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 Linux software-RAID device information (number of active, failed, spare
148 Query and parse data from a memcache daemon (memcached).
151 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
152 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
155 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
156 buffer cache and free.
159 Reads values from Modbus/TCP enabled devices. Supports reading values
160 from multiple "slaves" so gateway devices can be used.
163 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
167 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
168 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
171 Plugin to query performance values from a NetApp storage system using the
172 “Manage ONTAP” SDK provided by NetApp.
175 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
176 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
177 make use of it, filters.
180 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
181 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
182 plugin of choice for that.
185 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
189 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
193 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
196 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
197 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
200 Queries routing information from the “Optimized Link State Routing”
203 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
204 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
205 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
208 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
209 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
212 Query data from an Oracle database.
215 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
216 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
217 API. See collectd-perl(5).
220 Receive and dispatch timing values from Pinba, a profiling extension for
224 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
228 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
229 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
232 PowerDNS name server statistics.
235 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
238 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
241 The python plugin implements a Python interpreter into collectd. This
242 makes it possible to write plugins in Python which are executed by
243 collectd without the need to start a heavy interpreter every interval.
244 See collectd-python(5) for details.
247 The redis plugin gathers information from a redis server, including:
248 uptime, used memory, total connections etc.
251 Query interface and wireless registration statistics from RouterOS.
254 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
257 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
261 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
264 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
265 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
266 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
269 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
272 Parse table-like structured files.
275 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
279 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
282 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
285 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
288 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
291 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
294 Reads the number of records and file size from a running Tokyo Tyrant
298 System uptime statistics.
301 Users currently logged in.
304 Various statistics from Varnish, an HTTP accelerator.
307 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
308 number of pagefaults.
311 System resources used by Linux VServers.
312 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
315 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
318 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
321 Statistics for ZFS' “Adaptive Replacement Cache” (ARC).
323 * Output can be written or sent to various destinations by the following
327 Sends JSON-encoded data to an Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
328 server, such as RabbitMQ.
331 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
332 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
333 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
336 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
337 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
340 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
341 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
342 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
345 It's possible to implement write plugins in Python using the python
346 plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
349 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
350 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
351 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
354 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
355 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
356 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
357 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
361 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
362 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
366 Sends data to Carbon, the storage layer of Graphite.
369 Sends the values collected by collectd to a web-server using HTTP POST
370 requests. The transmitted data is either in a form understood by the
371 Exec plugin or formatted in JSON.
374 Sends the values to a Redis key-value database server.
376 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
377 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
380 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
383 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
384 See collectd-perl(5).
387 It's possible to implement log plugins in Python using the python plugin.
388 See collectd-python(5) for details.
391 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
393 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
396 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
397 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
398 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
399 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
402 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
406 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
407 See collectd-exec(5).
410 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
413 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
416 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
417 See collectd-perl(5).
420 It's possible to implement notification plugins in Python using the
421 python plugin. See collectd-python(5) for details.
423 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
424 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
426 - match_empty_counter
427 Match counter values which are currently zero.
430 Match values using a hash function of the hostname.
433 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
436 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
439 Select values by their data sources' values.
441 - target_notification
442 Create and dispatch a notification.
445 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
448 Scale (multiply) values by an arbitrary value.
451 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
453 * Miscellaneous plugins:
456 Checks values against configured thresholds and creates notifications if
457 values are out of bounds. See collectd-threshold(5) for details.
460 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
461 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
462 through one or more name changes in the process.
464 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
465 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
466 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
467 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
468 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
469 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
470 one plugin waits for an IO-operation to complete.
472 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
473 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
479 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
480 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
481 for a list of options and a syntax description.
483 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
484 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
486 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
487 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
488 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
489 used to overwrite valuable files!
491 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
492 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
493 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
494 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
495 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
496 solution please share it with us.
498 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
499 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
500 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
501 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
504 collectd and chkrootkit
505 -----------------------
507 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
508 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
509 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
510 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
511 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
512 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
518 To compile collectd from source you will need:
520 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
522 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
523 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
524 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
525 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
528 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
529 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
531 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
533 * libclntsh (optional)
534 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
536 * libcredis (optional)
537 Used by the redis plugin. Please note that you require a 0.2.2 version
538 or higher. <http://code.google.com/p/credis/>
541 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl', `nginx', or `write_http'
543 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
546 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
547 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
549 * libesmtp (optional)
550 For the `notify_email' plugin.
551 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
553 * libganglia (optional)
554 Used by the `gmond' plugin to process data received from Ganglia.
555 <http://ganglia.info/>
557 * libgcrypt (optional)
558 Used by the `network' plugin for encryption and authentication.
559 <http://www.gnupg.org/>
562 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
563 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
566 For querying iptables counters.
567 <http://netfilter.org/>
569 If not found on the system, a version shipped with this distribution can
570 be used. It requires some Linux headers in /usr/include/linux. You can
571 force the build system to use the shipped version by specifying
572 --with-libiptc=shipped
573 when running the configure script.
