4f3c812050876d97191038df63d79d772738ffe6
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 - battery
30 Batterycharge, -current and voltage of ACPI and PMU based laptop
31 batteries.
33 - cpu
34 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
35 states.
37 - cpufreq
38 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
40 - df
41 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
43 - disk
44 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
45 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
47 - dns
48 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
49 transfered.
51 - email
52 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
53 See collectd-email(5).
55 - entropy
56 Amount of entropy available to the system.
58 - exec
59 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
60 See collectd-exec(5).
62 - hddtemp
63 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
65 - interface
66 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
67 interface.
69 - iptables
70 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
71 iptables rule.
73 - ipvs
74 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
75 for each service and destination).
76 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
78 - irq
79 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
81 - load
82 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
84 - libvirt
85 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
87 - libxml2
88 Parse XML data provided by libvirt.
90 - mbmon
91 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
92 using mbmon(1).
94 - memcached
95 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
96 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
98 - memory
99 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
100 buffer cache and free.
102 - multimeter
103 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
104 M-4650CR'.
106 - mysql
107 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
108 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
110 - netlink
111 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
112 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
113 make use of it, filters.
115 - network
116 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
117 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
118 plugin of choice for that.
120 - nfs
121 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
122 NFSv3 right now.
124 - nginx
125 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
126 server/proxy.
128 - ntpd
129 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
131 - nut
132 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
133 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
135 - perl
136 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
137 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
138 API. See collectd-perl(5).
140 - ping
141 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
142 host.
144 - processes
145 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
147 - sensors
148 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
149 fan rotation speeds.
151 - serial
152 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
154 - snmp
155 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
156 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
157 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
159 - swap
160 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
162 - tape
163 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
165 - tcpconns
166 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
168 - users
169 Users currently logged in.
171 - vserver
172 System resources used by Linux VServers.
173 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
175 - wireless
176 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
178 - xmms
179 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
181 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
182 plugins:
184 - csv
185 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
186 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
187 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
189 - network
190 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
191 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
193 - perl
194 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
195 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
196 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
198 - rrdtool
199 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
200 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
201 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
202 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
203 system load a lot.
205 - unixsock
206 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
207 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
208 done.
210 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
211 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
213 - logfile
214 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
216 - perl
217 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
218 See collectd-perl(5).
220 - syslog
221 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
223 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
225 - exec
226 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
227 See collectd-exec(5).
229 - logfile
230 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
232 - network
233 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
235 - perl
236 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
237 See collectd-perl(5).
239 * Miscellaneous plugins:
241 - uuid
242 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
243 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
244 through one or more name changes in the process.
246 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
247 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
248 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
249 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
250 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
251 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
252 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
254 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
255 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
258 Operation
259 ---------
261 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
262 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
263 for a list of options and a syntax description.
265 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
266 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
268 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
269 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
270 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
271 used to overwrite valuable files!
273 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
274 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
275 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
276 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
277 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
278 solution please share it with us.
280 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
281 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
282 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
283 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
286 collectd and chkrootkit
287 -----------------------
289 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
290 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
291 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
292 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
293 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
294 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
297 Prerequisites
298 -------------
300 To compile collectd from source you will need:
302 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
304 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
305 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
306 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
307 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
308 platforms.
310 * libcurl (optional)
311 If you want to use the `apache' and/or `nginx' plugins.
313 * libhal (optional)
314 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
316 * libiptc (optional)
317 For querying iptables counters.
319 * libmysqlclient (optional)
320 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
322 * libnetlink (optional)
323 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
325 * libnetsnmp (optional)
326 For the `snmp' plugin.
328 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
329 can be used)
330 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
332 * libpcap (optional)
333 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
335 * libperl (optional)
336 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
337 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
339 * librrd (optional; headers and library; rrdtool 1.0 and 1.2 both work fine)
340 If built without `librrd' the resulting binary will be `client only', i.e.
341 will send its values via multicast and not create any RRD files itself.
342 Alternatively you can chose to write CSV-files (Comma Separated Values)
343 instead.
345 * libsensors (optional)
346 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
348 * libstatgrab may be used to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
349 and/or Solaris. Note that CPU- and disk-statistics, while being provided
350 by this library, are not supported in collectd right now..
351 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
353 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
354 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
356 * libxmms (optional)
358 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo
359 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
361 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework
362 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
363 particular.
365 * libvirt (optional)
366 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
369 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
370 ------------------------------------
372 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
373 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
374 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
375 run `./configure --help'.
377 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
378 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
379 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
380 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
381 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, you can force the plugin to be built.
382 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
383 setup and you really know what you're doing.
385 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
386 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
387 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
388 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
389 packages for collectd.
392 Crosscompiling
393 --------------
395 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
396 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
397 libc, have a problem with that.
399 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
400 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
401 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
402 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
403 compilation is, well, challenging.
405 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
406 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
407 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
408 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
411 Contact
412 -------
414 For questions, bugreports, development information and basically all other
415 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailinglist at
416 <collectd at verplant.org>.
418 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
419 channel #collectd on freenode.
422 Author
423 ------
425 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
426 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
427 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
429 Please send bugreports and patches to the mailinglist, see `Contact' above.