ApMon - Application Monitoring API for C++
				version 2.2.8
		  *******************************************
		    ***************************************
			        October 2008
			California Institute of Technology
		    *****************************************			
1. Introduction
2. What's new in version 2.x?
3. Installation 
4. Using ApMon
5. xApMon - Monitoring information
6. Logging
7. Bug reports

1. Introduction
****************
  ApMon is an API that can be used by any application to send monitoring
information to MonALISA services (http://monalisa.cacr.caltech.edu). The
monitoring data is sent as UDP datagrams to one or more hosts running MonALISA.
The MonALISA host may require a password enclosed in each datagram, for 
authentication purposes. ApMon can also send datagrams that contain monitoring
information regarding the system or the application.  
  The C++ version of ApMon only works on Linux systems.

2. What's new in version 2.x?
*****************************
  ApMon 2.0 was extended with xApMon, a feature that allows it to send to the 
MonALISA service datagrams with monitoring information regarding the system or
the application. In this ApMon version there is also the possibility to 
associate the datagrams with timestamps set by the user.

3. Installation
****************
 
  To compile the ApMon routines and all the examples, type:

	./configure [options]
	make
	make install

  (where "options" are the typical configure options).
  If you have Doxygen, you can get the API docs by issuing make doc.

  The lib will be installed in $prefix/lib and the ApMon.h include file into 
the $prefix/include directory.

4. Using ApMon
*******************
  We defined a class called ApMon, which holds the
parameters that the user wants to include in the datagram, until the datagram
is sent. 
  The datagram sent to the MonaLisa module has the following structure:
  - a header which has the following syntax: 
      v:<ApMon_version>p:<password>       
      
      (the password is sent in plaintext; if the MonALISA host does not require
      a password, a 0-length string should be sent instead of the password).
      
  - (since version 2.2.0) an ID for the sender, which is a randomly generated 
number.
  - (since version 2.2.0) a sequence number for the datagram. This field and
the previous one can be used by the MonALISA service to detect the loss of
datagrams.
  - cluster name (string) - the name of the monitored cluster 
  - node name (string) - the name of the monitored nodes
  - number of parameters (int)
  - for each parameter: name (string), value type (int), value (can be double,
int or string)
  - optionally a timestamp (int) if the user wants to specify the time
associated with the data; if the timestamp is not given, the current time on
the destination host which runs MonALISA will be used.

  The ApMon class has a constructor with the name of a configuration file as
the unique parameter. The configuration file specifies the IP addresses or
DNS names of the hosts running MonALISA, to which the data is sent, and
also specifies the ports on which the MonALISA service listens, on the 
destination hosts. The configuration file contains lines that specify the 
destination hosts and lines for configuring xApMon (see section 5). The
lines that specify the destination hosts have the following syntax:

IP_address|DNS_name[:port] [password]

Examples:
rb.rogrid.pub.ro:8884 mypassword
rb.rogrid.pub.ro:8884
ui.rogrid.pub.ro mypassword
ui.rogrid.pub.ro

  If the port is not specified, the default value 8884 will be assumed.
If the password is not specified, an empty string will be sent as password
to the MonALISA host (and the host will only accept the datagram if it does not
require a password)
  The configuration file may contain blank lines and comment lines (starting 
with "#"); these lines are ignored, and so are the leading and the trailing
white spaces from the other lines. 

 An ApMon object can also be initialized from a list which contains hostnames
and ports as explained above and/or URLs from where the names of the
destination hosts and the corresponding ports are to be read; the URLs
are associated with plain text configuration files which have the format 
described above. The URLs can also represent requests to a servlet or a CGI
script which can automatically provide the best configuration, taking into 
account the geographical zone in which the machine which runs ApMon is 
situated, and the application for which ApMon is used 
(see example_confgen.cpp). The geographical zone is determined from the
machine's IP and the applicaiton name is given by the user as the value of the
"appName" parameter included in the URL.


 There are two ways in which the user can send parameter values to MonALISA:
  a) a single parameter in a datagram
  b) multiple parameters in a datagram

  For sending a datagram with a single parameter, the user should call the
function sendParameter() which has several overloaded variants.

