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 - cpu
37 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
38 states.
40 - cpufreq
41 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
43 - dbi
44 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
45 data.
47 - df
48 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
50 - disk
51 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
52 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
54 - dns
55 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
56 transfered.
58 - email
59 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
60 See collectd-email(5).
62 - entropy
63 Amount of entropy available to the system.
65 - exec
66 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
67 See collectd-exec(5).
69 - filecount
70 Count the number of files in directories.
72 - hddtemp
73 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
75 - interface
76 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
77 interface.
79 - iptables
80 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
81 iptables rule.
83 - ipmi
84 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
86 - ipvs
87 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
88 for each service and destination).
89 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
91 - irq
92 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
94 - load
95 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
97 - libvirt
98 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
100 - mbmon
101 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
102 using mbmon(1).
104 - memcached
105 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
106 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
108 - memory
109 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
110 buffer cache and free.
112 - multimeter
113 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
114 M-4650CR'.
116 - mysql
117 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
118 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
120 - netlink
121 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
122 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
123 make use of it, filters.
125 - network
126 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
127 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
128 plugin of choice for that.
130 - nfs
131 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
132 NFSv3 right now.
134 - nginx
135 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
136 server/proxy.
138 - ntpd
139 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
141 - nut
142 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
143 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
145 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
146 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
147 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
149 - perl
150 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
151 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
152 API. See collectd-perl(5).
154 - ping
155 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
156 host.
158 - postgresql
159 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
160 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
162 - powerdns
163 PowerDNS name server statistics.
165 - processes
166 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
168 - rrdcached
169 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
171 - sensors
172 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
173 fan rotation speeds.
175 - serial
176 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
178 - snmp
179 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
180 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
181 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
183 - swap
184 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
186 - tail
187 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
188 values.
190 - tape
191 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
193 - tcpconns
194 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
196 - teamspeak2
197 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
199 - thermal
200 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
202 - users
203 Users currently logged in.
205 - vmem
206 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
207 number of pagefaults.
209 - vserver
210 System resources used by Linux VServers.
211 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
213 - wireless
214 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
216 - xmms
217 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
219 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
220 plugins:
222 - csv
223 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
224 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
225 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
227 - network
228 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
229 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
231 - perl
232 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
233 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
234 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
236 - rrdcached
237 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
238 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
239 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
241 - rrdtool
242 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
243 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
244 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
245 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
246 system load a lot.
248 - unixsock
249 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
250 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
251 done.
253 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
254 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
256 - logfile
257 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
259 - perl
260 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
261 See collectd-perl(5).
263 - syslog
264 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
266 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
268 - notify_desktop
269 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
270 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
271 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
272 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
274 - notify_email
275 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
276 recipients.
278 - exec
279 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
280 See collectd-exec(5).
282 - logfile
283 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
285 - network
286 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
288 - perl
289 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
290 See collectd-perl(5).
292 * Miscellaneous plugins:
294 - uuid
295 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
296 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
297 through one or more name changes in the process.
299 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
300 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
301 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
302 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
303 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
304 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
305 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
307 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
308 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
311 Operation
312 ---------
314 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
315 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
316 for a list of options and a syntax description.
318 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
319 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
321 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
322 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
323 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
324 used to overwrite valuable files!
326 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
327 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
328 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
329 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
330 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
331 solution please share it with us.
333 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
334 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
335 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
336 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
339 collectd and chkrootkit
340 -----------------------
342 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
343 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
344 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
345 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
346 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
347 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
350 Prerequisites
351 -------------
353 To compile collectd from source you will need:
355 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
357 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
358 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
359 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
360 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
361 platforms.
363 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
364 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
365 particular.
367 * libcurl (optional)
368 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', or `nginx' plugin.
370 * libdbi (optional)
371 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
372 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
374 * libesmtp (optional)
375 For the `notify_email' plugin.
377 * libhal (optional)
378 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
380 * libiptc (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
381 can be used if the Linux kernel headers are available)
382 For querying iptables counters.
384 * libmysqlclient (optional)
385 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
387 * libnetlink (optional)
388 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
390 * libnetsnmp (optional)
391 For the `snmp' plugin.
393 * libnotify (optional)
394 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
396 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
397 can be used)
398 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
400 * libowcapi (optional)
401 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
402 owserver(1) daemon).
404 * libpcap (optional)
405 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
407 * libperl (optional)
408 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
409 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
411 * libpq (optional)
412 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
414 * librrd (optional)
415 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
416 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
417 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
419 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
420 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
422 * libsensors (optional)
423 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
425 * libstatgrab (optional)
426 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
427 and/or Solaris.
428 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
430 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
431 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
433 * libvirt (optional)
434 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
436 * libxml2 (optional)
437 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
439 * libxmms (optional)
442 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
443 ------------------------------------
445 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
446 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
447 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
448 run `./configure --help'.
450 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
451 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
452 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
453 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
454 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, you can force the plugin to be built.
455 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
456 setup and you really know what you're doing.
458 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
459 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
460 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
461 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
462 packages for collectd.
465 Crosscompiling
466 --------------
468 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
469 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
470 libc, have a problem with that.
472 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
473 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
474 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
475 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
476 compilation is, well, challenging.
478 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
479 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
480 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
481 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
484 Contact
485 -------
487 For questions, bugreports, development information and basically all other
488 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailinglist at
489 <collectd at verplant.org>.
491 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
492 channel #collectd on freenode.
495 Author
496 ------
498 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
499 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
500 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
502 Please send bugreports and patches to the mailinglist, see `Contact' above.