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 - curl
37 Parse statistics from websites using regular expressions.
39 - bind
40 Name server and resolver statistics from the `statistics-channel'
41 interface of BIND 9.5, 9,6 and later.
43 - conntrack
44 Number of nf_conntrack entries.
46 - curl_json
47 Retrieves JSON data via cURL and parses it according to user
48 configuration.
50 - cpu
51 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
52 states.
54 - cpufreq
55 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
57 - dbi
58 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
59 data.
61 - df
62 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
64 - disk
65 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
66 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
68 - dns
69 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
70 transfered.
72 - email
73 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
74 See collectd-email(5).
76 - entropy
77 Amount of entropy available to the system.
79 - exec
80 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
81 See collectd-exec(5).
83 - filecount
84 Count the number of files in directories.
86 - fscache
87 Linux file-system based caching framework statistics.
89 - gmond
90 Receive multicast traffic from Ganglia instances.
92 - hddtemp
93 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
95 - interface
96 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
97 interface.
99 - iptables
100 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
101 iptables rule.
103 - ipmi
104 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
106 - ipvs
107 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
108 for each service and destination).
109 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
111 - irq
112 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
114 - java
115 Integrates a `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM) to execute plugins in Java
116 bytecode. See “Configuring with libjvm” below.
118 - load
119 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
121 - libvirt
122 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
124 - mbmon
125 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
126 using mbmon(1).
128 - memcachec
129 Query and parse data from a memcache daemon (memcached).
131 - memcached
132 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
133 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
135 - memory
136 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
137 buffer cache and free.
139 - multimeter
140 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
141 M-4650CR'.
143 - mysql
144 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
145 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
147 - netlink
148 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
149 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
150 make use of it, filters.
152 - network
153 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
154 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
155 plugin of choice for that.
157 - nfs
158 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
159 NFSv3 right now.
161 - nginx
162 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
163 server/proxy.
165 - ntpd
166 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
168 - nut
169 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
170 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
172 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
173 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
174 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
176 - openvpn
177 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
178 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
180 - oracle
181 Query data from an Oracle database.
183 - perl
184 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
185 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
186 API. See collectd-perl(5).
188 - ping
189 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
190 host.
192 - postgresql
193 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
194 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
196 - powerdns
197 PowerDNS name server statistics.
199 - processes
200 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
202 - protocols
203 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
205 - rrdcached
206 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
208 - sensors
209 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
210 fan rotation speeds.
212 - serial
213 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
215 - snmp
216 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
217 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
218 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
220 - swap
221 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
223 - table
224 Parse table-like structured files.
226 - tail
227 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
228 values.
230 - tape
231 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
233 - tcpconns
234 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
236 - teamspeak2
237 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
239 - ted
240 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
242 - thermal
243 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
245 - tokyotyrant
246 Record in and file size of a Tokyo Cabinet database file.
248 - uptime
249 System uptime statistics.
251 - users
252 Users currently logged in.
254 - vmem
255 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
256 number of pagefaults.
258 - vserver
259 System resources used by Linux VServers.
260 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
262 - wireless
263 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
265 - write_http
266 Send data to a web-server using POST requests.
268 - xmms
269 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
271 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
272 plugins:
274 - csv
275 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
276 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
277 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
279 - network
280 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
281 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
283 - perl
284 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
285 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
286 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
288 - rrdcached
289 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
290 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
291 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
293 - rrdtool
294 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
295 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
296 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
297 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
298 system load a lot.
300 - unixsock
301 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
302 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
303 done.
305 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
306 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
308 - logfile
309 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
311 - perl
312 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
313 See collectd-perl(5).
315 - syslog
316 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
318 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
320 - notify_desktop
321 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
322 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
323 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
324 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
326 - notify_email
327 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
328 recipients.
330 - exec
331 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
332 See collectd-exec(5).
334 - logfile
335 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
337 - network
338 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
340 - perl
341 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
342 See collectd-perl(5).
344 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
345 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
347 - match_empty_counter
348 Match counter values which are currently zero.
350 - match_regex
351 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
353 - match_timediff
354 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
356 - match_value
357 Select values by their data sources' values.
359 - target_notification
360 Create and dispatch a notification.
362 - target_replace
363 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
365 - target_set
366 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
368 * Miscellaneous plugins:
370 - uuid
371 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
372 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
373 through one or more name changes in the process.
