1 collectd - System information collection daemon
2 =================================================
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
16 * collectd is able to collect the following data:
19 Apache server utilization: Number of bytes transfered, number of
20 requests handled and detailed scoreboard statistics
23 APC UPS Daemon: UPS charge, load, input/output/battery voltage, etc.
26 Sensors in Macs running Mac OS X / Darwin: Temperature, fanspeed and
30 Statistics about Ascent, a free server for the game `World of Warcraft'.
33 Batterycharge, -current and voltage of ACPI and PMU based laptop
37 Name server and resolver statistics from the `statistics-channel'
38 interface of BIND 9.5, 9,6 and later.
41 Number of nf_conntrack entries.
44 Number of context switches done by the operating system.
47 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
51 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
54 Parse statistics from websites using regular expressions.
57 Retrieves JSON data via cURL and parses it according to user
61 Retrieves XML data via cURL and parses it according to user
65 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
69 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
72 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
73 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
76 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
80 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
81 See collectd-email(5).
84 Amount of entropy available to the system.
87 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
91 Count the number of files in directories.
94 Linux file-system based caching framework statistics.
97 Receive multicast traffic from Ganglia instances.
100 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
103 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
107 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
111 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
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.
119 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
122 Integrates a `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM) to execute plugins in Java
123 bytecode. See “Configuring with libjvm” below.
126 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
129 Detailed CPU statistics of the “Logical Partitions” virtualization
130 technique built into IBM's POWER processors.
133 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
136 Queries very detailed usage statistics from wireless LAN adapters and
137 interfaces that use the Atheros chipset and the MadWifi driver.
140 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
144 Query and parse data from a memcache daemon (memcached).
147 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
148 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
151 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
152 buffer cache and free.
155 Reads values from Modbus/TCP enabled devices. Supports reading values
156 from multiple "slaves" so gateway devices can be used.
159 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
163 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
164 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
167 Plugin to query performance values from a NetApp storage system using the
168 “Manage ONTAP” SDK provided by NetApp.
171 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
172 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
173 make use of it, filters.
176 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
177 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
178 plugin of choice for that.
181 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
185 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
189 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
192 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
193 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
196 Queries routing information from the “Optimized Link State Routing”
199 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
200 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
201 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
204 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
205 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
208 Query data from an Oracle database.
211 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
212 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
213 API. See collectd-perl(5).
216 Receive and dispatch timing values from Pinba, a profiling extension for
220 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
224 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
225 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
228 PowerDNS name server statistics.
231 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
234 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
237 The python plugin implements a Python interpreter into collectd. This
238 makes it possible to write plugins in Python which are executed by
239 collectd without the need to start a heavy interpreter every interval.
240 See collectd-python(5) for details.
243 The redis plugin gathers information from a redis server, including:
244 uptime, used memory, total connections etc.
247 Query interface and wireless registration statistics from RouterOS.
250 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
253 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
257 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
260 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
261 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
262 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
265 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
268 Parse table-like structured files.
271 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
275 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
278 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
281 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
284 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
287 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
290 Reads the number of records and file size from a running Tokyo Tyrant
294 System uptime statistics.
297 Users currently logged in.
300 Various statistics from Varnish, an HTTP accelerator.
303 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
304 number of pagefaults.
307 System resources used by Linux VServers.
308 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
311 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
314 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
317 Statistics for ZFS' “Adaptive Replacement Cache” (ARC).
319 * Output can be written or sent to various destinations by the following
323 Sends JSON-encoded data to an Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
324 server, such as RabbitMQ.
327 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
328 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
329 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
332 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
333 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
336 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
337 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
338 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
341 It's possible to implement write plugins in Python using the python
342 plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
345 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
346 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
347 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
350 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
351 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
352 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
353 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
357 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
358 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
362 Sends the values collected by collectd to a web-server using HTTP POST
363 requests. The transmitted data is either in a form understood by the
364 Exec plugin or formatted in JSON.
367 Sends the values to a Redis key-value database server.
369 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
370 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
373 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
376 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
377 See collectd-perl(5).
380 It's possible to implement log plugins in Python using the python plugin.
381 See collectd-python(5) for details.
384 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
386 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
389 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
390 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
391 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
392 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
395 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
399 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
400 See collectd-exec(5).
403 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
406 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
409 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
410 See collectd-perl(5).
413 It's possible to implement notification plugins in Python using the
414 python plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
416 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
417 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
419 - match_empty_counter
420 Match counter values which are currently zero.
423 Match values using a hash function of the hostname.
426 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
429 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
432 Select values by their data sources' values.
434 - target_notification
435 Create and dispatch a notification.
438 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
441 Scale (multiply) values by an arbitrary value.
444 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
446 * Miscellaneous plugins:
449 Checks values against configured thresholds and creates notifications if
450 values are out of bounds. See collectd-threshold(5) for details.
453 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
454 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
455 through one or more name changes in the process.
