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 - multimeter
151 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
152 M-4650CR'.
154 - mysql
155 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
156 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
158 - netapp
159 Plugin to query performance values from a NetApp storage system using the
160 “Manage ONTAP” SDK provided by NetApp.
162 - netlink
163 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
164 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
165 make use of it, filters.
167 - network
168 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
169 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
170 plugin of choice for that.
172 - nfs
173 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
174 NFSv3 right now.
176 - nginx
177 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
178 server/proxy.
180 - ntpd
181 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
183 - nut
184 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
185 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
187 - olsrd
188 Queries routing information from the “Optimized Link State Routing”
189 daemon.
191 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
192 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
193 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
195 - openvpn
196 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
197 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
199 - oracle
200 Query data from an Oracle database.
202 - perl
203 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
204 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
205 API. See collectd-perl(5).
207 - ping
208 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
209 host.
211 - postgresql
212 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
213 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
215 - powerdns
216 PowerDNS name server statistics.
218 - processes
219 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
221 - protocols
222 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
224 - python
225 The python plugin implements a Python interpreter into collectd. This
226 makes it possible to write plugins in Python which are executed by
227 collectd without the need to start a heavy interpreter every interval.
228 See collectd-python(5) for details.
230 - routeros
231 Query interface and wireless registration statistics from RouterOS.
233 - rrdcached
234 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
236 - sensors
237 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
238 fan rotation speeds.
240 - serial
241 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
243 - snmp
244 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
245 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
246 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
248 - swap
249 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
251 - table
252 Parse table-like structured files.
254 - tail
255 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
256 values.
258 - tape
259 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
261 - tcpconns
262 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
264 - teamspeak2
265 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
267 - ted
268 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
270 - thermal
271 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
273 - tokyotyrant
274 Reads the number of records and file size from a running Tokyo Tyrant
275 server.
277 - uptime
278 System uptime statistics.
280 - users
281 Users currently logged in.
283 - vmem
284 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
285 number of pagefaults.
287 - vserver
288 System resources used by Linux VServers.
289 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
291 - wireless
292 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
294 - xmms
295 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
297 - zfs_arc
298 Statistics for ZFS' “Adaptive Replacement Cache” (ARC).
300 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
301 plugins:
303 - csv
304 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
305 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
306 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
308 - network
309 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
310 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
312 - perl
313 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
314 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
315 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
317 - python
318 It's possible to implement write plugins in Python using the python
319 plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
321 - rrdcached
322 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
323 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
324 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
326 - rrdtool
327 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
328 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
329 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
330 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
331 system load a lot.
333 - unixsock
334 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
335 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
336 done.
338 - write_http
339 Sends the values collected by collectd to a web-server using HTTP POST
340 requests. The transmitted data is either in a form understood by the
341 Exec plugin or formatted in JSON.
343 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
344 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
346 - logfile
347 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
349 - perl
350 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
351 See collectd-perl(5).
353 - python
354 It's possible to implement log plugins in Python using the python plugin.
355 See collectd-python(5) for details.
357 - syslog
358 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
360 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
362 - notify_desktop
363 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
364 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
365 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
366 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
368 - notify_email
369 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
370 recipients.
372 - exec
373 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
374 See collectd-exec(5).
376 - logfile
377 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
379 - network
380 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
382 - perl
383 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
384 See collectd-perl(5).
386 - python
387 It's possible to implement notification plugins in Python using the
388 python plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
390 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
391 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
393 - match_empty_counter
394 Match counter values which are currently zero.
396 - match_hashed
397 Match values using a hash function of the hostname.
399 - match_regex
400 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
402 - match_timediff
403 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
405 - match_value
406 Select values by their data sources' values.
408 - target_notification
409 Create and dispatch a notification.
411 - target_replace
412 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
414 - target_scale
415 Scale (multiply) values by an arbitrary value.
417 - target_set
418 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
420 * Miscellaneous plugins:
422 - uuid
423 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
424 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
425 through one or more name changes in the process.
427 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
428 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
429 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
430 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
431 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
432 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
433 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
435 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
436 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
439 Operation
440 ---------
442 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
443 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
444 for a list of options and a syntax description.
446 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
447 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
449 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
450 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
451 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
452 used to overwrite valuable files!
454 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
455 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
456 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
457 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
458 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
459 solution please share it with us.
