Provided by:
collectd_4.4.2-3ubuntu1_i386 
NAME
collectd.conf - Configuration for the system statistics collection
daemon collectd
SYNOPSIS
BaseDir "/path/to/data/"
PIDFile "/path/to/pidfile/collectd.pid"
Server "123.123.123.123" 12345
LoadPlugin cpu
LoadPlugin load
LoadPlugin ping
<Plugin ping>
Host "example.org"
Host "provider.net"
</Plugin>
DESCRIPTION
This config file controls how the system statistics collection daemon
collectd behaves. The most significant option is LoadPlugin, which
controls which plugins to load. These plugins ultimately define
collectd’s behavior.
The syntax of this config file is similar to the config file of the
famous Apache Webserver. Each line contains either a key-value-pair or
a section-start or -end. Empty lines and everything after the hash-
symbol ‘#’ is ignored. Values are either string, enclosed in double-
quotes, (floating-point-)numbers or a boolean expression, i. e. either
true or false. String containing of only alphanumeric characters and
underscores do not need to be quoted.
The configuration is read and processed in order, i. e. from top to
bottom. So the plugins are loaded in the order listed in this config
file. It is a good idea to load any logging plugins first in order to
catch messages from plugins during configuration. Also, the
"LoadPlugin" option must occur before the "<Plugin ...>" block.
GLOBAL OPTIONS
BaseDir Directory
Sets the base directory. This is the directory beneath all RRD-
files are created. Possibly more subdirectories are created. This
is also the working directory for the daemon.
LoadPlugin Plugin
Loads the plugin Plugin. There must be at least one such line or
collectd will be mostly useless.
Include Path
If Path points to a file, includes that file. If Path points to a
directory, recursively includes all files within that directory and
its subdirectories. If the "wordexp" function is available on your
system, shell-like wildcards are expanded before files are
included. This means you can use statements like the following:
Include "/etc/collectd.d/*.conf"
If more than one files are included by a single Include option, the
files will be included in lexicographical order (as defined by the
"strcmp" function). Thus, you can e. g. use numbered prefixes to
specify the order in which the files are loaded.
To prevent loops and shooting yourself in the foot in interesting
ways the nesting is limited to a depth of 8 levels, which should be
sufficient for most uses. Since symlinks are followed it is still
possible to crash the daemon by looping symlinks. In our opinion
significant stupidity should result in an appropriate amount of
pain.
It is no problem to have a block like "<Plugin foo>" in more than
one file, but you cannot include files from within blocks.
PIDFile File
Sets where to write the PID file to. This file is overwritten when
it exists and deleted when the program is stopped. Some init-
scripts might override this setting using the -P command-line
option.
PluginDir Directory
Path to the plugins (shared objects) of collectd.
TypesDB File [File ...]
Set one or more files that contain the data-set descriptions. See
types.db(5) for a description of the format of this file.
Interval Seconds
Configures the interval in which to query the read plugins.
Obviously smaller values lead to a higher system load produced by
collectd, while higher values lead to more coarse statistics.
ReadThreads Num
Number of threads to start for reading plugins. The default value
is 5, but you may want to increase this if you have more than five
plugins that take a long time to read. Mostly those are plugin that
do network-IO. Setting this to a value higher than the number of
plugins you’ve loaded is totally useless.
Hostname Name
Sets the hostname that identifies a host. If you omit this setting,
the hostname will be determinded using the gethostname(2) system
call.
FQDNLookup true|false
If Hostname is determined automatically this setting controls
whether or not the daemon should try to figure out the "fully
qualified domain name", FQDN. This is done using a lookup of the
name returned by "gethostname".
Using this feature (i. e. setting this option to true) is
recommended. However, to preserve backwards compatibility the
default is set to false. The sample config file that is installed
with "make install" includes a line which sets this option, though,
so that default installations will have this setting enabled.
PLUGIN OPTIONS
Some plugins may register own options. These options must be enclosed
in a "Plugin"-Section. Which options exist depends on the plugin used.
Some plugins require external configuration, too. The "apache plugin",
for example, required "mod_status" to be configured in the webserver
you’re going to collect data from. These plugins are listed below as
well, even if they don’t require any configuration within collectd’s
configfile.
