About
-----
- collectd is a small daemon which collects statistics about a computer's
- usage and writes then into RRD files.
+ collectd is a small daemon which collects system information periodically
+ and provides mechanisms to store and monitor the values in a variety of
+ ways.
Features
Sensors in Macs running Mac OS X / Darwin: Temperature, fanspeed and
voltage sensors.
+ - ascent
+ Statistics about Ascent, a free server for the game `World of Warcraft'.
+
- battery
Batterycharge, -current and voltage of ACPI and PMU based laptop
batteries.
Values gathered by a custom program or script.
See collectd-exec(5).
+ - filecount
+ Count the number of files in directories.
+
- hddtemp
Harddisk temperatures using hddtempd.
Iptables' counters: Number of bytes that were matched by a certain
iptables rule.
+ - ipvs
+ IPVS connection statistics (number of connections, octets and packets
+ for each service and destination).
+ See http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/index.html.
+
- irq
IRQ counters: Frequency in which certain interrupts occur.
- load
System load average over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
+ - libvirt
+ CPU, disk and network I/O statistics from virtual machines.
+
- mbmon
Motherboard sensors: temperature, fanspeed and voltage information,
using mbmon(1).
+ - memcached
+ Statistics of the memcached distributed caching system.
+ <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
+
- memory
Memory utilization: Memory occupied by running processes, page cache,
buffer cache and free.
NFS Procedures: Which NFS command were called how often. Only NFSv2 and
NFSv3 right now.
- - ntp
+ - nginx
+ Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
+ server/proxy.
+
+ - ntpd
NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
- nut
Network UPS tools: UPS current, voltage, power, charge, utilisation,
temperature, etc. See upsd(8).
+ - onewire (EXPERIMENTAL!)
+ Read onewire sensors using the owcapu library of the owfs project.
+ Please read in collectd.conf(5) why this plugin is experimental.
+
- perl
The perl plugin implements a Perl-interpreter into collectd. You can
write your own plugins in Perl and return arbitrary values using this
API. See collectd-perl(5).
- This plugin is still considered to be experimental and subject to change
- between minor releases.
-
- ping
Network latency: Time to reach the default gateway or another given
host.
+ - postgresql
+ PostgreSQL database statistics: active server connections, transaction
+ numbers, block IO, table row manipulations.
+
- processes
Process counts: Number of running, sleeping, zombie, ... processes.
- swap
Pages swapped out onto harddisk or whatever is called `swap' by the OS..
+ - tail
+ Follows (tails) logfiles, parses them by lines and submits matched
+ values.
+
- tape
Bytes and operations read and written on tape devices. Solaris only.
- users
Users currently logged in.
+ - vmem
+ Virtual memory statistics, e. g. the number of page-ins/-outs or the
+ number of pagefaults.
+
- vserver
System resources used by Linux VServers.
See <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
- logfile
Writes logmessages to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
+ - perl
+ Log messages are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
+ See collectd-perl(5).
+
- syslog
Logs to the standard UNIX logging mechanism, syslog.
+ * Notifications can be handled by the following plugins:
+
+ - notify_desktop
+ Send a desktop notification to a notification daemon, as defined in
+ the Desktop Notification Specification. To actually display the
+ notifications, notification-daemon is required.
+ See http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/.
+
+ - notify_email
+ Send an E-mail with the notification message to the configured
+ recipients.
+
+ - exec
+ Execute a program or script to handle the notification.
+ See collectd-exec(5).
+
+ - logfile
+ Writes the notification message to a file or STDOUT/STDERR.
+
+ - network
+ Send the notification to a remote host to handle it somehow.
+
+ - perl
+ Notifications are propagated to plugins written in Perl as well.
+ See collectd-perl(5).
+
+ * Miscellaneous plugins:
+
+ - uuid
+ Sets the hostname to an unique identifier. This is meant for setups
+ where each client may migrate to another physical host, possibly going
+ through one or more name changes in the process.
+
* Performance: Since collectd is running as a daemon it doesn't spend much
time starting up again and again. With the exception of the exec plugin no
processes are forked. Caching in output plugins, such as the rrdtool and
* When the `csv' or `rrdtool' plugins are loaded they'll write the values to
files. The usual place for these files is beneath `/var/lib/collectd'.
- * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since only
- root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
+ * When using some of the plugins, collectd needs to run as user root, since
+ only root can do certain things, such as craft ICMP packages needed to ping
other hosts. collectd should NOT be installed setuid root since it can be
used to overwrite valuable files!
the values and read the rrdtool(1) manpage thoroughly.
+collectd and chkrootkit
+-----------------------
+
+ If you are using the `dns' plugin chkrootkit(1) will report collectd as a
+ packet sniffer ("<iface>: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/collectd[<pid>])"). The
+ plugin captures all UDP packets on port 53 to analyze the DNS traffic. In
+ this case, collectd is a legitimate sniffer and the report should be
+ considered to be a false positive. However, you might want to check that
+ this really is collectd and not some other, illegitimate sniffer.
+
+
Prerequisites
-------------
used and should be found in various implementations for hopefully all
platforms.
+ * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework (optional)
+ For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
+ particular.
+
* libcurl (optional)
- If you want to use the `apache' plugin
+ If you want to use the `apache', `ascent', or `nginx' plugin.
+
+ * libesmtp (optional)
+ For the `notify_email' plugin.
+
+ * libhal (optional)
+ If present, the uuid plugin will check for UUID from HAL.
