PMNSDEL(1)

💖 pmnsdel — the girl who deletes whole subtrees 💖

okay bestie, so this is pmnsdel from the Performance Co-Pilot family, and it's a General Commands Manual page, section 1, iykyk. it lives in the PCP set of tools and it is so satisfying to use, lemme tell you everything. 🎀

---

✨ NAME ✨

pmnsdel — delete a subtree of names from the Performance Co-Pilot PMNS 🦋

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

$PCP_BINADM_DIR/pmnsdel [-?]  [-D debug] [-n namespace] metricpath [...]

---

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so basically, pmnsdel removes subtrees of names from a Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS), which is the thing all the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) components use. not me being the one who actually cleans up around here. 💀

normally pmnsdel operates on the default Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS), but if you pass the -n option then it uses an alternative namespace from the file namespace. main character energy honestly. ✨

the default PMNS lives in the file $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/root, unless the environment variable PMNS_DEFAULT is set — in that case its value is assumed to be the pathname to the file containing the default PMNS. periodt.

the metric names that get deleted are all those for which one of the metricpath arguments is a prefix in the PMNS, see PMNS(5). 🫶

all of the files defining the PMNS have to be located inside the directory that contains the root of the PMNS, and for the default PMNS that's typically $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns — which typically implies you're running pmnsdel as root. 👑

⚠️ okay so listen: as long as some initial integrity checks are satisfied, pmnsdel will update the necessary PMNS files. if an error shows up, the original namespace gets restored. BUT — any PMNS files that are no longer referenced by the modified namespace will not be removed, even though their contents are not part of the new namespace. they just... stay there. chilling. 🙈

---

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

the available command line options are:

• -n pmnsfile, --namespace=pmnsfile — load an alternative Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS(5)) from the file pmnsfile. 🦋
• -?, --help — display the usage message and exit. iconic, love that for us. ✨

---

💀 CAVEATS 💀

once the writing of the new namespace file has begun, the signals SIGINT, SIGHUP and SIGTERM will be ignored to protect the integrity of the new files. like, it is NOT listening to you until it's done. 💅

---

🌈 FILES 🌈

• $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns/root — the default PMNS, when the environment variable PMNS_DEFAULT is unset. 🍓

---

💜 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). 🌸

---

🔥 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 get a list of the available debugging options and what they mean. go get your list bestie. ⭐

---

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

pmnsadd(1), pmnsmerge(1), pcp.conf(5), pcp.env(5) and PMNS(5). 🦋

---

and that's the whole page, no cap. this one comes from the Performance Co-Pilot — PCP — and it's PMNSDEL(1), mwah, take care of your namespace and she'll take care of you. 💖✨🎀