A list of all plugins and a short summary for each plugin can be found
in the README file shipped with the sourcecode and hopefully binary
packets as well.
Plugin "apache"
To configure the "apache"-plugin you first need to configure the Apache
webserver correctly. The Apache-plugin "mod_status" needs to be loaded
and working and the "ExtendedStatus" directive needs to be enabled. You
can use the following snipped to base your Apache config upon:
ExtendedStatus on
<IfModule mod_status.c>
<Location /mod_status>
SetHandler server-status
</Location>
</IfModule>
Since its "mod_status" module is very similar to Apache’s, lighttpd is
also supported. It introduces a new field, called "BusyServers", to
count the number of currently connected clients. This field is also
supported.
The following options are accepted by the "apache"-plugin:
URL http://host/mod_status?auto
Sets the URL of the "mod_status" output. This needs to be the
output generated by "ExtendedStatus on" and it needs to be the
machine readable output generated by appending the "?auto"
argument.
User Username
Optional user name needed for authentication.
Password Password
Optional password needed for authentication.
VerifyPeer true|false
Enable or disable peer SSL certificate verification. See
<http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html> for details. Enabled by
default.
VerifyHost true|false
Enable or disable peer host name verification. If enabled, the
plugin checks if the "Common Name" or a "Subject Alternate Name"
field of the SSL certificate matches the host name provided by the
URL option. If this identity check fails, the connection is
aborted. Obviously, only works when connecting to a SSL enabled
server. Enabled by default.
CACert File
File that holds one or more SSL certificates. If you want to use
HTTPS you will possibly need this option. What CA certificates come
bundled with "libcurl" and are checked by default depends on the
distribution you use.
Plugin "apcups"
Host Hostname
Hostname of the host running apcupsd. Defaults to localhost. Please
note that IPv6 support has been disabled unless someone can confirm
or decline that apcupsd can handle it.
Port Port
TCP-Port to connect to. Defaults to 3551.
Plugin "ascent"
This plugin collects information about an Ascent server, a free server
for the "World of Warcraft" game. This plugin gathers the information
by fetching the XML status page using "libcurl" and parses it using
"libxml2".
The configuration options are the same as for the "apache" plugin
above:
URL http://localhost/ascent/status/
Sets the URL of the XML status output.
User Username
Optional user name needed for authentication.
Password Password
Optional password needed for authentication.
CACert File
File that holds one or more SSL certificates. If you want to use
HTTPS you will possibly need this option. What CA certificates come
bundled with "libcurl" and are checked by default depends on the
distribution you use.
Plugin "cpufreq"
This plugin doesn’t have any options. It reads
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq (for the first
CPU installed) to get the current CPU frequency. If this file does not
exist make sure cpufreqd (<http://cpufreqd.sourceforge.net/>) or a
similar tool is installed and an "cpu governor" (that’s a kernel
module) is loaded.
Plugin "csv"
DataDir Directory
Set the directory to store CSV-files under. Per default CSV-files
are generated beneath the daemon’s working directory, i. e. the
BaseDir.
StoreRates true|false
If set to true, convert counter values to rates. If set to false
(the default) counter values are stored as is, i. e. as an
increasing integer number.
Plugin "df"
Device Device
Select partitions based on the devicename.
MountPoint Directory
Select partitions based on the mountpoint.
FSType FSType
Select partitions based on the filesystem type.
IgnoreSelected true|false
Invert the selection: If set to true, all partitions except the
ones that match any one of the criteria are collected. By default
only selected partitions are collected if a selection is made. If
no selection is configured at all, all partitions are selected.
Plugin "disk"
The "disk" plugin collects information about the usage of physical
disks and logical disks (partitions). Values collected are the number
of octets written to and read from a disk or partition, the number of
read/write operations issued to the disk and a rather complex "time" it
took for these commands to be issued.
Using the following two options you can ignore some disks or configure
the collection only of specific disks.
