pmlookuplabels(3) - Linux manual page

NAME | C SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | LABEL SYNTAX | PRECEDENCE | DATA STRUCTURES | EXAMPLES | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMLOOKUPLABELS(3)         Library Functions Manual         PMLOOKUPLABELS(3)

NAME         top

       pmLookupLabels,  pmGetInstancesLabels, pmGetItemLabels, pmGetCluster‐
       Labels,  pmGetInDomLabels,  pmGetDomainLabels,  pmGetContextLabels  -
       retrieve labels associated with performance metric values

C SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pcp/pmapi.h>

       int pmLookupLabels(pmID pmid, pmLabelSet **labelsets);

       int pmGetInstancesLabels(pmInDom indom, pmLabelSet **labelsets);
       int pmGetItemLabels(pmID pmid, pmLabelSet **labelsets);
       int pmGetClusterLabels(pmID pmid, pmLabelSet **labelsets);
       int pmGetInDomLabels(pmInDom indom, pmLabelSet **labelsets);
       int pmGetDomainLabels(int domain, pmLabelSet **labelsets);
       int pmGetContextLabels(pmLabelSet **labelsets);

       cc ... -lpcp

DESCRIPTION         top

       Labels are name:value pairs associated with performance metric values
       for the purpose of attaching additional metric metadata to values.
       This metadata is less structured and exists separately to the metric
       descriptor available for every PCP metric from pmLookupDesc(3).

       Much like the metric descriptor metadata, labels are an integral part
       of the identity of each metric, and should rarely, if ever, change.

       The pmLookupLabels routine is a convenience interface providing
       retrieval for all labels associated with a single performance metric
       identifier, pmid.  It performs no caching of labels internally.

       For efficiency in communication and storage within the various
       components of the PMCS (Performance Metrics Collection System),
       labels are maintained using a hierarchy.  The set of labels
       associated with any individual metric value consists of the union of
       labels from each of these sets of labels:

       1. Global labels (apply to all metric values from a host or archive
       context)

       pmGetContextLabels
               provides the labelset associated with all metric values from
               a given source (PMAPI context).

       2. Domain labels (apply to every metric within a PMDA)

       pmGetDomainLabels
               provides the labelset associated with the domain identifier.

       3. Instance Domain labels (apply to all metrics sharing that indom)

       pmGetInDomLabels
               provides the labelset associated with the instance domain
               identifier indom.

       4. Cluster labels (apply to a group of metrics within one domain)

       pmGetClusterLabels
               provides the labelset associated with the metric cluster
               (domain,cluster) identified by pmid.

       5. Item labels (apply to an individual performance metric)

       pmGetItemLabels
               provides the labelset associated with the metric item
               (domain,cluster,item) identified by pmid.

       6. Instance labels (apply to individual instances of a metric)

       pmGetInstancesLabels
               provides the set of instance identifiers and labels in
               labelsets for each instance associated with the instance
               domain identifier indom.  The return value indicates the
               number of elements in the result - one labelset for each
               instance.

       These independent labelsets can be merged using pmMergeLabelSets(3)
       to form the complete set of all labels associated with a given value.

LABEL SYNTAX         top

       Labels are stored and communicated within PCP using JSONB format.
       This format is a restricted form of JSON suitable for indexing and
       other operations.  In JSONB form, insignificant whitespace is
       discarded, and the order of label names is not preserved.  Within the
       PMCS a lexicographically sorted key space is always maintained,
       however.  Duplicate label names are not permitted.  The label with
       highest precedence is the only one presented.  If duplicate names are
       presented at the same hierarchy level, only one will be preserved
       (exactly which one wins is arbitrary, so do not rely on this).

       All name:value pair(s) present will be converted to JSONB form and
       merged with the existing set of labels for the requested entity
       (context, domain, indom, metric or instance).

       The label names are further constrained to the same set of rules
       defined for PMNS subtree names.

       Each component in a label name must begin with an alphabetic
       character, and be followed by zero or more characters drawn from the
       alphabetics, the digits and the underscore (``_'') character.  For
       alphabetic characters in a name, upper and lower case are
       distinguished.

       The value of a label offers significantly more freedom, and may be
       any valid value as defined by the JSON (http://json.org )
       specification.  Redundant whitespace is always removed within the
       PMCS.

PRECEDENCE         top

       The complete set of labels associated with any metric value is built
       from several sources and duplicate label names may exist at any point
       in the source hierarchy.  However, when evaluating the label set
       (merging labels from the different sources) the JSONB concept of only
       presenting unique labels is used.  It is therefore important to
       define precedence rules in order that a deterministic set of uniquely
       named labels can be defined.

