=encoding UTF-8

=head1 NAME

collectd-exec - Documentation of collectd's C<exec plugin>

=head1 SYNOPSIS

  # See collectd.conf(5)
  LoadPlugin exec
  # ...
  <Plugin exec>
    Exec "myuser:mygroup" "myprog"
    Exec "otheruser" "/path/to/another/binary" "arg0" "arg1"
    NotificationExec "user" "/usr/lib/collectd/exec/handle_notification"
  </Plugin>

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The C<exec plugin> forks off an executable either to receive values or to
dispatch notifications to the outside world. The syntax of the configuration is
explained in L<collectd.conf(5)> but summarized in the above synopsis.

If you want/need better performance or more functionality you should take a
long look at the C<perl plugin>, L<collectd-perl(5)>.

=head1 EXECUTABLE TYPES

There are currently two types of executables that can be executed by the
C<exec plugin>:

=over 4

=item C<Exec>

These programs are forked and values that it writes to C<STDOUT> are read back.
The executable is forked in a fashion similar to L<init>: It is forked once and
not again until it exits. If it exited, it will be forked again after at most
I<Interval> seconds. It is perfectly legal for the executable to run for a long
time and continuously write values to C<STDOUT>.

See L<EXEC DATA FORMAT> below for a description of the output format expected
from these programs.

B<Warning:> If the executable only writes one value and then exits it will be
executed every I<Interval> seconds. If I<Interval> is short (the default is 10
seconds) this may result in serious system load.

=item C<NotificationExec>

The program is forked once for each notification that is handled by the daemon.
The notification is passed to the program on C<STDIN> in a fashion similar to
HTTP-headers. In contrast to programs specified with C<Exec> the execution of
this program is not serialized, so that several instances of this program may
run at once if multiple notifications are received.

See L<NOTIFICATION DATA FORMAT> below for a description of the data passed to
these programs.

=back

=head1 EXEC DATA FORMAT

The forked executable is expected to print values to C<STDOUT>. The expected
format is as follows:

=over 4

=item Comments

Each line beginning with a C<#> (hash mark) is ignored.

=item B<PUTVAL> I<Identifier> [I<OptionList>] I<Valuelist>

Submits one or more values (identified by I<Identifier>, see below) to the
daemon which will dispatch it to all its write-plugins.

An I<Identifier> is of the form
C<I<host>B</>I<plugin>B<->I<instance>B</>I<type>B<->I<instance>> with both
I<instance>-parts being optional. If they're omitted the hyphen must be
omitted, too. I<plugin> and each I<instance>-part may be chosen freely as long
as the tuple (plugin, plugin instance, type instance) uniquely identifies the
plugin within collectd. I<type> identifies the type and number of values
(i.E<nbsp>e. data-set) passed to collectd. A large list of predefined
data-sets is available in the B<types.db> file. See L<types.db(5)> for a
description of the format of this file.

The I<OptionList> is an optional list of I<Options>, where each option is a
key-value-pair. A list of currently understood options can be found below, all
other options will be ignored. Values that contain spaces must be quoted with
double quotes.

I<Valuelist> is a colon-separated list of the time and the values, each either
an integer if the data-source is a counter, or a double if the data-source is
of type "gauge". You can submit an undefined gauge-value by using B<U>. When
submitting B<U> to a counter the behavior is undefined. The time is given as
epoch (i.E<nbsp>e. standard UNIX time) or B<N> to use the current time.

You can mix options and values, but the order is important: Options only
effect following values, so specifying an option as last field is allowed, but
useless. Also, an option applies to B<all> following values, so you don't need
to re-set an option over and over again.

The currently defined B<Options> are:

=over 4

=item B<interval=>I<seconds>

Gives the interval in which the data identified by I<Identifier> is being
collected.

=back

Please note that this is the same format as used in the B<unixsock plugin>, see
L<collectd-unixsock(5)>. There's also a bit more information on identifiers in
case you're confused.

Since examples usually let one understand a lot better, here are some:

  PUTVAL leeloo/cpu-0/cpu-idle N:2299366
  PUTVAL alice/interface/if_octets-eth0 interval=10 1180647081:421465:479194

=item B<PUTNOTIF> [I<OptionList>] B<message=>I<Message>

Submits a notification to the daemon which will then dispatch it to all plugins
which have registered for receiving notifications. 

The B<PUTNOTIF> if followed by a list of options which further describe the
notification. The B<message> option is special in that it will consume the rest
of the line as its value. The B<message>, B<severity>, and B<time> options are
mandatory.

