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 - varnish
292 Various statistics from Varnish, an HTTP accelerator.
294 - vmem
295 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
296 number of pagefaults.
298 - vserver
299 System resources used by Linux VServers.
300 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
302 - wireless
303 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
305 - xmms
306 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
308 - zfs_arc
309 Statistics for ZFS' “Adaptive Replacement Cache” (ARC).
311 * Output can be written or sent to various destinations by the following
312 plugins:
314 - amqp
315 Sends JSON-encoded data to an Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
316 server, such as RabbitMQ.
318 - csv
319 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
320 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
321 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
323 - network
324 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
325 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
327 - perl
328 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
329 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
330 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
332 - python
333 It's possible to implement write plugins in Python using the python
334 plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
336 - rrdcached
337 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
338 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
339 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
341 - rrdtool
342 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
343 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
344 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
345 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
346 system load a lot.
348 - unixsock
349 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
350 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
351 done.
353 - write_http
354 Sends the values collected by collectd to a web-server using HTTP POST
355 requests. The transmitted data is either in a form understood by the
356 Exec plugin or formatted in JSON.
358 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
359 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
361 - logfile
362 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
364 - perl
365 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
366 See collectd-perl(5).
368 - python
369 It's possible to implement log plugins in Python using the python plugin.
370 See collectd-python(5) for details.
372 - syslog
373 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
375 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
377 - notify_desktop
378 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
379 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
380 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
381 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
383 - notify_email
384 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
385 recipients.
387 - exec
388 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
389 See collectd-exec(5).
391 - logfile
392 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
394 - network
395 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
397 - perl
398 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
399 See collectd-perl(5).
401 - python
402 It's possible to implement notification plugins in Python using the
403 python plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
405 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
406 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
408 - match_empty_counter
409 Match counter values which are currently zero.
411 - match_hashed
412 Match values using a hash function of the hostname.
414 - match_regex
415 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
417 - match_timediff
418 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
420 - match_value
421 Select values by their data sources' values.
423 - target_notification
424 Create and dispatch a notification.
426 - target_replace
427 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
429 - target_scale
430 Scale (multiply) values by an arbitrary value.
432 - target_set
433 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
435 * Miscellaneous plugins:
437 - uuid
438 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
439 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
440 through one or more name changes in the process.
442 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
443 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
444 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
445 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
446 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
447 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
448 one plugin waits for an IO-operation to complete.
450 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
451 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
454 Operation
455 ---------
457 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
458 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
459 for a list of options and a syntax description.
461 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
462 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
464 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
465 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
466 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
467 used to overwrite valuable files!
469 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
470 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
471 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
472 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
473 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
474 solution please share it with us.
476 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
477 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
478 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
479 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
482 collectd and chkrootkit
483 -----------------------
485 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
486 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
487 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
488 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
489 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
490 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
493 Prerequisites
494 -------------
496 To compile collectd from source you will need:
498 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
500 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
501 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
502 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
503 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
504 platforms.
506 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
507 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
508 particular.
509 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
511 * libclntsh (optional)
512 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
514 * libcurl (optional)
515 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
516 plugin.
517 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
519 * libdbi (optional)
520 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
521 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
523 * libesmtp (optional)
524 For the `notify_email' plugin.
525 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
527 * libganglia (optional)
528 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
529 <http://ganglia.info/>
531 * libgcrypt (optional)
532 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
533 <http://www.gnupg.org/>
535 * libhal (optional)
536 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
537 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
539 * libiptc (optional)
540 For querying iptables counters.
541 <http://netfilter.org/>
543 If not found on the system, a version shipped with this distribution can
544 be used. It requires some Linux headers in /usr/include/linux. You can
545 force the build system to use the shipped version by specifying
546 --with-libiptc=shipped
547 when running the configure script.
549 * libjvm (optional)
550 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
551 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
552 libjvm” below.
553 <http://openjdk.java.net/> (and others)
555 * libmemcached (optional)
556 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
557 <http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html>
559 * libmodbus (optional)
560 Used by the `modbus' plugin to communicate with Modbus/TCP devices.
561 <https://launchpad.net/libmodbus>
563 * libmysqlclient (optional)
564 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
565 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
567 * libnetapp (optional)
568 Required for the “netapp” plugin.
569 This library is part of the “Manage ONTAP SDK” published by NetApp.
571 * libnetlink (optional)
572 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
573 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
575 * libnetsnmp (optional)
576 For the `snmp' plugin.
577 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
579 * libnotify (optional)
580 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
581 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
583 * liboping (optional)
584 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
585 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
587 * libowcapi (optional)
588 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
589 owserver(1) daemon).
590 <http://www.owfs.org/>
592 * libpcap (optional)
593 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
594 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
596 * libperl (optional)
597 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
598 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
599 <http://www.perl.org/>
601 * libpq (optional)
602 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
603 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
605 * libprotobuf-c, protoc-c (optional)
606 Used by the `pinba' plugin to generate a parser for the network packets
607 sent by the Pinba PHP extension.
608 <http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-c/>
610 * libpython (optional)
611 Used by the `python' plugin. Currently, only 2.3 ≦ Python < 3 is supported.
612 <http://www.python.org/>
614 * librabbitmq (optional; also called “rabbitmq-c”)
615 Used by the AMQP plugin for AMQP connections, for example to RabbitMQ.
616 <http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-c/>
618 * librouteros (optional)
619 Used by the `routeros' plugin to connect to a device running `RouterOS'.
620 <http://verplant.org/librouteros/>
622 * librrd (optional)
623 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
624 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
625 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
626 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
628 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
629 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
630 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
632 * libsensors (optional)
633 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
634 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
636 * libstatgrab (optional)
637 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
638 and/or Solaris.
639 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
641 * libtokyotyrant (optional)
642 Used by the tokyotyrant plugin.
643 <http://1978th.net/tokyotyrant/>
645 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
646 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
647 <http://networkupstools.org/>
649 * libvirt (optional)
650 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
651 <http://libvirt.org/>
653 * libxml2 (optional)
654 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
655 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
657 * libxmms (optional)
658 <http://www.xmms.org/>
660 * libyajl (optional)
661 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
662 <http://github.com/lloyd/yajl>
664 * libvarnish (optional)
665 Fetches statistics from a Varnish instance. This is needed for the Varnish plugin
666 <http://varnish-cache.org>
668 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
669 ------------------------------------
671 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
672 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
673 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
674 run `./configure --help'.
676 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
677 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
678 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
679 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
680 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
681 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
682 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
683 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
684 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
685 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
686 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
687 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
688 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
689 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
690 not be used in everyday situations.
692 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
693 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
694 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
695 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
696 packages for collectd.
698 Configuring with libjvm
699 -----------------------
701 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
702 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
703 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
704 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
705 tricky.
707 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
708 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
709 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
711 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
713 - jni.h
714 - jni_md.h
715 - libjvm.so
717 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
718 library checks succeed.
720 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
721 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
722 (environment) variables:
724 - JAVA_CPPFLAGS
725 - JAVA_CFLAGS
726 - JAVA_LDFLAGS
728 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
730 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
732 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
733 do that.
735 Crosscompiling
736 --------------
738 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
739 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
740 libc, have a problem with that.
742 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
743 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
744 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
745 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
746 compilation is, well, challenging.
748 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
749 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
750 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
751 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
753 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
754 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
755 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
756 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
757 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
758 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
759 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
761 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
762 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
763 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
766 Contact
767 -------
769 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
770 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
771 <collectd at verplant.org>.
773 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
774 channel #collectd on freenode.
777 Author
778 ------
780 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
781 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
782 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
784 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'
785 above.