Background:  My customer tried to set interval of pmlogger data collection on RHEL 9.6 latest pcp. I were in trouble as following:

1. At first, set PMLOGGER_INTERVAL=600 as in https://access.redhat.com/articles/1222913

2. Found /var/lib/pcp/config/pmlogger/config.default contains `log advisory on 60 seconds` policy for zeroconf/atop-proc and zeroconf/pidstat. Reconfigure the config with pmlogconf -r

3. Found `systemctl restart pmlogger` regenerate the config and make `default` to `60 seconds` again.

-#+ zeroconf/pidstat:y:default:
+#+ zeroconf/pidstat:y:60 seconds:
 ## metrics used by the pcp-pidstat(1) command
-log advisory on default {
+log advisory on 60 seconds { 
...

5. Found PMLOGGER_CHECK_SKIP_LOGCONF=yes in /usr/libexec/pcp/bin/pmlogger_check after then in /etc/sysconfig/pmlogger.

After finding the names, they are searchable and I found they are in man pages.
But I think this is some type of documentation issue. 

• Noticing (3) and (5) was not easy.
• (I still do not understand why generated configs in (3) and (4) are different.)

What were you trying to do that didn't work?

• Get required knowledge to configure pmlogger.
  • Configuration files are automatically checked and regenerated even if admin doesn't directly run pmlogconf.
  • This can be disabled.

What is the impact of this issue to you?

Some confusion.

Ideas to improve. 

• Adding some lines of reference to generated config files

  # DO NOT UPDATE THE INITIAL SECTION OF THIS FILE.
  # Any changes may be lost the next time pmlogconf is used
  # on this file.
  # Starting pmlogger trigger auto regeneration and checking by pmlogconf  <<==
  # See also man pmlogger_check(1)   <<==
  

• Updating https://access.redhat.com/articles/1222913 with
  • some groups' intervals are not default
  • to change intervals, move out groups from auto configured area.