* libiptc (optional)
For querying iptables counters.
* libmysqlclient (optional)
+ Unsurprisingly used by the `mysql' plugin.
* libnetlink (optional)
+ Used, obviously, for the `netlink' plugin.
* libnetsnmp (optional)
+ For the `snmp' plugin.
+
+ * libnotify (optional)
+ For the `notify_desktop' plugin.
* liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
can be used)
Used by the `ping' plugin to send and receive ICMP packets.
+ * libowcapi (optional)
+ Used by the `onewire' plugin to read values from onewire sensors (or the
+ owserver(1) daemon).
+
* libpcap (optional)
Used to capture packets by the `dns' plugin.
+ * libperl (optional)
+ Obviously used by the `perl' plugin. The library has to be compiled with
+ ithread support (introduced in Perl 5.6.0).
+
+ * libpq (optional)
+ The PostgreSQL C client library used by the `postgresql' plugin.
+
* librrd (optional; headers and library; rrdtool 1.0 and 1.2 both work fine)
If built without `librrd' the resulting binary will be `client only', i.e.
will send its values via multicast and not create any RRD files itself.
Alternatively you can chose to write CSV-files (Comma Separated Values)
instead.
+ * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo (optional)
+ Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
+
* libsensors (optional)
- To read from `lm_sensors'.
+ To read from `lm_sensors', see the `sensors' plugin.
- * libstatgrab may be used to collect statistics on systems other than Linux
- and/or Solaris. Note that CPU- and disk-statistics, while being provided
- by this library, are not supported in collectd right now..
+ * libstatgrab (optional) may be used to collect statistics on systems other
+ than Linux and/or Solaris. Note that CPU- and disk-statistics, while being
+ provided by this library, are not supported in collectd right now..
<http://www.i-scream.org/libstatgrab/>
* libupsclient/nut (optional)
For the `nut' plugin which queries nut's `upsd'.
+ * libvirt (optional)
+ Collect statistics from virtual machines.
+
+ * libxml2 (optional)
+ Parse XML data. This is needed for the `ascent' and `libvirt' plugins.
+
* libxmms (optional)
- * librt, libsocket, libkstat, libdevinfo
- Various standard Solaris libraries which provide system functions.
- * CoreFoundation.framework and IOKit.framework
- For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
- particular.
+Configuring / Compiling / Installing
+------------------------------------
+
+ To configure, build and install collectd with the default settings, run
+ `./configure && make && make install'. For detailed, generic instructions
+ see INSTALL. For a complete list of configure options and their description,
+ run `./configure --help'.
+
+ By default, the configure script will check for all build dependencies and
+ disable all plugins whose requirements cannot be fulfilled (any other plugin
+ will be enabled). To enable a plugin, install missing dependencies (see
+ section `Prerequisites' above) and rerun `configure'. If you specify the
+ `--enable-<plugin>' configure option, the script will fail if the depen-
+ dencies for the specified plugin are not met. If you specify the
+ `--disable-<plugin>' configure option, the plugin will not be built. Both
+ options are meant for package maintainers and should not be used in everyday
+ situations.
+
+ By default, collectd will be installed into `/opt/collectd'. You can adjust
+ this setting by specifying the `--prefix' configure option - see INSTALL for
+ details. If you pass DESTDIR=<path> to `make install', <path> will be
+ prefixed to all installation directories. This might be useful when creating
+ packages for collectd.
Crosscompiling
--------------
- To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
- variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
- libc, have a problem with that.
+ To compile correctly collectd needs to be able to initialize static
+ variables to NAN (Not A Number). Some C libraries, especially the GNU
+ libc, have a problem with that.
+
+ Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
+ NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
+ ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
+ test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
+ compilation is, well, challenging.
+
+ If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
+ configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
+ that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
+ are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
- Luckily, with GCC it's possible to work around that problem: One can define
- NAN as being (0.0 / 0.0) and `isnan' as `f != f'. However, to test this
- ``implementation'' the configure script needs to compile and run a short
- test program. Obviously running a test program when doing a cross-
- compilation is, well, challenging.
+ Likewise, collectd needs to know the layout of doubles in memory, in order
+ to craft uniform network packets over different architectures. For this, it
+ needs to know how to convert doubles into the memory layout used by x86. The
+ configure script tries to figure this out by compiling and running a few
+ small test programs. This is of course not possible when cross-compiling.
+ You can use the `--with-fp-layout' option to tell the configure script which
+ conversion method to assume. Valid arguments are:
- If you run into this problem, you can use the `--with-nan-emulation'
- configure option to force the use of this implementation. We can't promise
- that the compiled binary actually behaves as it should, but since NANs
- are likely never passed to the libm you have a good chance to be lucky.
+ * `nothing' (12345678 -> 12345678)
+ * `endianflip' (12345678 -> 87654321)
+ * `intswap' (12345678 -> 56781234)
Contact
-------
- For questions, bugreports, development information and basically all other
- concerns please send an email to collectd's mailinglist at
+ For questions, bug reports, development information and basically all other
+ concerns please send an email to collectd's mailing list at
<collectd at verplant.org>.
For live discussion and more personal contact visit us in IRC, we're in
Sebastian tokkee Harl <sh at tokkee.org>,
and many contributors (see `AUTHORS').
- Please send bugreports and patches to the mailinglist, see `Contact' above.
+ Please send bug reports and patches to the mailing list, see `Contact'
+ above.
projects / collectd.git / blobdiff