intel_pmt_plugin

Overview

intel_pmt_plugin is an external collector plugin for Netdata. It retrieves telemetry data from Intel Platform Monitoring Technology (PMT) hardware capabilities and displays it on Netdata charts.

The plugin primarily parses periodic raw PMT data that is being sampled by heartd and decodes it using libpmt. Alternatively, it can interface with the ChromiumOS pmt_tool to sample data if heartd is not configured by the user.

This plugin exposes these metrics to Netdata for real-time monitoring and visualization through the [Netdata External Plugins API].

Prerequisites

To use this plugin, the target system must meet the following requirements:

Hardware: An Intel platform that supports Intel PMT (e.g., Meteor Lake).
Kernel: A Linux kernel with Intel PMT drivers enabled (e.g., intel_pmt_class).
Software:
- heartd: (Recommended) System service for periodic health monitoring.
- pmt_tool: Utility for on-demand sampling of Intel PMT data, used as a fallback.
- netdata: The monitoring agent.

Features

Periodic Ingestion: Ingests raw PMT data in real time as it is being sampled by heartd periodically.
Libmpt Integration: Decodes raw data sampled by heartd using libpmt/decoder.
Fallback Mode: Can invoke pmt_tool to sample data if heartd is unavailable.
Dynamic Charts: Creates charts dynamically based on the telemetry regions and fields exposed by the hardware.
Low Overhead: Efficiently processes data to minimize system impact.

Installation

In a standard ChromiumOS build environment, this plugin is typically installed alongside pmt_tool.

To manually install or enable it for Netdata:

Ensure the plugin script/binary is executable:
```
chmod +x intel_pmt.plugin
```
Place the plugin in the Netdata plugins directory (typically /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/ or /usr/local/etc/netdata/custom-plugins.d/).
Ensure the netdata user has permissions to execute pmt_tool and access the necessary system files (usually under /sys/class/intel_pmt). For example, run netdata as root: netdata -u root or start_netdata.sh.

Configuration

Command-line Options

The plugin supports the following command-line options to configure the data source:

--source: Specifies the data source format.
- heartd: Reads periodic raw data sampled by the heartd service. This is the recommended mode.
- csv: Reads data from a CSV file or invokes pmt_tool to generate it. (Default)

The following options are only applicable if --source=csv.

--path: Specifies the path to the input file (e.g., CSV file).
--seconds: Sampling interval in seconds when using pmt_tool.
--records: Number of records to collect when using pmt_tool.

Enabling the Plugin

Netdata generally auto-detects external plugins found in its plugins directory. To explicitly enable or disable it, edit /usr/local/etc/netdata/netdata.conf:

[plugins]
    intel_pmt_plugin = yes