perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Jason Zurawski <>]

Hi Szymon;

Just to confirm, the documentation you referred to is this?

https://code.google.com/p/perfsonar-ps/wiki/pSPerformanceToolkit33#Timezone_Configuration

It is correct that we just use the underlying RHEL/CentOS tools for this 
operation as well, and all of our services use interfaces to the syslog 
infrastructure via Log4Perl to take whatever time may be loaded into the 
system.  It may be the case that those instructions are out of date though.  
I tried the following steps on one of my instances, and they appeared to work:

        a) copy the zone info from '/usr/share/zoneinfo/*' to /etc/localtime. 
 In my case I switched from PDT to EDT:

sudo cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime

        b) Manually modify '/etc/sysconfig/clock' to the correct zone

        c) reboot

        d) After reboot verify 'date', and then look at one of your log 
files.  In my case I saw this for PingER's modification time

> [psadmin@nettest
>  perfsonar]$ ls -als /var/log/perfsonar | grep pinger\.log$
>    44 -rw-r--r--   1 perfsonar perfsonar    37059 Apr  3 08:40 pinger.log

and this inside of the file where the zone was switched:

> 2014/04/03 05:40:57 (8685) ERROR> Remote.pm:373 
> perfSONAR_PS::Client::LS::Remote::getKey - Key not found.
> 2014/04/03 05:40:57 (8685) ERROR> Remote.pm:692 
> perfSONAR_PS::Client::LS::Remote::sendKeepalive - Key value not supplied.
> 2014/04/03 08:52:32 (2177) WARN> daemon.pl:262 main:: - Setting listener 
> queue size to 100
> 2014/04/03 08:52:32 (2177) WARN> daemon.pl:272 main:: - Enabling echo 
> service for each endpoint unless specified otherwise


Let us know if that works, if so I will change that documentation to reflect 
this as the accepted solution.  

With regards to your other question related to the GUIs - the OWAMP and BWCTL 
graphs will use the local time of the browser that is viewing them.  PingER 
and the SNMP graphs are older, and both will be depreciated in the next 
release, so those will use whatever the server's system time happens to be. 

Thanks;

-jason

On Apr 3, 2014, at 6:13 AM, Szymon Trocha 
<>
 wrote:

> BTW - are there suggestions to use common system timezone e.g. set to UTC 
> in all test hosts to avoid time difference problems? What is the approach? 
> Can GUI interpret graphs according to local timezone and convert from UTC?

On Apr 3, 2014, at 3:42 AM, Szymon Trocha 
<>
 wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> in v 3.3.2 I have changed timezone as per installation guide but it seems 
> that it's not taken into account by the toolkit e.g. all logs are with 
> wrong timestamps including timestamps in the logs. I also wonder whether it 
> impacts the tests as I can't see any pingER results - the GUI says "No 
> results":
> 
> [root@ps1
>  perfsonar]# date
> Thu Apr  3 09:05:41 CEST 2014
> [root@ps1
>  perfsonar]# cat /etc/sysconfig/clock | grep ZONE
> ZONE="Europe/Warsaw"
> [root@ps1
>  perfsonar]#
> 
> Here is what I see through GUI:
> Index of /toolkit/admin/logs
> [ICO]    Name    Last modified    Size    Description
> [DIR]    Parent Directory         -
> [TXT]    config_daemon.log    02-Apr-2014 12:42     0
> [ ]    discover_external_address.log    02-Apr-2014 23:47 3.2K
> [ ]    ls_cache_daemon.log    02-Apr-2014 23:48     4.2K
> [ ]    ls_cache_daemon.log.1    02-Apr-2014 14:31     8.4K
> [ ]    ls_registration_daemon.log    03-Apr-2014 00:00     80K
> [ ]    ls_registration_daemon.log.1    02-Apr-2014 14:37     112K
> [ ]    owamp_bwctl.log    03-Apr-2014 00:27     331K
> [ ]    perfsonarbuoy_ma.log    02-Apr-2014 23:50     2.6K
> [ ]    perfsonarbuoy_ma.log.1    02-Apr-2014 07:59     59K
> [ ]    pinger.log    03-Apr-2014 00:28     653K
> [ ]    pinger.log.1    02-Apr-2014 14:59     677K
> [ ]    service_watcher.log    03-Apr-2014 00:00     63K
> [ ]    service_watcher_error.log    03-Apr-2014 00:00     424
> [ ]    snmp_ma.log    02-Apr-2014 23:50     3.9K
> [ ]    snmp_ma.log.1    02-Apr-2014 07:16     15K
> [TXT]    traceroute_ma.log    03-Apr-2014 00:19     442K
> [ ]    traceroute_ma.netlogger.log    03-Apr-2014 00:19     5.6M
> [ ]    traceroute_master.log    02-Apr-2014 23:48     7.5K
> [ ]    traceroute_master.netlogger.log    03-Apr-2014 00:19 46K
> [ ]    traceroute_ondemand_mp.log    03-Apr-2014 00:28     454K
> [ ]    traceroute_ondemand_mp.netlogger.log    02-Apr-2014 23:48 1.6K
> [ ]    traceroute_scheduler.log    03-Apr-2014 00:18     53K
> [ ]    traceroute_scheduler.netlogger.log    03-Apr-2014 00:28 697K
> [DIR]    web_admin/    02-Apr-2014 23:58     -
> 
> 
> When I'm trying to graph ping results from yesterday (which means Star: Apr 
> 2, End Apr 2) the gui says No results and the pinger.log says:
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (2009) INFO> daemon.pl:572 main::psService - Received 
> incoming connection from:     127.0.0.1
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (3105) INFO> Request.pm:357 
> perfSONAR_PS::Request::finish - Total service time for request from 
> 127.0.0.1: 0.008292 seconds
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (2009) INFO> daemon.pl:572 main::psService - Received 
> incoming connection from:     127.0.0.1
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (3106) FATAL> PingER.pm:113 
> perfSONAR_PS::Datatypes::PingER::handle -  Handler for SetupDataRequest 
> failed: Can't use string ("-1") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at 
> /opt/perfsonar_ps/PingER/bin/../lib/perfSONAR_PS/Datatypes/PingER.pm line 
> 531.
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (3106) ERROR> RequestHandler.pm:709 
> perfSONAR_PS::RequestHandler::__ANON__ - Error handling metadata/data 
> block:  Handler for SetupDataRequest failed: Can't use string ("-1") as a 
> HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at 
> /opt/perfsonar_ps/PingER/bin/../lib/perfSONAR_PS/Datatypes/PingER.pm line 
> 531.
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (3106) ERROR> RequestHandler.pm:735 
> perfSONAR_PS::RequestHandler::handleMessage - Couldn't handle requested 
> metadata: An internal error occurred while servicing this metadata/data 
> block
> 2014/04/03 00:31:38 (3106) INFO> Request.pm:357 
> perfSONAR_PS::Request::finish - Total service time for request from 
> 127.0.0.1: 0.02274 seconds
> 
> when viewing the database with select * from data_201404; all entries 
> contain 0 value ...
> 
> 
> -- 
> Szymon Trocha
> 
> Poznań Supercomputing & Netw. Center ::: NETWORK OPERATION CENTER
> Tel. +48 618582022 ::: http://noc.man.poznan.pl