Valid options are:

=over 4

=item B<message=>I<Message> (B<REQUIRED>)

Sets the message of the notification. This is the message that will be made
accessible to the user, so it should contain some useful information. As with
all options: If the message includes spaces, it must be quoted with double
quotes. This option is mandatory.

=item B<severity=failure>|B<warning>|B<okay> (B<REQUIRED>)

Sets the severity of the notification. This option is mandatory.

=item B<time=>I<Time> (B<REQUIRED>)

Sets the time of the notification. The time is given as "epoch", i.E<nbsp>e. as
seconds since January 1st, 1970, 00:00:00. This option is mandatory.

=item B<host=>I<Hostname>

=item B<plugin=>I<Plugin>

=item B<plugin_instance=>I<Plugin-Instance>

=item B<type=>I<Type>

=item B<type_instance=>I<Type-Instance>

These "associative" options establish a relation between this notification and
collected performance data. This connection is purely informal, i.E<nbsp>e. the
daemon itself doesn't do anything with this information. However, websites or
GUIs may use this information to place notifications near the affected graph or
table. All the options are optional, but B<plugin_instance> without B<plugin>
or B<type_instance> without B<type> doesn't make much sense and should be
avoided.

=item B<type:key=>I<value>

Sets user defined meta information. The B<type> key is a single character
defining the type of the meta information.

The current supported types are:

=over 8

=item B<s> A string passed as-is.

=back

=back

=back

Please note that this is the same format as used in the B<unixsock plugin>, see
L<collectd-unixsock(5)>.

When collectd exits it sends a B<SIGTERM> to all still running
child-processes upon which they have to quit.

=head1 NOTIFICATION DATA FORMAT

The notification executables receive values rather than providing them. In
fact, after the program is started C<STDOUT> is connected to C</dev/null>.

The data is passed to the executables over C<STDIN> in a format very similar to
HTTP: At first there is a "header" with one line per field. Every line consists
of a field name, ended by a colon, and the associated value until end-of-line.
The "header" is ended by two newlines immediately following another,
i.e. an empty line. The rest, basically the "body", is the message of the
notification.

The following is an example notification passed to a program:

  Severity: FAILURE
  Time: 1200928930.515
  Host: myhost.mydomain.org
  \n
  This is a test notification to demonstrate the format

The following header files are currently used. Please note, however, that you
should ignore unknown header files to be as forward-compatible as possible.

=over 4

=item B<Severity>

Severity of the notification. May either be B<FAILURE>, B<WARNING>, or B<OKAY>.

=item B<Time>

The time in epoch, i.e. as seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. The value
currently has millisecond precision (i.e. three decimal places), but scripts
should accept arbitrary numbers of decimal places, including no decimal places.

=item B<Host>

=item B<Plugin>

=item B<PluginInstance>

=item B<Type>

=item B<TypeInstance>

Identification of the performance data this notification is associated with.
All of these fields are optional because notifications do not B<need> to be
associated with a certain value.

=back

=head1 ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variables are set by the plugin before calling
I<exec>:

=over 4

=item COLLECTD_INTERVAL

Value of the global interval setting.

=item COLLECTD_HOSTNAME

Hostname used by I<collectd> to dispatch local values.

=back

=head1 USING NAGIOS PLUGINS

Though the interface is far from perfect, there are tons of plugins for Nagios.
You can use these plugins with collectd by using a simple transition layer,
C<exec-nagios.px>, which is shipped with the collectd distribution in the
C<contrib/> directory. It is a simple Perl script that comes with embedded
documentation. To see it, run the following command:

  perldoc exec-nagios.px

This script expects a configuration file, C<exec-nagios.conf>. You can find an
example in the C<contrib/> directory, too.

Even a simple mechanism to submit "performance data" to collectd is
implemented. If you need a more sophisticated setup, please rewrite the plugin
to make use of collectd's more powerful interface.

=head1 CAVEATS

=over 4

=item *

The user, the binary is executed as, may not have root privileges, i.E<nbsp>e.
must have an UID that is non-zero. This is for your own good.

=item *

Early versions of the plugin did not use a command but treated all lines as if
they were arguments to the I<PUTVAL> command. When the I<PUTNOTIF> command was
implemented, this behavior was kept for lines which start with an unknown
command for backwards compatibility. This compatibility code has been removed
in I<collectdE<nbsp>5>.

=back

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<collectd(1)>,
L<collectd.conf(5)>,
L<collectd-perl(5)>,
L<collectd-unixsock(5)>,
L<fork(2)>, L<exec(3)>

=head1 AUTHOR

Florian Forster E<lt>octo@collectd.orgE<gt>

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