461 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
462 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
463 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
464 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
467 collectd and chkrootkit
468 -----------------------
470 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
471 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
472 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
473 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
474 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
475 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
478 Prerequisites
479 -------------
481 To compile collectd from source you will need:
483 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
485 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
486 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
487 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
488 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
489 platforms.
491 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
492 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
493 particular.
494 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
496 * libclntsh (optional)
497 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
499 * libcurl (optional)
500 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
501 plugin.
502 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
504 * libdbi (optional)
505 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
506 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
508 * libesmtp (optional)
509 For the `notify_email' plugin.
510 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
512 * libganglia (optional)
513 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
514 <http://ganglia.info/>
516 * libgcrypt (optional)
517 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
518 <http://www.gnupg.org/>
520 * libhal (optional)
521 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
522 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
524 * libiptc (optional)
525 For querying iptables counters.
526 <http://netfilter.org/>
528 If not found on the system, a version shipped with this distribution can
529 be used. It requires some Linux headers in /usr/include/linux. You can
530 force the build system to use the shipped version by specifying
531 --with-libiptc=shipped
532 when running the configure script.
534 * libjvm (optional)
535 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
536 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
537 libjvm” below.
538 <http://openjdk.java.net/> (and others)
540 * libmemcached (optional)
541 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
542 <http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html>
544 * libmysqlclient (optional)
545 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
546 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
548 * libnatapp (optional)
549 Required for the “netapp” plugin.
550 This library is part of the “Manage ONTAP SDK” published by NetApp.
552 * libnetlink (optional)
553 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
554 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
556 * libnetsnmp (optional)
557 For the `snmp' plugin.
558 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
560 * libnotify (optional)
561 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
562 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
564 * liboping (optional)
565 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
566 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
568 * libowcapi (optional)
569 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
570 owserver(1) daemon).
571 <http://www.owfs.org/>
573 * libpcap (optional)
574 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
575 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
577 * libperl (optional)
578 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
579 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
580 <http://www.perl.org/>
582 * libpq (optional)
583 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
584 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
586 * libpython (optional)
587 Used by the `python' plugin. Currently, only 2.3 ≦ Python < 3 is supported.
588 <http://www.python.org/>
590 * librouteros (optional)
591 Used by the `routeros' plugin to connect to a device running `RouterOS'.
592 <http://verplant.org/librouteros/>
594 * librrd (optional)
595 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
596 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
597 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
598 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
600 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
601 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
602 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
604 * libsensors (optional)
605 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
606 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
608 * libstatgrab (optional)
609 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
610 and/or Solaris.
611 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
613 * libtokyotyrant (optional)
614 Used by the tokyotyrant plugin.
615 <http://1978th.net/tokyotyrant/>
617 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
618 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
619 <http://networkupstools.org/>
621 * libvirt (optional)
622 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
623 <http://libvirt.org/>
625 * libxml2 (optional)
626 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
627 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
629 * libxmms (optional)
630 <http://www.xmms.org/>
632 * libyajl (optional)
633 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
634 <http://github.com/lloyd/yajl>
636 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
637 ------------------------------------
639 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
640 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
641 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
642 run `./configure --help'.
644 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
645 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
646 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
647 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
648 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
649 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
650 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
651 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
652 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
653 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
654 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
655 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
656 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
657 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
658 not be used in everyday situations.
660 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
661 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
662 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
663 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
664 packages for collectd.
666 Configuring with libjvm
667 -----------------------
669 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
670 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
671 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
672 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
673 tricky.
675 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
676 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
677 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
679 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
681 - jni.h
682 - jni_md.h
683 - libjvm.so
685 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
686 library checks succeed.
688 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
689 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
690 (environment) variables:
692 - JAVA_CPPFLAGS
693 - JAVA_CFLAGS
694 - JAVA_LDFLAGS
696 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
698 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
700 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
701 do that.
703 Crosscompiling
704 --------------
706 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
707 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
708 libc, have a problem with that.
710 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
711 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
712 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
713 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
714 compilation is, well, challenging.
716 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
717 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
718 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
719 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
721 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
722 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
723 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
724 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
725 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
726 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
727 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
729 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
730 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
731 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
734 Contact
735 -------
737 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
738 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
739 <collectd at verplant.org>.
741 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
742 channel #collectd on freenode.
745 Author
746 ------
748 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
749 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
750 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
752 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'
753 above.