1 collectd - System information collection daemon
2 =================================================
3 http://collectd.org/
5 About
6 -----
8 collectd is a small daemon which collects system information periodically
9 and provides mechanisms to store and monitor the values in a variety of
10 ways.
13 Features
14 --------
16 * collectd is able to collect the following data:
18 - apache
19 Apache server utilization: Number of bytes transfered, number of
20 requests handled and detailed scoreboard statistics
22 - apcups
23 APC UPS Daemon: UPS charge, load, input/output/battery voltage, etc.
25 - apple_sensors
26 Sensors in Macs running Mac OS X / Darwin: Temperature, fanspeed and
27 voltage sensors.
29 - ascent
30 Statistics about Ascent, a free server for the game `World of Warcraft'.
32 - battery
33 Batterycharge, -current and voltage of ACPI and PMU based laptop
34 batteries.
36 - bind
37 Name server and resolver statistics from the `statistics-channel'
38 interface of BIND 9.5, 9,6 and later.
40 - conntrack
41 Number of nf_conntrack entries.
43 - contextswitch
44 Number of context switches done by the operating system.
46 - cpu
47 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
48 states.
50 - cpufreq
51 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
53 - curl
54 Parse statistics from websites using regular expressions.
56 - curl_json
57 Retrieves JSON data via cURL and parses it according to user
58 configuration.
60 - curl_xml
61 Retrieves XML data via cURL and parses it according to user
62 configuration.
64 - dbi
65 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
66 data.
68 - df
69 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
71 - disk
72 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
73 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
75 - dns
76 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
77 transfered.
79 - email
80 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
81 See collectd-email(5).
83 - entropy
84 Amount of entropy available to the system.
86 - exec
87 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
88 See collectd-exec(5).
90 - filecount
91 Count the number of files in directories.
93 - fscache
94 Linux file-system based caching framework statistics.
96 - gmond
97 Receive multicast traffic from Ganglia instances.
99 - hddtemp
100 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
102 - interface
103 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
104 interface.
106 - iptables
107 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
108 iptables rule.
110 - ipmi
111 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
113 - ipvs
114 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
115 for each service and destination).
116 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
118 - irq
119 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
121 - java
122 Integrates a `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM) to execute plugins in Java
123 bytecode. See “Configuring with libjvm” below.
125 - load
126 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
128 - libvirt
129 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
131 - madwifi
132 Queries very detailed usage statistics from wireless LAN adapters and
133 interfaces that use the Atheros chipset and the MadWifi driver.
135 - mbmon
136 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
137 using mbmon(1).
139 - memcachec
140 Query and parse data from a memcache daemon (memcached).
142 - memcached
143 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
144 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
146 - memory
147 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
148 buffer cache and free.
150 - modbus
151 Reads values from Modbus/TCP enabled devices. Supports reading values
152 from multiple "slaves" so gateway devices can be used.
154 - multimeter
155 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
156 M-4650CR'.
158 - mysql
159 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
160 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
162 - netapp
163 Plugin to query performance values from a NetApp storage system using the
164 “Manage ONTAP” SDK provided by NetApp.
166 - netlink
167 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
168 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
169 make use of it, filters.
171 - network
172 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
173 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
174 plugin of choice for that.
176 - nfs
177 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
178 NFSv3 right now.
180 - nginx
181 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
182 server/proxy.
184 - ntpd
185 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
187 - nut
188 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
189 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
191 - olsrd
192 Queries routing information from the “Optimized Link State Routing”
193 daemon.
195 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
196 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
197 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
199 - openvpn
200 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
201 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
203 - oracle
204 Query data from an Oracle database.
206 - perl
207 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
208 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
209 API. See collectd-perl(5).
211 - pinba
212 Receive and dispatch timing values from Pinba, a profiling extension for
213 PHP.
215 - ping
216 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
217 host.
219 - postgresql
220 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
221 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
223 - powerdns
224 PowerDNS name server statistics.
226 - processes
227 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
229 - protocols
230 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
232 - python
233 The python plugin implements a Python interpreter into collectd. This
234 makes it possible to write plugins in Python which are executed by
235 collectd without the need to start a heavy interpreter every interval.