       As a rule of thumb, the labels closest to PMNS leaf nodes and metric
       values take precedence:

       1. Global context labels
           (as reported by the pmcd.labels metric) are the lowest
           precedence.

       2. Domain labels
           (for all values from a PMDA) are the next highest precedence.

       3. Instance Domain Labels
           associated with an InDom are the next highest precedence.

       4. Metric cluster labels
           associated with a PMID cluster are the next highest precedence.

       5. Metric item labels
           associated with an individual PMID are the next highest
           precedence.

       6. Instance labels
           associated with a metric instance identifier have highest
           precedence.

DATA STRUCTURES         top

       The primary output from pmLookupLabels is returned in the argument
       labelset as an array, using the following component data structures;

            struct {
                uint     name : 16;      /* label name offset in JSONB string */
                uint     namelen : 8;    /* length of name excluding the null */
                uint     flags : 8;      /* information about this label */
                uint     value : 16;     /* offset of the label value */
                uint     valuelen : 16;  /* length of value in bytes */
            } pmLabel;

            struct {
                uint     inst;           /* PM_IN_NULL or the instance ID */
                int      nlabels;        /* count of labels or error code */
                char     *json;          /* JSON formatted labels string */
                uint     jsonlen : 16;   /* JSON string length byte count */
                uint     padding : 16;   /* zero, reserved for future use */
                pmLabel  *labels;        /* indexing into the JSON string */
            } pmLabelSet;

       The pmLabel provides information about an individual label.  This
       includes the offsets to the start of its name and value in the json
       string of a pmLabelSet, their respective lengths, and also any
       informative flags associated with the label (describing where it lies
       in the hierarchy of labels, and whether it is an intrinsic or
       extrinsic label).

       Building on this, the pmLabelSet provides information about the set
       of labels associated with an entity (context, domain, indom, metric
       or instance).  The entity will be from any one level of the label
       hierarchy.  If at the lowest hierarchy level (which happens to be
       highest precedence - PM_LABEL_INSTANCES) then the inst field will
       contain an actual instance identifier instead of PM_IN_NULL.

       The nlabels field describes the number of labels (name:value pairs)
       that can be found in both the accompanying json string (which is
       JSONB format - no unnecessary whitespace and with no duplicate label
       names) and the accompanying labels array (which has nlabels
       elements).

EXAMPLES         top

       Consider a deployment with global labels (assume $PCP_SYSCONF_DIR is
       set to its usual location of /etc/pcp) as follows:

       $ cat /etc/pcp/labels/*
       {
         "tier": "production",
         "datacenter": "hkg",
         "services": ["indexer","database"]
       }

       Use pminfo to form the merged labelsets for several pmdasample(1)
       metrics as follows:

       $ pminfo -m -f --labels sample.rapid sample.colour sample.mirage

       sample.rapid PMID: 30.0.64
            value 800000000
            labels {"agent":"sample","datacenter":"sydney","hostname":"acme.com","measure":"speed","role":"testing","services":["indexer","database"],"tier":"production","units":"metres per second","unitsystem":"SI"}

       sample.colour PMID: 30.0.5
            inst [0 or "red"] value 101
            inst [1 or "green"] value 202
            inst [2 or "blue"] value 303
            inst [0 or "red"] labels {"agent":"sample","datacenter":"syd","hostname":"acme.com","model":"RGB","role":"testing","services":["indexer","database"],"tier":"production"}
            inst [1 or "green"] labels {"agent":"sample","datacenter":"syd","hostname":"acme.com","model":"RGB","role":"testing","services":["indexer","database"],"tier":"production"}
            inst [2 or "blue"] labels {"agent":"sample","datacenter":"syd","hostname":"acme.com","model":"RGB","role":"testing","services":["indexer","database"],"tier":"production"}

       sample.mirage PMID: 29.0.37
            inst [0 or "m-00"] value 99
            inst [0 or "m-00"] labels {"agent":"sample","datacenter":"sydney","hostname":"acme.com","role":"testing","services":["indexer","database"],"tier":"production","transient":false}

       Here, pminfo has merged the separate sets of labels returned from
       pmGetContextLabels (names: datacenter, hostname, services, tier),
       pmGetDomainLabels (names: role, agent), pmGetInDomLabels (names:
       model), pmGetItemLabels (names: units, unitsystem) and
       pmGetInstancesLabels (names: transient) to form the complete set for
       each of the metrics.

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       On success these interfaces all return the number of elements in the
       labelsets array.  associated with performance metrics.  The memory
       associated with labelsets should be released using pmFreeLabelSets(3)
       when no longer needed.

       Only in the case of pmLookupLabels will the resulting labelset be a
       merged set of labels from all hierarchy levels.

       For the other routines, except for pmGetInstancesLabels, if no labels
       exist at all for the requested hierarchy level the return code will
       be zero and no space will have been allocated.

       In the case of pmGetInstancesLabels, which can return multiple
       elements in its labelsets result (one set of labels for each
       instance), the nlabels field may be either zero indicating no labels
       for that instance, or a positive count of labels, or a negative PMAPI
       error code.

       Note that it is mandatory for a call to pmGetInstancesLabels to be
       preceded by a call to pmGetInDom(3) to ensure the instances have been
       resolved within the PMDA.

       If no result can be obtained, e.g. due to IPC failure using the
       current PMAPI context then pmGetInstancesLabels will return a
       negative error code which may be examined using pmErrStr(3).

SEE ALSO         top

       pmcd(1), PMAPI(3), pmFetch(3), pmGetInDom(3), pmLookupDesc(3),
       pmLookupName(3), pmFreeLabelSets(3), pmMergeLabelSets(3) and
       pmNewContext(3).

COLOPHON         top

       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
       2018-02-02.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2018-02-02.)  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                   PMLOOKUPLABELS(3)

Pages that refer to this page: pmdumplog(1)pminfo(1)pmapi(3)pmdalabel(3)pmfetch(3)pmfreelabelsets(3)pmmergelabels(3)pmprintlabelsets(3)LOGARCHIVE(5)