375 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
376 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
377 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
378 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
379 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
380 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
381 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
383 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
384 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
387 Operation
388 ---------
390 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
391 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
392 for a list of options and a syntax description.
394 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
395 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
397 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
398 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
399 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
400 used to overwrite valuable files!
402 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
403 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
404 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
405 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
406 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
407 solution please share it with us.
409 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
410 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
411 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
412 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
415 collectd and chkrootkit
416 -----------------------
418 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
419 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
420 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
421 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
422 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
423 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
426 Prerequisites
427 -------------
429 To compile collectd from source you will need:
431 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
433 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
434 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
435 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
436 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
437 platforms.
439 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
440 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
441 particular.
442 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
444 * libclntsh (optional)
445 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
447 * libcurl (optional)
448 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
449 plugin.
450 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
452 * libdbi (optional)
453 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
454 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
456 * libesmtp (optional)
457 For the `notify_email' plugin.
458 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
460 * libganglia (optional)
461 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
463 * libgcrypt (optional)
464 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
466 * libhal (optional)
467 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
468 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
470 * libiptc (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
471 can be used if the Linux kernel headers are available)
472 For querying iptables counters.
473 <http://netfilter.org/>
475 * libjvm (optional)
476 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
477 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
478 libjvm” below.
480 * libmemcached (optional)
481 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
483 * libmysqlclient (optional)
484 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
485 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
487 * libnetlink (optional)
488 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
489 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
491 * libnetsnmp (optional)
492 For the `snmp' plugin.
493 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
495 * libnotify (optional)
496 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
497 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
499 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
500 can be used)
501 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
502 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
504 * libowcapi (optional)
505 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
506 owserver(1) daemon).
507 <http://www.owfs.org/>
509 * libpcap (optional)
510 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
511 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
513 * libperl (optional)
514 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
515 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
516 <http://www.perl.org/>
518 * libpq (optional)
519 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
520 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
522 * librrd (optional)
523 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
524 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
525 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
526 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
528 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
529 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
530 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
532 * libsensors (optional)
533 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
534 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
536 * libstatgrab (optional)
537 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
538 and/or Solaris.
539 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
541 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
542 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
543 <http://networkupstools.org/>
545 * libvirt (optional)
546 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
547 <http://libvirt.org/>
549 * libxml2 (optional)
550 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
551 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
553 * libxmms (optional)
554 <http://www.xmms.org/>
556 * libyajl (optional)
557 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
558 <http://www.lloydforge.org/projects/yajl/>
560 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
561 ------------------------------------
563 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
564 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
565 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
566 run `./configure --help'.
568 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
569 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
570 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
571 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
572 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
573 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
574 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
575 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
576 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
577 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
578 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
579 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
580 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
581 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
582 not be used in everyday situations.
584 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
585 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
586 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
587 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
588 packages for collectd.
590 Configuring with libjvm
591 -----------------------
593 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
594 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
595 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
596 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
597 tricky.
599 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
600 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
601 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
603 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
605 - jni.h
606 - jni_md.h
607 - libjvm.so
609 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
610 library checks succeed.
612 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
613 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
614 (environment) variables:
616 - JAVA_CPPFLAGS
617 - JAVA_CFLAGS
618 - JAVA_LDFLAGS
620 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
622 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
624 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
625 do that.
627 Crosscompiling
628 --------------
630 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
631 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
632 libc, have a problem with that.
634 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
635 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
636 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
637 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
638 compilation is, well, challenging.
640 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
641 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
642 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
643 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
645 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
646 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
647 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
648 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
649 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
650 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
651 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
653 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
654 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
655 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
658 Contact
659 -------
661 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
662 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
663 <collectd at verplant.org>.
665 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
666 channel #collectd on freenode.
669 Author
670 ------
672 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
673 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
674 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
676 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'
677 above.