236 See collectd-python(5) for details.
238 - routeros
239 Query interface and wireless registration statistics from RouterOS.
241 - rrdcached
242 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
244 - sensors
245 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
246 fan rotation speeds.
248 - serial
249 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
251 - snmp
252 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
253 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
254 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
256 - swap
257 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
259 - table
260 Parse table-like structured files.
262 - tail
263 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
264 values.
266 - tape
267 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
269 - tcpconns
270 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
272 - teamspeak2
273 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
275 - ted
276 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
278 - thermal
279 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
281 - tokyotyrant
282 Reads the number of records and file size from a running Tokyo Tyrant
283 server.
285 - uptime
286 System uptime statistics.
288 - users
289 Users currently logged in.
291 - vmem
292 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
293 number of pagefaults.
295 - vserver
296 System resources used by Linux VServers.
297 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
299 - wireless
300 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
302 - xmms
303 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
305 - zfs_arc
306 Statistics for ZFS' “Adaptive Replacement Cache” (ARC).
308 * Output can be written or sent to various destinations by the following
309 plugins:
311 - csv
312 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
313 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
314 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
316 - network
317 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
318 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
320 - perl
321 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
322 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
323 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
325 - python
326 It's possible to implement write plugins in Python using the python
327 plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
329 - rrdcached
330 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
331 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
332 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
334 - rrdtool
335 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
336 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
337 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
338 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
339 system load a lot.
341 - unixsock
342 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
343 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
344 done.
346 - write_http
347 Sends the values collected by collectd to a web-server using HTTP POST
348 requests. The transmitted data is either in a form understood by the
349 Exec plugin or formatted in JSON.
351 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
352 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
354 - logfile
355 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
357 - perl
358 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
359 See collectd-perl(5).
361 - python
362 It's possible to implement log plugins in Python using the python plugin.
363 See collectd-python(5) for details.
365 - syslog
366 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
368 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
370 - notify_desktop
371 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
372 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
373 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
374 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
376 - notify_email
377 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
378 recipients.
380 - exec
381 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
382 See collectd-exec(5).
384 - logfile
385 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
387 - network
388 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
390 - perl
391 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
392 See collectd-perl(5).
394 - python
395 It's possible to implement notification plugins in Python using the
396 python plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
398 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
399 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
401 - match_empty_counter
402 Match counter values which are currently zero.
404 - match_hashed
405 Match values using a hash function of the hostname.
407 - match_regex
408 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
410 - match_timediff
411 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
413 - match_value
414 Select values by their data sources' values.
416 - target_notification
417 Create and dispatch a notification.
419 - target_replace
420 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
422 - target_scale
423 Scale (multiply) values by an arbitrary value.
425 - target_set
426 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
428 * Miscellaneous plugins:
430 - uuid
431 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
432 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
433 through one or more name changes in the process.
435 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
436 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
437 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
438 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
439 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
440 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
441 one plugin waits for an IO-operation to complete.
443 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
444 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
447 Operation
448 ---------
450 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
451 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
452 for a list of options and a syntax description.
454 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
455 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
457 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
458 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
459 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
460 used to overwrite valuable files!
462 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
463 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
464 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
465 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
466 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
467 solution please share it with us.
469 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
470 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
471 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
472 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
475 collectd and chkrootkit
476 -----------------------
478 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
479 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
480 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
481 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
482 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
483 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
486 Prerequisites
487 -------------
489 To compile collectd from source you will need:
491 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
493 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
494 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
495 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
496 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
497 platforms.
499 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
500 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
501 particular.
502 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
504 * libclntsh (optional)
505 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
507 * libcurl (optional)
508 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
509 plugin.
510 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
512 * libdbi (optional)
513 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
514 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
516 * libesmtp (optional)
517 For the `notify_email' plugin.
518 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
520 * libganglia (optional)
521 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
522 <http://ganglia.info/>
524 * libgcrypt (optional)
525 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
526 <http://www.gnupg.org/>
528 * libhal (optional)
529 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
530 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
532 * libiptc (optional)
533 For querying iptables counters.
534 <http://netfilter.org/>
536 If not found on the system, a version shipped with this distribution can
537 be used. It requires some Linux headers in /usr/include/linux. You can
538 force the build system to use the shipped version by specifying
539 --with-libiptc=shipped
540 when running the configure script.
