'\"macro stdmacro
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.TH PMRECONNECTCONTEXT 3 "PCP" "Performance Co-Pilot"
.SH NAME
\f3pmReconnectContext\f1 \- reconnect to a PMAPI context
.SH "C SYNOPSIS"
.ft 3
#include <pcp/pmapi.h>
.sp
int pmReconnectContext(int \fIhandle\fP);
.sp
cc ... \-lpcp
.ft 1
.SH DESCRIPTION
As a consequence of network, host or
Performance Metrics Collector Daemon (PMCD) failures, an applications
connection to a PMCD may be established and then subsequently lost.
.PP
The routine
.B pmReconnectContext
allows an application to request that the context identified by 
.I handle
should be re-established, provided the associated PMCD is accessible.
.PP
To avoid flooding the system with reconnect requests,
.B pmReconnectContext
will only attempt a reconnection after a suitable delay from the previous
unsuccessful attempt to reconnect this context. This imposed restriction on
the reconnect re-try time interval uses an exponential back-off so that the 
initial delay is 5 seconds after the first unsuccessful attempt, then 10
seconds, then 20 seconds, then 40 seconds and then 80 seconds thereafter.
.PP
The environment variable
.B PMCD_RECONNECT_TIMEOUT
may be used to redefine the back-off intervals, see
.BR PMAPI (3).
.PP
If the reconnection succeeds,
.B pmReconnectContext
returns
.IR handle .
.PP
If
.I handle
identifies a context associated with an archive source of metrics,
.B pmReconnectContext
does nothing and returns
.IR handle .
.PP
Calling
.B pmReconnectContext
with a handle identifying a currently connected context will cause the
connection to be broken before any reconnection is attempted.
.PP
Note that even in the case of a successful reconnection,
.B pmReconnectContext
does not change the current
Performance Metrics Application Programming Interface (PMAPI)
context.
.PP
When attempting to connect to a remote
.BR pmcd (1)
on a machine that is booting,
.B pmReconnectContext
could potentially block for a long time until the remote machine
finishes its initialization.
.B pmReconnectContext
will abort and return an error if the connection has not been established after
some specified interval has elapsed.  The default interval is 5
seconds.  This may be modified by setting
.B PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT
in the environment to a real number of seconds for the
desired timeout.
This is most useful in cases where the remote host is at
the end of a slow network, requiring longer latencies to
establish the connection correctly.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B PMCD_CONNECT_TIMEOUT
Timeout period (in seconds) for
.BR pmcd (1)
connection attempts.
.TP
.B PMCD_RECONNECT_TIMEOUT
Redefines the back-off intervals - refer to
.BR PMAPI (3).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR pmcd (1),
.BR PMAPI (3),
.BR pmNewContext (3)
and
.BR pmUseContext (3).
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
.P
.B PM_ERR_NOCONTEXT
.IP
.I handle
does not identify a valid PMAPI context
.P
.B \-ETIMEDOUT
.IP
The re-try time has not elapsed, or the reconnection is attempted and fails.
.SH CAVEAT
.P
Applications that use
.BR gethostbyname (3)
should exercise caution because the static fields in
.I "struct hostent"
may not be preserved across some
.BR PMAPI (3)
calls.
In particular,
.BR pmNewContext (3)
and
.BR pmReconnectContext (3)
both may call
.BR gethostbyname (3)
internally.