  For sending multiple parameters in a datagram, the user should call the
function sendParameters(), which receives as arguments arrays with the names
and the values of the parameters to be sent.

  Since version 2.0 there are two additional functions, sendTimedParameter() 
and sendTimedParameters(), which allow the user to specify a timestamp
for the parameters.
  
  ApMon does not send parameters whose names are NULL strings or string 
parameters that have NULL value (these parameters are "skipped").

  The configuration file and/or URLs can be periodically checked for changes,
but this option is disabled by default. In order to enable it, the user should
call setConfCheck(true); the value of the time interval at which the recheck
operatins are performed, can be set with the functions setConfRecheck() or
setRecheckInterval(). The way in which the configuration file or URLs are
checked for changes can be also specified in the configuration file:

  - to enable/disable the periodical checking of the configuration file
or URLs:
xApMon_conf_recheck = on/off

  - to set the time interval at which the file/URLs are checked for changes:
xApMon_recheck_interval = <number_of_seconds>

***** IMPORTANT! *******
  If you want to use features that involve the background thread (periodical
configuration reloading, job/system monitoring), the ApMon object used must
be alloc'ed dynamically (as seen in the examples). 
 
  For a better understanding of how to use the functions mentioned above, see
the Doxygen documentation and the examples.


5. xApMon - Monitoring information
***********************************
ApMon can be configured to send to the MonALISA service monitoring information 
regarding the application or the system. The system monitoring information
is obtained from the proc/ filesystem and the job monitoring information is
obtained by parsing the output of the ps command. If job monitoring for a
process is requested, all its sub-processes will be taken into consideration
(i.e., the resources consumed by the process and all the subprocesses will be
summed).

There are three categories of monitoring datagrams that ApMon can send:

a) job monitoring information - contains the following parameters:

   run_time		- elapsed time from the start of this job
   cpu_time	   	- processor time spent running this job
   cpu_usage		- percent of the processor used for this job, as 
			  reported by ps
   virtualmem	 	- virtual memory occupied by the job (in KB)
   rss			- resident image size of the job (in KB)
   mem_usage		- percent of the memory occupied by the job, as 
			  reported by ps
   workdir_size		- size in MB of the working directory of the job
   disk_total		- size in MB of the disk partition containing the 
			  working directory
   disk_used		- size in MB of the used disk space on the partition 
			  containing the working directory
   disk_free		- size in MB of the free disk space on the partition 
			  containing the working directory
   disk_usage		- percent of the used disk partition containing the 
			  working directory
   open_files		- number of opened file descriptors

b) system monitoring information - contains the following parameters:

   cpu_usr  		- percent of the time spent by the CPU in user mode 
   cpu_sys		- percent of the time spent by the CPU in system mode
   cpu_nice		- percent of the time spent by the CPU in nice mode
   cpu_idle		- percent of the time spent by the CPU in idle mode
   cpu_usage	 	- CPU usage percent
   pages_in		- the number of pages paged in per second 
			  (average for the last time interval)
   pages_out		- the number of pages paged out per second 
			  (average for the last time interval) 
   swap_in		- the number of swap pages brought in per second 
			  (average for the last time interval)
   swap_out		- the number of swap pages brought out per second 
			  (average for the last time interval) 
   load1		- average system load over the last minute
   load5		- average system load over the last 5 min
   load15		- average system load over the last 15 min
   mem_used	        - amount of currently used memory, in MB
   mem_free		- amount of free memory, in MB
   mem_usage		- used system memory in percent
   swap_used	        - amount of currently used swap, in MB 
   swap_free		- amount of free swap, in MB
   swap_usage		- swap usage in percent
   net_in	        - network (input)  transfer in kBps
   net_out	        - network (input)  transfer in kBps 
   net_errs	        - number of network errors
  (these will produce params called sys_ethX_in, sys_ethX_out, sys_ethX_errs, 
   corresponding to each network interface)
   processes		- curent number of processes
   processes_{D,R,T,S,Z}- number of processes in the D (uninterruptible sleep),
			  R (running), T (traced/stopped), S (sleeping),
			  Z (zombie) states   	
   uptime		- system uptime in days
   net_sockets          - the number of open TCP, UDP, ICM, Unix sockets.
   (this will produce parameters called sockets_tcp, sockets_udp, ...)
   net_tcp_details      - the number of TCP sockets in each possible state
   (this will produce parameters called sockets_tcp_ESTABLISHED, 
    sockets_TCP_LISTEN, ...)
        
