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 Number of nf_conntrack entries.
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 Executes SQL statements on various databases and interprets the returned
58 Mountpoint usage (Basically the values `df(1)' delivers)
61 Disk utilization: Sectors read/written, number of read/write actions,
62 average time an IO-operation took to complete.
65 DNS traffic: Query types, response codes, opcodes and traffic/octets
69 Email statistics: Count, traffic, spam scores and checks.
70 See collectd-email(5).
73 Amount of entropy available to the system.
76 Values gathered by a custom program or script.
80 Count the number of files in directories.
83 Receive multicast traffic from Ganglia instances.
86 Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
89 Interface traffic: Number of octets, packets and errors for each
93 Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
97 IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) sensors information.
100 IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
101 for each service and destination).
102 See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
105 IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
108 Integrates a `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM) to execute plugins in Java
109 bytecode. See “Configuring with libjvm” below.
112 System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
115 CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
118 Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
122 Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
123 <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
126 Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
127 buffer cache and free.
130 Information provided by serial multimeters, such as the `Metex
134 MySQL server statistics: Commands issued, handlers triggered, thread
135 usage, query cache utilization and traffic/octets sent and received.
138 Very detailed Linux network interface and routing statistics. You can get
139 (detailed) information on interfaces, qdiscs, classes, and, if you can
140 make use of it, filters.
143 Receive values that were collected by other hosts. Large setups will
144 want to collect the data on one dedicated machine, and this is the
145 plugin of choice for that.
148 NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
152 Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
156 NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
159 Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
160 temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
162 - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
163 Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
164 Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
167 RX and TX of each client in openvpn-status.log (status-version 2).
168 <http://openvpn.net/index.php/documentation/howto.html>
171 Query data from an Oracle database.
174 The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
175 write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
176 API. See collectd-perl(5).
179 Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
183 PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
184 numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
187 PowerDNS name server statistics.
190 Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
193 Counts various aspects of network protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, etc.
196 RRDtool caching daemon (RRDcacheD) statistics.
199 System sensors, accessed using lm_sensors: Voltages, temperatures and
203 RX and TX of serial interfaces. Linux only; needs root privileges.
206 Read values from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) enabled
207 network devices such as switches, routers, thermometers, rack monitoring
208 servers, etc. See collectd-snmp(5).
211 Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
214 Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
218 Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
221 Number of TCP connections to specific local and remote ports.
224 TeamSpeak2 server statistics.
227 Plugin to read values from `The Energy Detective' (TED).
230 Linux ACPI thermal zone information.
233 Users currently logged in.
236 Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
237 number of pagefaults.
240 System resources used by Linux VServers.
241 See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
244 Link quality of wireless cards. Linux only.
247 Bitrate and frequency of music played with XMMS.
249 * Output can be written or send to various destinations by the following
253 Write to comma separated values (CSV) files. This needs lots of
254 diskspace but is extremely portable and can be analysed with almost
255 every program that can analyse anything. Even Microsoft's Excel..
258 Send the data to a remote host to save the data somehow. This is useful
259 for large setups where the data should be saved by a dedicated machine.
262 Of course the values are propagated to plugins written in Perl, too, so
263 you can easily do weird stuff with the plugins we didn't dare think of
264 ;) See collectd-perl(5).
267 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using the RRDtool caching
268 daemon (RRDcacheD) - see rrdcached(1). That daemon provides a general
269 implementation of the caching done by the `rrdtool' plugin.
272 Output to round-robin-database (RRD) files using librrd. See rrdtool(1).
273 This is likely the most popular destination for such values. Since
274 updates to RRD-files are somewhat expensive this plugin can cache
275 updates to the files and write a bunch of updates at once, which lessens
279 One can query the values from the unixsock plugin whenever they're
280 needed. Please read collectd-unixsock(5) for a description on how that's
283 * Logging is, as everything in collectd, provided by plugins. The following
284 plugins keep up informed about what's going on:
287 Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
290 Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
291 See collectd-perl(5).
294 Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
296 * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
299 Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
300 the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
301 notifications, notification-daemon is required.
302 See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
305 Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
309 Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
310 See collectd-exec(5).
313 Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
316 Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
319 Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
320 See collectd-perl(5).
322 * Value processing can be controlled using the "filter chain" infrastructure
323 and "matches" and "targets". The following plugins are available:
326 Match values by their identifier based on regular expressions.
329 Match values with an invalid timestamp.
332 Select values by their data sources' values.
334 - target_notification
335 Create and dispatch a notification.
338 Replace parts of an identifier using regular expressions.
341 Set (overwrite) entire parts of an identifier.
343 * Miscellaneous plugins:
346 Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
347 where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
348 through one or more name changes in the process.
350 * Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
351 time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
352 processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
353 network plugins, makes sure your resources are used efficiently. Also,
354 since collectd is programmed multithreaded it benefits from hyperthreading
355 and multicore processors and makes sure that the daemon isn't idle if only
356 one plugins waits for an IO-operation to complete.
358 * Once set up, hardly any maintenance is necessary. Setup is kept as easy
359 as possible and the default values should be okay for most users.
365 * collectd's configuration file can be found at `sysconfdir'/collectd.conf.
366 Run `collectd -h' for a list of builtin defaults. See `collectd.conf(5)'
367 for a list of options and a syntax description.
