Bug 1664871

Summary: When using base 'pcp dstat' command, time considered stat but should not be
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: John Pittman <jpittman>
Component: pcpAssignee: Nathan Scott <nathans>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact: qe-baseos-tools-bugs
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 8.0CC: fche, lberk, mgoodwin, nathans, nweddle, patrickm, tcleveng
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: 8.1   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2019-05-15 21:48:13 UTC Type: Bug
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Bug Depends On: 1682583, 1685302    
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Description John Pittman 2019-01-09 21:31:56 UTC
Description of problem:

When using base 'pcp dstat' command, time considered stat but should not be.  For example if the below command is issued, only a column of timestamps is displayed.

[root@localhost ~]# pcp dstat --time
----system----
     time     
09-01 16:27:52
09-01 16:27:53
09-01 16:27:54
09-01 16:27:55
09-01 16:27:56^C

There is no use-case for this, so instead it should assume that the user just wanted to add timestamps to the default stats.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

pcp-zeroconf-4.2.0-1.el8.x86_64

Steps to reproduce:

# pcp dstat --time

Actual results:

[root@localhost ~]# pcp dstat --time
----system----
     time     
09-01 16:27:52
09-01 16:27:53
09-01 16:27:54
09-01 16:27:55
09-01 16:27:56^C

Expected results:

[root@localhost ~]# pcp dstat --time
You did not select any stats, using -cdngy by default.
----system---- ----total-usage---- -dsk/total- -net/total- ---paging-- ---system--
     time     |usr sys idl wai stl| read  writ| recv  send|  in   out | int   csw 
09-01 16:29:42|                   |           |           |           |           
09-01 16:29:43|  0   0  99   0   0|   0     0 | 118   102 |   0     0 | 192  1237 
09-01 16:29:44|  0   0 100   0   0|   0     0 |  66   950 |   0     0 |  77   119 
09-01 16:29:45|  0   0 100   0   0|   0     0 | 118   374 |   0     0 |  68    90 
09-01 16:29:46|  0   0 100   0   0|   0     0 |  66   374 |   0     0 |  57    83 
09-01 16:29:47|  0   0  99   0   0|   0     0 | 118   374 |   0     0 |  64    97 
09-01 16:29:48|  0   0 100   0   0|   0     0 |  66   374 |   0     0 |  58    82 
09-01 16:29:49|  0   0 100   0   0|   0     0 | 118   374 |   0     0 |  56    84 ^C

Comment 1 Nathan Scott 2019-01-10 02:43:50 UTC
Hi John,

I tend to agree.  The current behaviour is compatible with the original dstat implementation, but I too find it a little odd and unhelpful so I'm inclined to change it.  (if anyone can think of any reason it might be useful to report only time, please let me know)

It's a straightforward change to the code too.  One thing I did notice while updating the code was that prefixing the --time column to the existing default set of columns does push the length of the output past 80 characters wide.  In dstat output to a console that results in the final column being chopped off (with a visible indicator that has happened) - only affects console output, not csv to-a-file mode.

I expect that's not a major issue in practice however (a small increase in sizing to the terminal resolves it), and I'll make this change exactly as you've suggested unless anyone has a compelling case for using the --time option on its own.

cheers.

Comment 2 John Pittman 2019-01-10 13:01:54 UTC
Thanks Nathan, sounds good.  Please let me know if you need anything.

Comment 3 Nathan Scott 2019-01-11 00:03:40 UTC
This is fixed upstream via the PCP commit below.  Will be in the pcp-4.3.1 release in a few weeks time, which will promptly make its way into Fedora and the RHEL8.x series thereafter.  Thanks for the report John!

commit 14ff9283d79e46d10698afafa9ad83978ec55169
Author: Nathan Scott <nathans>
Date:   Thu Jan 10 16:54:21 2019 +1100

    pcp-dstat: improve solo --time option handling
    
    Without any other options, --time is not useful - change it so
    that the 'You did not choose any stats options' logic kicks in,
    and it reports the -a set.  Fixes a console-size handling issue
    that is then exposed too.
    
    This resolves Red Hat BZ #1664871.

Comment 4 Nathan Scott 2019-05-15 21:48:13 UTC
This commit is included in the PCP rebase for 8.1.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1685302 ***