c) general system information - contains the following parameters:
   hostname		-
   ip                  	- will produce ethX_ip params for each interface
   cpu_MHz		- CPU frequency
   no_CPUs             	- number of CPUs
   total_mem		- total amount of memory, in MB
   total_swap		- total amount of swap, in MB
   cpu_vendor_id	- the CPU's vendor ID
   cpu_family
   cpu_model
   cpu_model_name
   bogomips             - number of bogomips for the CPU  

The parameters can be enabled/disabled from the configuration file (if
they are disabled, they will not be included in the datagrams). In order to 
enable/disable a parameter, the user should write in the configuration
file lines of the following form:

xApMon_job_parametername = on/off
(for job parameters)
or:
xApMon_sys_parametername = on/off
(for job parameters)
or:
xApMon_parametername = on/off
(for general system parameters)

Example:
xApMon_job_run_time = on
xApMon_sys_load1 = off
xApMon_no_CPUs = on

By default, all the parameters are enabled.

The job/system monitoring can be enabled/disabled by including the following 
lines in the configuration file:

xApMon_job_monitoring = on/off
xApMon_sys_monitoring = on/off

The datagrams with general system information are only sent if system 
monitoring is enabled, at greater time intervals (2 datagrams with general
system information for each 100 system monitoring datagrams). To enable/
disable the sending of general system information datagrams, the following
line should be written in the configuration file:

xApMon_general_info = on/off

The time interval at which job/system monitoring datagrams are sent can be set
with:

xApMon_job_interval = <number_of_seconds>
xApMon_sys_interval = <number_of_seconds>

To enable/disable the job/system monitoring, and also to set the time 
intervals, the functions setJobMonitoring() and setSysMonitoring() can be
used (see the API docs for more details).

To monitor jobs, you have to specify the PID of the parent process for the 
tree of processes that you want to monitor, the working directory, the cluster 
and the node names that will be registered in MonALISA (and also the job 
monitoring must be enabled). If work directory is "", no information will be 
retrieved about disk:
  addJobToMonitor(long pid, char *workdir, char *clusterName,
			    char *nodeName);

  To stop monitoring a job, the removeJobToMonitor(long pid) should be called.

 LIMITATIONS:
  The following values are limited to some constants defined in ApMon.h:
  - the maximum number of destinations to which the datagrams can be sent 
(specified by the constant MAX_N_DESTINATIONS; by default it is 30)
  - the maximum size of a datagram (specified by the constant MAX_DGRAM_SIZE;
by default it is 8192B and the user should not modify this value)
  - the password may have at most 20 characters
  - the maximum number of jobs that can be monitored is 30 	
  - the maximum number of messages that can be sent per second, on average, is
limited, in order to avoid the accidental growth of the network load (which 
may happen, for example, if the user places the sendParameters() calls in a 
loop, without pauses between them). To set the maxim number of messages that 
can be sent per second by ApMon, you can use the following function:
  setMaxMsgRate(int rate);

  Another way to set the maximum number of messages is to specify it in the
configuration file:
  xApMon_maxMsgRate = 30
  
  By default, the maximum number of messages per second is 50.

6. Logging
***********
  ApMon prints its messages to the standard output, with the aid of the 
logger() function from utils.cpp (see the API documentation). The user may
print its own messages with this function (see example_1.cpp, example_2.cpp).
Each message has a level which represent its importance. The possible levels
are FATAL, WARNING, INFO, FINE, DEBUG. Only the messages which have a level 
with greater or equal importance than the current ApMon loglevel are printed. 
The ApMon loglevel can be set from the configuration file (by default it is
INFO):

xApMon_loglevel = <level>
e.g.,
xApMon_loglevel = FINE

  The logging level can also be set with the aid of the setLogLevel() method, 
e.g.:
  ApMon::setLogLevel("WARNING");
  
7. Bug reports
***************
  For bug reports, comments and suggestions please write to
  developers@monalisa.cern.ch