options and arguments. (iykyk)

And if you use both mechanisms at once? The effect is additive, fr fr. The resultant flags are those set via $PCP_DEBUG combined with those set via any -D command-line options. Both. Together. Slay. ✨

---

🌸 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). ✨

---

👑 COMPATIBILITY 👑

Prior to PCP 7.0, debug options were maintained in a dual state: an old-style binary encoded integer (plus a macro name, for the programmers out there) and a new-style character string name for each debug option.

In PCP 7.0, support for the old-style was dropped. Gone. Not coming back. 🪦

The table below documents the equivalence for those debugging options that appeared in both the old and the new styles 👇

          ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────┐
          │                    Old Style                    │  New Style  │
          ├───────────────────────┬────────────┬────────────┼─────────────┤
          │ Symbolic Name         │       Mask │      Value │ Name        │
          ├───────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
          │ DBG_TRACE_PDU         │ 0x00000001 │          1 │ pdu         │
          │ DBG_TRACE_FETCH       │ 0x00000002 │          2 │ fetch       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_PROFILE     │ 0x00000004 │          4 │ profile     │
          │ DBG_TRACE_VALUE       │ 0x00000008 │          8 │ value       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_CONTEXT     │ 0x00000010 │         16 │ context     │
          │ DBG_TRACE_INDOM       │ 0x00000020 │         32 │ indom       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_PDUBUF      │ 0x00000040 │         64 │ pdubuf      │
          │ DBG_TRACE_LOG         │ 0x00000080 │        128 │ log         │
          │ DBG_TRACE_LOGMETA     │ 0x00000100 │        256 │ logmeta     │
          │ DBG_TRACE_OPTFETCH    │ 0x00000200 │        512 │ optfetch    │
          │ DBG_TRACE_AF          │ 0x00000400 │       1024 │ af          │
          │ DBG_TRACE_APPL0       │ 0x00000800 │       2048 │ appl0       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_APPL1       │ 0x00001000 │       4096 │ appl1       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_APPL2       │ 0x00002000 │       8192 │ appl2       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_PMNS        │ 0x00004000 │      16384 │ pmns        │
          │ DBG_TRACE_LIBPMDA     │ 0x00008000 │      32768 │ libpmda     │
          │ DBG_TRACE_TIMECONTROL │ 0x00001000 │      65536 │ timecontrol │
          │ DBG_TRACE_PMC         │ 0x00002000 │     131072 │ pmc         │
          │ DBG_TRACE_DERIVE      │ 0x00004000 │     262144 │ derive      │
          │ DBG_TRACE_LOCK        │ 0x00008000 │     524288 │ lock        │
          │ DBG_TRACE_INTERP      │ 0x00010000 │    1048576 │ interp      │
          │ DBG_TRACE_CONFIG      │ 0x00020000 │    2097152 │ config      │
          │ DBG_TRACE_PMAPI       │ 0x00040000 │    4194304 │ pmapi       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_FAULT       │ 0x00080000 │    8388608 │ fault       │
          │ DBG_TRACE_AUTH        │ 0x00100000 │   16777216 │ auth        │
          │ DBG_TRACE_DISCOVERY   │ 0x00200000 │   33554432 │ discovery   │
          │ DBG_TRACE_ATTR        │ 0x00400000 │   67108864 │ attr        │
          │ DBG_TRACE_HTTP        │ 0x00800000 │  134217728 │ http        │
          │ DBG_TRACE_DESPERATE   │ 0x04000000 │ 1073741824 │ desperate   │
          └───────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴─────────────┘

---

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• PCPIntro(1)
• PMAPI(3)
• pmClearDebug(3)
• pmGetDebug(3)
• pmGetOptions(3)
• pmSetDebug(3)
• pcp.conf(5)
• pcp.env(5)

---

and that's the page bestie!! 🦋 this one came from Performance Co-Pilot (that's the source) and it's the PCP release, page PMDBG(1) — go forth and debug your little heart out, the debug options are all listed and they are all yours 💖✨🎀