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 - mbmon
88 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
89 using mbmon(1).
91 - memcached
92 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
93 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
95 - memory
96 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
97 buffer cache and free.
99 - multimeter
100 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
101 M-4650CR'.
103 - mysql
104 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
105 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
107 - netlink
108 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
109 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
110 make use of it, filters.
112 - network
113 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
114 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
115 plugin of choice for that.
117 - nfs
118 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
119 NFSv3 right now.
121 - nginx
122 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
123 server/proxy.
125 - ntpd
126 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
128 - nut
129 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
130 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
132 - perl
133 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
134 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
135 API. See collectd-perl(5).
137 - ping
138 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
139 host.
141 - processes
142 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
144 - sensors
145 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
146 fan rotation speeds.
148 - serial
149 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
151 - snmp
152 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
153 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
154 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
156 - swap
157 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
159 - tail
160 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
161 values.
163 - tape
164 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
166 - tcpconns
167 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
169 - users
170 Users currently logged in.
172 - vmem
173 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
174 number of pagefaults.
176 - vserver
177 System resources used by Linux VServers.
178 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
180 - wireless
181 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
183 - xmms
184 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
186 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
187 plugins:
189 - csv
190 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
191 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
192 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
194 - network
195 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
196 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
198 - perl
199 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
200 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
201 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
203 - rrdtool
204 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
205 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
206 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
207 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
208 system load a lot.
210 - unixsock
211 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
212 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
213 done.
215 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
216 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
218 - logfile
219 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
221 - perl
222 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
223 See collectd-perl(5).
225 - syslog
226 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
228 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
230 - exec
231 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
232 See collectd-exec(5).
234 - logfile
235 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
237 - network
238 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
240 - perl
241 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
242 See collectd-perl(5).
244 * Miscellaneous plugins:
246 - uuid
247 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
248 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
249 through one or more name changes in the process.
251 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
252 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
253 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
254 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
255 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
256 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
257 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
259 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
260 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
263 Operation
264 ---------
266 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
267 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
268 for a list of options and a syntax description.
270 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
271 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
273 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
274 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
275 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
276 used to overwrite valuable files!
278 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
279 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
280 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
281 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
282 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
283 solution please share it with us.
285 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
286 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
287 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
288 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
291 collectd and chkrootkit
292 -----------------------
294 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
295 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
296 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
297 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
298 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
299 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
302 Prerequisites
303 -------------
305 To compile collectd from source you will need:
307 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
309 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
310 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
311 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
312 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
313 platforms.
315 * libcurl (optional)
316 If you want to use the `apache' and/or `nginx' plugins.
318 * libhal (optional)
319 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
321 * libiptc (optional)
322 For querying iptables counters.
324 * libmysqlclient (optional)
325 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
327 * libnetlink (optional)
328 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
330 * libnetsnmp (optional)
331 For the `snmp' plugin.
333 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
334 can be used)
335 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
337 * libpcap (optional)
338 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
340 * libperl (optional)
341 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
342 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
344 * librrd (optional; headers and library; rrdtool 1.0 and 1.2 both work fine)
345 If built without `librrd' the resulting binary will be `client only', i.e.
346 will send its values via multicast and not create any RRD files itself.
347 Alternatively you can chose to write CSV-files (Comma Separated Values)
348 instead.
350 * libsensors (optional)
351 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
353 * libstatgrab may be used to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
354 and/or Solaris. Note that CPU- and disk-statistics, while being provided
355 by this library, are not supported in collectd right now..
356 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
358 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
359 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
361 * libxmms (optional)
363 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo
364 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
366 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework
367 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
368 particular.
370 * libvirt (optional)
371 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
373 * libxml2 (optional)
374 Parse XML data provided by libvirt.
377 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
378 ------------------------------------
380 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
381 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
382 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
383 run `./configure --help'.
385 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
386 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
387 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
388 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
389 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, you can force the plugin to be built.
390 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
391 setup and you really know what you're doing.
393 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
394 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
395 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
396 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
397 packages for collectd.
400 Crosscompiling
401 --------------
403 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
404 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
405 libc, have a problem with that.
407 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
408 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
409 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
410 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
411 compilation is, well, challenging.
413 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
414 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
415 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
416 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
419 Contact
420 -------
422 For questions, bugreports, development information and basically all other
423 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailinglist at
424 <collectd at verplant.org>.
426 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
427 channel #collectd on freenode.
430 Author
431 ------
433 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
434 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
435 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
437 Please send bugreports and patches to the mailinglist, see `Contact' above.