Welcome to Pandora FMS Community!

Find answers, ask questions, and connect with our community around the world.

Welcome to Pandora FMS Community Forums Community support Windows module_perfcounter – does anyone have it working?

  • Windows module_perfcounter – does anyone have it working?

    Posted by Dez on October 20, 2009 at 06:34

    I have setup a basic Pandora 2.1 server installion & successfully installed the Windows Agent on a few Windows 2003 servers. I have also successfully added extra modules for monitoring extra CPU’s & disk space on extra drives. However I have not been able to get the perfcounter module to work.

    As a simple test I just copy & pasted in the exact example from the wiki into my conf file:

    module_begin
    module_name perfcounter
    module_type generic_data
    module_perfcounter MemoryPages/sec
    module_end

    I then restarted the agent service, but the perfcounter module did not show up on the Pandora server (unlike the extra CPU & disk space modules which showed up straight away).

    The wiki obscurely mentions that pdh.dll must be installed. I have checked & it is present in C:WINDOWSsystem32. I even put a copy of it in C:Program Filespandora_agent. Still no change.

    So my question is, does anyone have this working. If so, then what extra steps do I have to do?

    Thanks.

    Sancho replied 15 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 9 Replies
  • 9 Replies
  • Dez

    Member
    October 20, 2009 at 07:02
    0 Karma points
    Community rank: tentacle-noob-1 Tentacle noob
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    This is my debug log. It doesn’t even mention the perfcounter module.

    2009-10-20 00:00:03 Run begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:03 Pandora_Windows_Service::checkConfig: Remote configuration disabled
    2009-10-20 00:00:03 Run ServicioReg
    2009-10-20 00:00:03 Run ReceivedPackets
    2009-10-20 00:00:03 Executing: cmd.exe /c “netstat -s | grep “Packets Received” | tr -d ” ” | cut -f 2 -d “=” | tr -d “n””
    2009-10-20 00:00:04 Run Listen_Conn
    2009-10-20 00:00:04 Executing: cmd.exe /c “netstat -an | grep LISTEN | wc -l | tr -d ” “”
    2009-10-20 00:00:04 Run FreeDiskC
    2009-10-20 00:00:04 Run FreeDiskD
    2009-10-20 00:00:04 Run CPUUse0
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Run FreeMemory
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Run Logevents
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 ServicioReg getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 ServicioReg getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 ReceivedPackets getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 ReceivedPackets getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Listen_Conn getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Listen_Conn getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeDiskC getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeDiskC getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeDiskD getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeDiskD getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 CPUUse0 getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 CPUUse0 getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeMemory getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 FreeMemory getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Logevents getXML begin
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Logevents getXML end
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Copying XML on C:WindowsTempIMXJSNS1_Jetset_Production.19311.data
    2009-10-20 00:00:08 Next execution on 60 seconds

  • Sancho

    Administrator
    October 20, 2009 at 11:16
    2321 Karma points
    Community awards: bulb Bright ideas
    Community rank: tentacle_master_icon Tentacle Master
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Perfcounter is for Pandora FMS 3.0 windows agent, not for 2.1, the good news is you can use the pandora fms agent 3.0 for windows in a 2.1 server setup. Just install the newest windows agent, is not released officially (the RC1 will be released today or tomorrow, just for you, follow this link:

    http://artica.es/downloads/Pandora FMS Windows agent v3.0 RC1-Setup.exe

  • Dez

    Member
    October 20, 2009 at 11:23
    0 Karma points
    Community rank: tentacle-noob-1 Tentacle noob
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Thats great. Thank you very much.

    Is there a v2.1 specific version of the Windows Agent documentation? I’m concerned that I might make this sort of mistake again.

  • Sancho

    Administrator
    October 20, 2009 at 11:26
    2321 Karma points
    Community awards: bulb Bright ideas
    Community rank: tentacle_master_icon Tentacle Master
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Yep, but you should use the 3.0 version, is a HUGE step forward in Pandora. All documentation for all versions are on our wiki at http://openideas.info/wiki , plus a lot of annexes and other (interesting) stuff.

  • Dez

    Member
    October 20, 2009 at 12:35
    0 Karma points
    Community rank: tentacle-noob-1 Tentacle noob
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Ok, I have made some progress now. I have added a counter for available megabytes as follows:

    # Memory Available MBytes
    module_begin
    module_name MemAvailMBytes
    module_type generic_data
    module_description Memory Available MBytes
    module_perfcounter MemoryAvailable MBytes
    module_end

    This appears to be returning valid values.

    However I have also added one for processor time:

    # Get processor time from Performance Counter
    module_begin
    module_name Processor_Time
    module_type generic_data
    module_perfcounter Processor(_Total)% Processor Time
    module_end

    As far I know this should be returning values between 0 to 100. Instead I’m getting values like this:

       
            Processor_Time
            generic_data
            39806287500000
            Processor Total Precent Processor Time
       

    Any ideas?

  • Sancho

    Administrator
    October 20, 2009 at 12:48
    2321 Karma points
    Community awards: bulb Bright ideas
    Community rank: tentacle_master_icon Tentacle Master
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Windows surprise you again with black magic?, don’t worry 🙂

    Perfcounters returns values with different scales, windows perfcounter “resize” them, applying a factor over received data, pandora could do the same using the postprocess value in the module definitioin, if you post process them using 0.0001 for example, you will divide it by 1000. Another problem could be that windows are reporting a global counter, so you need to define the module as a generic_data_inc type, not generic_data.

    I hope this help to fight against the black magic of Windows !

  • Dez

    Member
    October 21, 2009 at 09:34
    0 Karma points
    Community rank: tentacle-noob-1 Tentacle noob
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    The data seems wrong no matter how I scale it. In this case I used the following WMI equivalent & it is returning correct data:

    module_begin
    module_name PercentProcessorTime
    module_type generic_data_string
    module_wmiquery select PercentProcessorTime from Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Processor where name = ‘_Total’
    module_wmicolumn PercentProcessorTime
    module_end

  • aoton

    Member
    December 9, 2009 at 17:11
    0 Karma points
    Community rank: tentacle-noob-1 Tentacle noob
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Hello,

    I’m working with this module getting “differents” behaivours on virtual machines.

    With:

    module_begin
    module_name VM Processor Time (%)
    module_type generic_data_inc
    module_perfcounter VM Processor(_Total)% Processor Time
    module_end

    I have to add a Post process factor of 0.00001

    This return a value near of 0 when the vm is not under load and near to 98 with cpuburn running, by example.

    But with:

    module_begin
    module_name Processor Time (%)
    module_type generic_data_inc
    module_perfcounter Processor(_Total)% Processor Time
    module_end

    Need a post process factor 0.00001 too but the returned values works from 98 witout load and 0 with load.

    I think that both counters must return a similar value, knows somebody why this behaivour?

    Regards,

  • Sancho

    Administrator
    December 11, 2009 at 14:11
    2321 Karma points
    Community awards: bulb Bright ideas
    Community rank: tentacle_master_icon Tentacle Master
    Like it
    Up
    0
    Down
    Drop it
    ::

    Perfcounters are a depth mistery. WMI its usually much better, but in some applications you only have perfcounters, we add this feature for compatibility  and to have more options, but for get CPU is much better the internal pandora module, for example.