369 * When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
370 files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
372 * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
373 only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
374 other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
375 used to overwrite valuable files!
377 * Sample scripts to generate graphs reside in `contrib/' in the source
378 package or somewhere near `/usr/share/doc/collectd' in most distributions.
379 Please be aware that those script are meant as a starting point for your
380 own experiments.. Some of them require the `RRDs' Perl module.
381 (`librrds-perl' on Debian) If you have written a more sophisticated
382 solution please share it with us.
384 * The RRAs of the automatically created RRD files depend on the `step'
385 and `heartbeat' settings given. If change these settings you may need to
386 re-create the files, losing all data. Please be aware of that when changing
387 the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
390 collectd and chkrootkit
391 -----------------------
393 If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
394 packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
395 plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
396 this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
397 considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
398 this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
404 To compile collectd from source you will need:
406 * Usual suspects: C compiler, linker, preprocessor, make, ...
408 * A POSIX-threads (pthread) implementation.
409 Since gathering some statistics is slow (network connections, slow devices,
410 etc) the collectd is parallelized. The POSIX threads interface is being
411 used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
414 * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
415 For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
417 <http://developer.apple.com/corefoundation/>
419 * libclntsh (optional)
420 Used by the `oracle' plugin.
423 If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', `curl' or `nginx' plugin.
424 <http://curl.haxx.se/>
427 Used by the `dbi' plugin to connect to various databases.
428 <http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/>
430 * libesmtp (optional)
431 For the `notify_email' plugin.
432 <http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/>
435 If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
436 <http://hal.freedesktop.org/>
438 * libiptc (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
439 can be used if the Linux kernel headers are available)
440 For querying iptables counters.
441 <http://netfilter.org/>
444 Library that encapsulates the `Java Virtual Machine' (JVM). This library is
445 used by the Java plugin to execute Java bytecode. See “Configuring with
448 * libmysqlclient (optional)
449 Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
450 <http://dev.mysql.com/>
452 * libnetlink (optional)
453 Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
454 <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Iproute2>
456 * libnetsnmp (optional)
457 For the `snmp' plugin.
458 <http://www.net-snmp.org/>
460 * libnotify (optional)
461 For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
462 <http://www.galago-project.org/>
464 * liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
466 Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
467 <http://verplant.org/liboping/>
469 * libowcapi (optional)
470 Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
472 <http://www.owfs.org/>
475 Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
476 <http://www.tcpdump.org/>
479 Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
480 ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
481 <http://www.perl.org/>
484 The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
485 <http://www.postgresql.org/>
488 Used by the `rrdtool' and `rrdcached' plugins. The latter requires RRDtool
489 client support which was added after version 1.3 of RRDtool. Versions 1.0,
490 1.2 and 1.3 are known to work with the `rrdtool' plugin.
491 <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>
493 * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
494 Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
495 <http://developers.sun.com/solaris/>
497 * libsensors (optional)
498 To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
499 <http://www.lm-sensors.org/>
501 * libstatgrab (optional)
502 Used by various plugins to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
504 <http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
506 * libupsclient/nut (optional)
507 For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
508 <http://networkupstools.org/>
511 Collect statistics from virtual machines.
512 <http://libvirt.org/>
515 Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
516 <http://xmlsoft.org/>
519 <http://www.xmms.org/>
522 Configuring / Compiling / Installing
523 ------------------------------------
525 To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
526 `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
527 see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
528 run `./configure --help'.
530 By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
531 disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
532 will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
533 section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
534 `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
535 dencies for the specified plugin are not met. If you specify the
536 `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. Both
537 options are meant for package maintainers and should not be used in everyday
540 By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
541 this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
542 details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
543 prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
544 packages for collectd.
546 Configuring with libjvm
547 -----------------------
549 To determine the location of the required files of a Java installation is not
550 an easy task, because the locations vary with your kernel (Linux, SunOS, …)
551 and with your architecture (x86, SPARC, …) and there is no ‘java-config’
552 script we could use. Configuration of the JVM library is therefore a bit
555 The easiest way to use the `--with-java=$JAVA_HOME' option, where
556 `$JAVA_HOME' is usually something like:
557 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.14
559 The configure script will then use find(1) to look for the following files:
565 If found, appropriate CPP-flags and LD-flags are set and the following
566 library checks succeed.
568 If this doesn't work for you, you have the possibility to specify CPP-flags,
569 C-flags and LD-flags for the ‘Java’ plugin by hand, using the following three
570 (environment) variables:
576 For example (shortened for demonstration purposes):
578 ./configure JAVA_CPPFLAGS="-I$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux"
580 Adding "-ljvm" to the JAVA_LDFLAGS is done automatically, you don't have to
586 To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
587 variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
588 libc, have a problem with that.
590 Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
591 NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
592 ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
593 test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
594 compilation is, well, challenging.
596 If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
597 configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
598 that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
599 are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
601 Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
602 to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
603 needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
604 configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
605 small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
606 You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
607 conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
609 * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
610 * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
611 * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
617 For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
618 concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
619 <collectd at verplant.org>.
621 For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
622 channel #collectd on freenode.
628 Florian octo Forster <octo at verplant.org>,
629 Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
630 and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
632 Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'