nova/doc/source/reference/gmr.rst

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Guru Meditation Reports
=======================

Nova contains a mechanism whereby developers and system administrators can generate a report about the state of a running Nova executable.  This report is called a *Guru Meditation Report* (*GMR* for short).

Generating a GMR
----------------

A *GMR* can be generated by sending the *USR2* signal to any Nova process with support (see below).  The *GMR* will then be outputted standard error for that particular process.

For example, suppose that ``nova-api`` has process id ``8675``, and was run with ``2>/var/log/nova/nova-api-err.log``.  Then, ``kill -USR2 8675`` will trigger the Guru Meditation report to be printed to ``/var/log/nova/nova-api-err.log``.

Structure of a GMR
------------------

The *GMR* is designed to be extensible; any particular executable may add its own sections.  However, the base *GMR* consists of several sections:

Package
  Shows information about the package to which this process belongs, including version information

Threads
  Shows stack traces and thread ids for each of the threads within this process

Green Threads
  Shows stack traces for each of the green threads within this process (green threads don't have thread ids)

Configuration
  Lists all the configuration options currently accessible via the CONF object for the current process

Adding Support for GMRs to New Executables
------------------------------------------

Adding support for a *GMR* to a given executable is fairly easy.

First import the module, as well as the Nova version module:

.. code-block:: python

      from oslo_reports import guru_meditation_report as gmr
      from nova import version

Then, register any additional sections (optional):

.. code-block:: python

      TextGuruMeditation.register_section('Some Special Section',
                                          some_section_generator)

Finally (under main), before running the "main loop" of the executable (usually ``service.server(server)`` or something similar), register the *GMR* hook:

.. code-block:: python

      TextGuruMeditation.setup_autorun(version)

Extending the GMR
-----------------

As mentioned above, additional sections can be added to the GMR for a particular executable.  For more information, see the inline documentation under :mod:`oslo.reports`