pmdbg(1) — Linux manual page

PMDBG(1)                 General Commands Manual                 PMDBG(1)

NAME         top

       pmdbg - report Performance Co-Pilot debug options

SYNOPSIS         top

       pmdbg [-l]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The components of the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) use a global
       mechanism to control diagnostic and debug output.

       pmdbg prints out all the available debug options with the name of
       the option and some descriptive text.

       The -l option does nothing, but is included for backwards
       compatibility with older versions of pmdbg.

       Most applications using the facilities of the PCP support a -D
       name[,name ...]  command-line syntax to enable debug control using
       the name(s) of the desired debug options.

       Alternatively the initial value of the debug control flags may be
       set to a comma-separated list if option name(s) using the
       environment variable $PCP_DEBUG, provided the applications use
       pmGetOptions(3) to process command line options and arguments.  If
       both mechanisms are used the effect is additive, so the resultant
       flags are those set via $PCP_DEBUG combined with those set via any
       -D command line options.

PCP ENVIRONMENT         top

       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         top

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

       In PCP 7.0 support for the the old-style was dropped.

       The table below documents the equivalence for those debugging
       options that appeared in both the 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         top

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

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 2026-05-24.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2026-05-24.)  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                           PMDBG(1)

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