diff --git a/debian/README.Debian b/debian/README.Debian
index 7513ac293a30b96e62e8dbafaadbcaead0cec2a6..cab3f6438cc1b39149199b0bf1a0062bbd592502 100644 (file)
--- a/debian/README.Debian
+++ b/debian/README.Debian
with collectd. See /usr/share/doc/collectd/examples/collection3/README for
details. This is a successor for collection.cgi.
+Cleanup of old data:
+--------------------
+
+collectd itself does not take care of removing any data files (e.g. RRDtool)
+that are no longer updated (e.g., no longer existing hosts or instances).
+There are a couple of ways to take care of that. In any case, double-check the
+list of files to be removed before doing so! We do not take responsibility for
+any data loss or similar.
+
+- Check the last modification time of all RRD files:
+
+ find /var/lib/collectd/rrd/ -mtime +30 -type f
+
+ This will list all files that have not been updated within the last 30 days.
+ After double-checking the list of files, use a command like the following to
+ delete old files:
+
+ find /var/lib/collectd/rrd/ -mtime +30 -type f | xargs rm
+
+ NOTE: Some versions of RRDtool did not update mtime when writing to a file.
+ This has been fixed in version 1.3.5 of RRDtool. If your version is
+ affected by that, this approach does not work.
+
+- Check the 'last_update' header of the RRD files:
+
+ export IFS="
+ "
+ for file in $( find /var/lib/collectd/rrd/ -type f -name '*.rrd' ); do
+ last_update=$( rrdtool info $file | grep last_update | cut -d' ' -f3 )
+ if test -n "$last_update" \
+ -a $(( $( date +%s ) - $last_update )) -gt 2592000; then
+ echo $file
+ fi
+ done
+
+ This will also list all files that have not been updated within the last 30
+ days. It's a bit more expensive since each and every RRD file will have to
+ be read from disk rather than checking the file-system meta-data only.
+
+When doing those checks, take into account any caching times configured in the
+RRDtool plugin or when using RRDCacheD.
+
Building your own plugins:
--------------------------
- Originally, plugins for collectd had to be written in C and linked as shared
objects. Starting with version 4.0.0, it is also possible to use plugins
written in the scripting language Perl or implemented as separate processes.
- See collectd-perl(5) and collectd-exec(5) for details.
+ In later versions, support for Java and Python has been added. See the
+ appropriate collectd-<extension>(5) manual page for details.
- If you want to contribute plugins to the official distribution you should
read http://collectd.org/dev-info.shtml.