iostat2pcp(1)

NAME

   iostat2pcp - import iostat data and create a PCP archive

SYNOPSIS

   iostat2pcp [-v] [-S start] [-t interval] [-Z timezone] infile outfile

DESCRIPTION

   iostat2pcp  reads  a  text  file  created  with  iostat(1) (infile) and
   translates this into a Performance  Co-Pilot  (PCP)  archive  with  the
   basename  outfile.   If infile is - then iostat2pcp reads from standard
   input, allowing easy preprocessing of the iostat(1) output with  sed(1)
   or similar.

   The  resultant PCP archive may be used with all the PCP client tools to
   graph subsets of the data using pmchart(1), perform data reduction  and
   reporting, filter with the PCP inference engine pmie(1), etc.

   A  series  of  physical  files will be created with the prefix outfile.
   These are outfile.0 (the performance data), outfile.meta (the  metadata
   that  describes  the  performance  data)  and outfile.index (a temporal
   index to improve efficiency of replay operations for the archive).   If
   any  of  these files exists already, then iostat2pcp will not overwrite
   them and will exit with an error message.

   The first output sample from iostat(1) contains a  statistical  summary
   since  boot  time  and is ignored by iostat2pcp, so the first real data
   set is the second one in the iostat(1) output.

   The best results are obtained when iostat(1) was run with  its  own  -t
   flag,  so each output sample is prefixed with a timestamp.  Even better
   is -t with $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO set in environment when iostat(1) is run,
   in which case the timestamp includes the timezone.

   Note  that  if  $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO  is not used with the -t option then
   iostat(1) may produce a timestamp controlled by LC_TIME from the locale
   that  is  in  a  format  iostat2pcp  cannot parse.  The formats for the
   timestamp that iostat2pcp accepts are illustrated by these examples:

   2013-07-06T21:34:39+1000
       (for the $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO).

   2013-07-06 21:34:39
       (for some of the European formats, e.g.  de_AT,  de_BE,  de_LU  and
       en_DK.utf8).

   06/07/13 21:34:39
       (for all of the $LC_TIME settings for English locales outside North
       America, e.g. en_AU, en_GB, en_IE, en_NZ, en_SG and en_ZA, and  all
       the Spanish locales, e.g.  es_ES, es_MX and es_AR).

   In  particular,  note that some common North American $LC_TIME settings
   will not work with iostat2pcp (namely, en_US, POSIX and C) because they
   use  the  MM/DD  format  which  may  be  incorrectly converted with the
   assumed DD/MM format.  This is  another  reason  to  recommend  setting
   $S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO.

   If there are no timestamps in the input stream, iostat2pcp will try and
   deduce the sample interval if basic Disk data (-d option for iostat(1))
   is found.  If this fails, then the -t option may be used to specify the
   sample interval in seconds.  This option is ignored if  timestamps  are
   found in the input stream.

   The  -S  option may be used to specify as start time for the first real
   sample in infile, where start must  have  the  format  HH:MM:SS.   This
   option is ignored if timestamps are found in the input stream.

   The  -Z  option  may  be  used to specify a timezone.  It must have the
   format +HHMM (for hours and minutes East of UTC) or  -HHMM  (for  hours
   and minutes West of UTC).  Note in particular that neither the zoneinfo
   (aka Olson) format, e.g. Europe/Paris, nor the Posix  TZ  format,  e.g.
   EST+5  is  allowed  for  the  -Z option.  This option is ignored if ISO
   timestamps are found in the input  stream.   If  the  timezone  is  not
   specified and cannot be deduced, it defaults to UTC.

   Some additional diagnostic output is generated with the -v option.

   iostat2pcp  is  a Perl script that uses the PCP::LogImport Perl wrapper
   around the PCP libpcp_import library, and as such could be used  as  an
   example  to develop new tools to import other types of performance data
   and create PCP archives.

CAVEAT

   iostat2pcp requires infile to have  been  created  by  the  version  of
   iostat(1) from <http://freshmeat.net/projects/sysstat>.

   iostat2pcp  handles  the -c (CPU), -d (Disk), -x (eXtended Disk) and -p
   (Partition)  report  formats  (including  their  -k,  -m,  -z  and  ALL
   variants),  but does not accommodate the -n (Network Filesystem) report
   format from iostat(1); this is a demand-driven limitation rather than a
   technical limitation.

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).

SEE ALSO

   iostat(1), pmchart(1), pmie(1), pmlogger(1), sed(1), Date::Format(3pm),
   Date::Parse(3pm), PCP::LogImport(3pm) and LOGIMPORT(3).

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