576 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
577 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
579 <http://openjdk.java.net/> (and others)
581 * libmemcached (optional)
582 Used by the `memcachec' plugin to connect to a memcache daemon.
583 <http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html>
585 * libmodbus (optional)
586 Used by the “modbus” plugin to communicate with Modbus/TCP devices. The
587 “modbus” plugin works with version 2.0.3 of the library – due to frequent
588 API changes other versions may or may not compile cleanly.
589 <http://www.libmodbus.org/>
591 * libmysqlclient (optional)
592 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
593 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
595 * libnetapp (optional)
596 Required for the “netapp” plugin.
597 This library is part of the “Manage ONTAP SDK” published by NetApp.
599 * libnetlink (optional)
600 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
601 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
603 * libnetsnmp (optional)
604 For the `snmp' plugin.
605 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
607 * libnotify (optional)
608 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
609 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
611 * liboping (optional)
612 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
613 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
615 * libowcapi (optional)
616 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
618 <http://www.owfs.org/>
621 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
622 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
624 * libperfstat (optional)
625 Used by various plugins to gather statistics under AIX.
628 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
629 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
630 <http://www.perl.org/>
633 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
634 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
636 * libprotobuf-c, protoc-c (optional)
637 Used by the `pinba' plugin to generate a parser for the network packets
638 sent by the Pinba PHP extension.
639 <http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-c/>
641 * libpython (optional)
642 Used by the `python' plugin. Currently, Python 2.3 and later and Python 3
644 <http://www.python.org/>
646 * librabbitmq (optional; also called “rabbitmq-c”)
647 Used by the AMQP plugin for AMQP connections, for example to RabbitMQ.
648 <http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-c/>
650 * librouteros (optional)
651 Used by the `routeros' plugin to connect to a device running `RouterOS'.
652 <http://verplant.org/librouteros/>
655 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
656 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
657 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
658 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
660 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
661 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
662 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
664 * libsensors (optional)
665 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
666 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
668 * libstatgrab (optional)
669 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
671 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
673 * libtokyotyrant (optional)
674 Used by the tokyotyrant plugin.
675 <http://1978th.net/tokyotyrant/>
677 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
678 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
679 <http://networkupstools.org/>
682 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
683 <http://libvirt.org/>
686 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
687 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
690 <http://www.xmms.org/>
693 Parse JSON data. This is needed for the `curl_json' plugin.
694 <http://github.com/lloyd/yajl>
696 * libvarnish (optional)
697 Fetches statistics from a Varnish instance. This is needed for the Varnish plugin
698 <http://varnish-cache.org>
700 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
701 ------------------------------------
703 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
704 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
705 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
706 run `./configure --help'.
708 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
709 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
710 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
711 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
712 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
713 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. In that case you can force the
714 plugin to be built using the `--enable-<plugin>=force' configure option.
715 This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
716 setup and you really know what you're doing. If you specify the
717 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. If you
718 specify the `--enable-all-plugins' or `--disable-all-plugins' configure
719 options, all plugins will be enabled or disabled respectively by default.
720 Explicitly enabling or disabling a plugin overwrites the default for the
721 specified plugin. These options are meant for package maintainers and should
722 not be used in everyday situations.
724 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
725 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
726 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
727 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
728 packages for collectd.
730 Configuring with libjvm
731 -----------------------
733 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
734 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
735 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
736 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
739 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
740 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
741 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
743 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
749 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
750 library checks succeed.
752 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
753 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
754 (environment) variables:
760 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
762 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
764 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
770 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
771 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
772 libc, have a problem with that.
774 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
775 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
776 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
777 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
778 compilation is, well, challenging.
780 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
781 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
782 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
783 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
785 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
786 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
787 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
788 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
789 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
790 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
791 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
793 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
794 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
795 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
801 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
802 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
803 <collectd at verplant.org>.
805 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
806 channel #collectd on freenode.
812 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
813 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
814 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
816 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'