542 * libjvm (optional)
543 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
544 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
545 libjvm” below.
546 <http://openjdk.java.net/> (and others)
548 * libmemcached (optional)
549 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
550 <http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html>
552 * libmodbus (optional)
553 Used by the “modbus” plugin to communicate with Modbus/TCP devices. The
554 “modbus” plugin works with version 2.0.3 of the library – due to frequent
555 API changes other versions may or may not compile cleanly.
556 <http://www.libmodbus.org/>
558 * libmysqlclient (optional)
559 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
560 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
562 * libnetapp (optional)
563 Required for the “netapp” plugin.
564 This library is part of the “Manage ONTAP SDK” published by NetApp.
566 * libnetlink (optional)
567 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
568 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
570 * libnetsnmp (optional)
571 For the `snmp' plugin.
572 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
574 * libnotify (optional)
575 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
576 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
578 * liboping (optional)
579 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
580 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
582 * libowcapi (optional)
583 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
584 owserver(1) daemon).
585 <http://www.owfs.org/>
587 * libpcap (optional)
588 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
589 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
591 * libperfstat (optional)
592 Used by various plugins to gather statistics under AIX.
594 * libperl (optional)
595 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
596 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
597 <http://www.perl.org/>
599 * libpq (optional)
600 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
601 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
603 * libprotobuf-c, protoc-c (optional)
604 Used by the `pinba' plugin to generate a parser for the network packets
605 sent by the Pinba PHP extension.
606 <http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-c/>
608 * libpython (optional)
609 Used by the `python' plugin. Currently, only 2.3 ≦ Python < 3 is supported.
610 <http://www.python.org/>
612 * librouteros (optional)
613 Used by the `routeros' plugin to connect to a device running `RouterOS'.
614 <http://verplant.org/librouteros/>
616 * librrd (optional)
617 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
618 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
619 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
620 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
622 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
623 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
624 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
626 * libsensors (optional)
627 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
628 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
630 * libstatgrab (optional)
631 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
632 and/or Solaris.
633 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
635 * libtokyotyrant (optional)
636 Used by the tokyotyrant plugin.
637 <http://1978th.net/tokyotyrant/>
639 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
640 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
641 <http://networkupstools.org/>
643 * libvirt (optional)
644 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
645 <http://libvirt.org/>
647 * libxml2 (optional)
648 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
649 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
651 * libxmms (optional)
652 <http://www.xmms.org/>
654 * libyajl (optional)
655 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
656 <http://github.com/lloyd/yajl>
658 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
659 ------------------------------------
661 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
662 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
663 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
664 run `./configure --help'.
666 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
667 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
668 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
669 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
670 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
671 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
672 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
673 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
674 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
675 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
676 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
677 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
678 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
679 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
680 not be used in everyday situations.
682 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
683 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
684 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
685 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
686 packages for collectd.
688 Configuring with libjvm
689 -----------------------
691 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
692 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
693 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
694 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
695 tricky.
697 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
698 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
699 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
701 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
703 - jni.h
704 - jni_md.h
705 - libjvm.so
707 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
708 library checks succeed.
710 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
711 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
712 (environment) variables:
714 - JAVA_CPPFLAGS
715 - JAVA_CFLAGS
716 - JAVA_LDFLAGS
718 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
720 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
722 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
723 do that.
725 Crosscompiling
726 --------------
728 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
729 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
730 libc, have a problem with that.
732 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
733 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
734 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
735 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
736 compilation is, well, challenging.
738 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
739 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
740 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
741 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
743 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
744 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
745 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
746 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
747 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
748 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
749 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
751 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
752 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
753 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
756 Contact
757 -------
759 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
760 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
761 <collectd at verplant.org>.
763 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
764 channel #collectd on freenode.
767 Author
768 ------
770 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
771 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
772 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
774 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'
775 above.