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
- 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.
+ - nginx
+ Collects statistics from `nginx' (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail
+ server/proxy.
+
- ntp
NTP daemon statistics: Local clock drift, offset to peers, etc.
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.
- 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:
+
+ - 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
-------------
platforms.
* libcurl (optional)
- If you want to use the `apache' plugin
+ If you want to use the `apache' and/or `nginx' plugins.
+
+ * 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.
* liboping (optional, if not found a version shipped with this distribution
can be used)
* 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).
+
* 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.
instead.
* 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
For compiling on Darwin in general and the `apple_sensors' plugin in
particular.
+ * libvirt (optional)
+ Collect statistics from virtual machines.
+
+
+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, you can force the plugin to be built.
+ This will most likely fail though unless you're working in a very unusual
+ setup and you really know what you're doing.
+
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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.
Contact
projects / collectd.git / blobdiff