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 Parse statistics from websites using regular expressions.
40 Name server and resolver statistics from the `statistics-channel'
41 interface of BIND 9.5, 9,6 and later.
44 CPU utilization: Time spent in the system, user, nice, idle, and related
48 CPU frequency (For laptops with speed step or a similar technology)
51 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
55 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
58 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
59 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
62 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
66 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
67 See collectd-email(5).
70 Amount of entropy available to the system.
73 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
77 Count the number of files in directories.
80 Receive multicast traffic from Ganglia instances.
83 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
86 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
90 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
94 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
97 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
98 for each service and destination).
99 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
102 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
105 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
108 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
111 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
115 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
116 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
119 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
120 buffer cache and free.
123 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
127 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
128 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
131 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
132 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
133 make use of it, filters.
136 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
137 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
138 plugin of choice for that.
141 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
145 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
149 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
152 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
153 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
155 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
156 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
157 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
160 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
161 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
164 Query data from an Oracle database.
167 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
168 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
169 API. See collectd-perl(5).
172 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
176 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
177 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
180 PowerDNS name server statistics.
183 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
186 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
189 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
192 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
196 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
199 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
200 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
201 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
204 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
207 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
211 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
214 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
217 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
220 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
223 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
226 Users currently logged in.
229 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
230 number of pagefaults.
233 System resources used by Linux VServers.
234 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
237 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
240 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
242 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
246 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
247 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
248 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
251 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
252 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
255 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
256 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
257 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
260 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
261 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
262 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
265 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
266 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
267 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
268 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
272 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
273 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
276 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
277 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
280 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
283 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
284 See collectd-perl(5).
287 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
289 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
292 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
293 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
294 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
295 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
298 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
302 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
303 See collectd-exec(5).
306 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
309 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
312 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
313 See collectd-perl(5).
315 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
316 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
319 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
322 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
325 Select values by their data sources' values.
327 - target_notification
328 Create and dispatch a notification.
331 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
334 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
336 * Miscellaneous plugins:
339 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
340 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
341 through one or more name changes in the process.
343 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
344 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
345 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
346 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
347 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
348 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
349 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
351 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
352 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
358 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
359 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
360 for a list of options and a syntax description.
362 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
363 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
365 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
366 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
367 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
368 used to overwrite valuable files!
370 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
371 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
372 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
373 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
374 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
375 solution please share it with us.
377 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
378 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
379 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
380 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
383 collectd and chkrootkit
384 -----------------------
386 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
387 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
388 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
389 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
390 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
391 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
397 To compile collectd from source you will need:
399 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
401 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
402 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
403 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
404 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
407 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
408 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
410 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
412 * libclntsh (optional)
413 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
416 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl' or `nginx' plugin.
417 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
420 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
421 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
423 * libesmtp (optional)
424 For the `notify_email' plugin.
425 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
428 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
429 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
431 * libiptc (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
432 can be used if the Linux kernel headers are available)
433 For querying iptables counters.
434 <http://netfilter.org/>
436 * libmysqlclient (optional)
437 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
438 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
440 * libnetlink (optional)
441 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
442 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
444 * libnetsnmp (optional)
445 For the `snmp' plugin.
446 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
448 * libnotify (optional)
449 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
450 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
452 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
454 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
455 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
457 * libowcapi (optional)
458 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
460 <http://www.owfs.org/>
463 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
464 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
467 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
468 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
469 <http://www.perl.org/>
472 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
473 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
476 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
477 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
478 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
479 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
481 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
482 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
483 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
485 * libsensors (optional)
486 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
487 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
489 * libstatgrab (optional)
490 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
492 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
494 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
495 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
496 <http://networkupstools.org/>
499 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
500 <http://libvirt.org/>
503 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
504 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
507 <http://www.xmms.org/>
510 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
511 ------------------------------------
513 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
514 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
515 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
516 run `./configure --help'.
518 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
519 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
520 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
521 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
522 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
523 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. If you specify the
524 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. Both
525 options are meant for package maintainers and should not be used in everyday
528 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
529 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
530 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
531 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
532 packages for collectd.
538 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
539 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
540 libc, have a problem with that.
542 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
543 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
544 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
545 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
546 compilation is, well, challenging.
548 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
549 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
550 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
551 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
553 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
554 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
555 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
556 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
557 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
558 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
559 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
561 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
562 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
563 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
569 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
570 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
571 <collectd at verplant.org>.
573 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
574 channel #collectd on freenode.
580 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
581 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
582 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
584 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'