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Re: why not install as DSO?

To: Alan Bailey <abailey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: why not install as DSO?
From: "Nathan Scott" <nathans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:24:41 -0500
In-reply-to: Alan Bailey <abailey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> "why not install as DSO?" (Jul 13, 9:00pm)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107132056240.2267-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: owner-pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx
hi Alan,

On Jul 13,  9:00pm, Alan Bailey wrote:
> Subject: why not install as DSO?
> I've got a simple question.  Why is the default to install pmdas as
> daemons instead of as a DSO?  I quote from pmdaproc.sh:
> 
>   # Install control variables
>   #       Can install as DSO?
>   dso_opt=false
> 
> I kinda like installing them as DSO's because it puts everything into one
> process.  It might also end up taking up less memory.  Which one is
> recommended, and why?  Or is this something that is figured out at install
> time, and since I'm on a linux system, it thinks it shouldn't install it
> as a DSO?
> 
> Just wondering.
> 

One thing to bear in mind is that pmcd is single threaded by
design, so a PMDA which takes some time to fetch new data can
cause pmcd to respond more slowly - eg. if the fetch mechanism
has to block while obtaining data.  The kernel PMDAs (for both
IRIX + Linux) tend to use system calls to fetch their data and
are very lightweight - other PMDAs are not quite so cheap.

Another factor is that a separate process is self-contained,
so a crash in a non-DSO PMDA won't cause pmcd to die & pmcd
can continue on gracefully serving up other metrics in this
situation.

There is little difference between the Install scripts on
Linux and IRIX, so the choice of DSO/daemon usually defaults
to daemon (on all platforms) to try to improve parallelism
and robustness.

cheers.

-- 
Nathan

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