457 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
458 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
459 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
460 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
461 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
462 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
463 one plugin waits for an IO-operation to complete.
465 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
466 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
472 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
473 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
474 for a list of options and a syntax description.
476 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
477 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
479 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
480 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
481 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
482 used to overwrite valuable files!
484 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
485 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
486 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
487 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
488 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
489 solution please share it with us.
491 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
492 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
493 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
494 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
497 collectd and chkrootkit
498 -----------------------
500 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
501 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
502 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
503 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
504 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
505 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
511 To compile collectd from source you will need:
513 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
515 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
516 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
517 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
518 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
521 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
522 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
524 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
526 * libclntsh (optional)
527 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
529 * libcredis (optional)
530 Used by the redis plugin. Please note that you require a 0.2.2 version
531 or higher. <http://code.google.com/p/credis/>
534 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
536 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
539 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
540 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
542 * libesmtp (optional)
543 For the `notify_email' plugin.
544 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
546 * libganglia (optional)
547 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
548 <http://ganglia.info/>
550 * libgcrypt (optional)
551 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
552 <http://www.gnupg.org/>
555 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
556 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
559 For querying iptables counters.
560 <http://netfilter.org/>
562 If not found on the system, a version shipped with this distribution can
563 be used. It requires some Linux headers in /usr/include/linux. You can
564 force the build system to use the shipped version by specifying
565 --with-libiptc=shipped
566 when running the configure script.
569 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
570 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
572 <http://openjdk.java.net/> (and others)
574 * libmemcached (optional)
575 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
576 <http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html>
578 * libmodbus (optional)
579 Used by the “modbus” plugin to communicate with Modbus/TCP devices. The
580 “modbus” plugin works with version 2.0.3 of the library – due to frequent
581 API changes other versions may or may not compile cleanly.
582 <http://www.libmodbus.org/>
584 * libmysqlclient (optional)
585 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
586 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
588 * libnetapp (optional)
589 Required for the “netapp” plugin.
590 This library is part of the “Manage ONTAP SDK” published by NetApp.
592 * libnetlink (optional)
593 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
594 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
596 * libnetsnmp (optional)
597 For the `snmp' plugin.
598 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
600 * libnotify (optional)
601 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
602 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
604 * liboping (optional)
605 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
606 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
608 * libowcapi (optional)
609 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
611 <http://www.owfs.org/>
614 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
615 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
617 * libperfstat (optional)
618 Used by various plugins to gather statistics under AIX.
621 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
622 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
623 <http://www.perl.org/>
626 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
627 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
629 * libprotobuf-c, protoc-c (optional)
630 Used by the `pinba' plugin to generate a parser for the network packets
631 sent by the Pinba PHP extension.
632 <http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-c/>
634 * libpython (optional)
635 Used by the `python' plugin. Currently, Python 2.3 and later and Python 3
637 <http://www.python.org/>
639 * librabbitmq (optional; also called “rabbitmq-c”)
640 Used by the AMQP plugin for AMQP connections, for example to RabbitMQ.
641 <http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-c/>
643 * librouteros (optional)
644 Used by the `routeros' plugin to connect to a device running `RouterOS'.
645 <http://verplant.org/librouteros/>
648 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
649 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
650 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
651 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
653 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
654 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
655 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
657 * libsensors (optional)
658 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
659 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
661 * libstatgrab (optional)
662 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
664 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
666 * libtokyotyrant (optional)
667 Used by the tokyotyrant plugin.
668 <http://1978th.net/tokyotyrant/>
670 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
671 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
672 <http://networkupstools.org/>
675 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
676 <http://libvirt.org/>
679 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
680 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
683 <http://www.xmms.org/>
686 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
687 <http://github.com/lloyd/yajl>
689 * libvarnish (optional)
690 Fetches statistics from a Varnish instance. This is needed for the Varnish plugin
691 <http://varnish-cache.org>
693 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
694 ------------------------------------
696 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
697 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
698 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
699 run `./configure --help'.
701 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
702 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
703 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
704 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
705 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
706 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
707 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
708 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
709 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
710 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
711 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
712 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
713 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
714 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
715 not be used in everyday situations.
717 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
718 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
719 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
720 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
721 packages for collectd.
723 Configuring with libjvm
724 -----------------------
726 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
727 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
728 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
729 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
732 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
733 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
734 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
736 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
742 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
743 library checks succeed.
745 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
746 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
747 (environment) variables:
753 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
755 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
757 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
763 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
764 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
765 libc, have a problem with that.
767 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
768 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
769 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
770 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
771 compilation is, well, challenging.
773 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
774 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
775 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
776 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
778 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
779 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
780 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
781 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
782 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
783 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
784 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
786 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
787 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
788 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
794 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
795 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
796 <collectd at verplant.org>.
798 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
799 channel #collectd on freenode.
805 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
806 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
807 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
809 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'