Add Custom-Monitored Programs

Although you can add any UNIX program to Pepperdata custom program monitoring, monitoring works best for programs that are long-running—at least 10 seconds, and optimally minutes. If a program finishes in less than 10 seconds, its reported status and data might be incomplete due to the Pepperdata sample rate.

Procedure

Important: You can begin with any host on which Pepperdata is running, but be sure to repeat all the procedure steps on every host where Pepperdata is running.

If Pepperdata is already performing custom monitoring or extended JMX metrics collection, skip to step 2 to add new rules. Otherwise, configure the rules file as described in this step.

Note: The same rules file is used for program matching rules and extended JMX metrics definitions.

Add the property to specify the filename and location for your rules file, pepperdata.agent.program.monitor.configPath, to the Pepperdata site file, pepperdata-site.xml. Be sure to replace your-file-path-and-name with the name you want for your yaml rules file.

By default, the Pepperdata site file, pepperdata-site.xml, is located in /etc/pepperdata. If you customized the location, the file is specified by the PD_CONF_DIR environment variable. See Change the Location of pepperdata-site.xml for details.
```
<property>
  <name>pepperdata.agent.program.monitor.configPath</name>
  <value>your-file-path-and-name</value>
</property>
```
Malformed XML files can cause operational errors that can be difficult to debug. To prevent such errors, we recommend that you use a linter, such as xmllint, after you edit any .xml configuration file.
Configure your program matching rules.
1. Open the rules file for editing.
  - If Pepperdata is already performing custom program monitoring or extended JMX metrics collection, open the existing yaml rules file.
  - Otherwise, create a text file for the filename and location that you specified for the pepperdata.agent.program.monitor.configPath property.
2. Add, delete, or revise the program matching rules; see Syntax: Program Matching Rules.
3. Save your changes and close the file.
Verify that your program matching rules are valid; see Verify and Validate Program Matching Rules.

Important: Do not skip this verification step. If there are errors in any rule or the rules file is invalid in any way, none of the rules and definitions are loaded.
Load the program matching rules into the PepAgent by restarting the PepAgent process on the host.

You can use either the service (if provided by your OS) or systemctl command:
- sudo service pepagentd restart
- sudo systemctl restart pepagentd
Tip: Any time you modify the yaml rules file, you must reload the rules file by restarting PepAgent.
Repeat steps 1 to 4 on every host where Pepperdata is running.

Important: Be sure to repeat steps 1 to 4 on every host where Pepperdata is running. If you skip the configuration process on a host, Pepperdata is unable to perform the custom program monitoring.

Next: Syntax: Program Matching Rules