Disk Name
Select the disk Name. Whether it is collected or ignored depends on
the IgnoreSelected setting, see below. As with other plugins that
use the daemon’s ignorelist functionality, a string that starts and
ends with a slash is interpreted as a regular expression. Examples:
Disk "sdd"
Disk "/hda[34]/"
IgnoreSelected true|false
Sets whether selected disks, i. e. the ones matches by any of the
Disk statements, are ignored or if all other disks are ignored. The
behavior (hopefully) is intuitive: If no Disk option is configured,
all disks are collected. If at least one Disk option is given and
no IgnoreSelected or set to false, only matching disks will be
collected. If IgnoreSelected is set to true, all disks are
collected except the ones matched.
Plugin "dns"
Interface Interface
The dns plugin uses libpcap to capture dns traffic and analyses it.
This option sets the interface that should be used. If this option
is not set, or set to "any", the plugin will try to get packets
from all interfaces. This may not work on certain platforms, such
as Mac OS X.
IgnoreSource IP-address
Ignore packets that originate from this address.
Plugin "email"
SocketFile Path
Sets the socket-file which is to be created.
SocketGroup Group
If running as root change the group of the UNIX-socket after it has
been created. Defaults to collectd.
SocketPerms Permissions
Change the file permissions of the UNIX-socket after it has been
created. The permissions must be given as a numeric, octal value as
you would pass to chmod(1). Defaults to 0770.
MaxConns Number
Sets the maximum number of connections that can be handled in
parallel. Since this many threads will be started immediately
setting this to a very high value will waste valuable resources.
Defaults to 5 and will be forced to be at most 16384 to prevent
typos and dumb mistakes.
Plugin "exec"
Please make sure to read collectd-exec(5) before using this plugin. It
contains valuable information on when the executable is executed and
the output that is expected from it.
Exec User[:[Group]] Executable [<arg> [<arg> ...]]
NotificationExec User[:[Group]] Executable [<arg> [<arg> ...]]
Execute the executable Executable as user User. If the user name is
followed by a colon and a group name, the effective group is set to
that group. The real group and saved-set group will be set to the
default group of that user. If no group is given the effective
group ID will be the same as the real group ID.
Please note that in order to change the user and/or group the
daemon needs superuser privileges. If the daemon is run as an
unprivileged user you must specify the same user/group here. If the
daemon is run with superuser privileges, you must supply a non-root
user here.
The executable may be followed by optional arguments that are
passed to the program. Please note that due to the configuration
parsing numbers and boolean values may be changed. If you want to
be absolutely sure that something is passed as-is please enclose it
in quotes.
The Exec and NotificationExec statements change the semantics of
the programs executed, i. e. the data passed to them and the
response expected from them. This is documented in great detail in
collectd-exec(5).
Plugin "hddtemp"
To get values from hddtemp collectd connects to localhost (127.0.0.1),
port 7634/tcp. The Host and Port options can be used to change these
default values, see below. "hddtemp" has to be running to work
correctly. If "hddtemp" is not running timeouts may appear which may
interfere with other statistics..
The hddtemp homepage can be found at
<http://www.guzu.net/linux/hddtemp.php>.
Host Hostname
Hostname to connect to. Defaults to 127.0.0.1.
Port Port
TCP-Port to connect to. Defaults to 7634.
TranslateDevicename true|false
If enabled, translate the disk names to major/minor device numbers
(e. g. "8-0" for /dev/sda). For backwards compatibility this
defaults to true but it’s recommended to disable it as it will
probably be removed in the next major version.
Plugin "interface"
Interface Interface
Select this interface. By default these interfaces will then be
collected. For a more detailed description see IgnoreSelected
below.
IgnoreSelected true|false
If no configuration if given, the traffic-plugin will collect data
from all interfaces. This may not be practical, especially for
loopback- and similar interfaces. Thus, you can use the
Interface-option to pick the interfaces you’re interested in.
Sometimes, however, it’s easier/preferred to collect all interfaces
except a few ones. This option enables you to do that: By setting
IgnoreSelected to true the effect of Interface is inversed: All
selected interfaces are ignored and all other interfaces are
collected.
Plugin "iptables"
Chain Table Chain [Comment|Number [Name]]
Select the rules to count. If only Table and Chain are given, this
plugin will collect the counters of all rules which have a comment-
match. The comment is then used as type-instance.
If Comment or Number is given, only the rule with the matching
comment or the nth rule will be collected. Again, the comment (or
the number) will be used as the type-instance.
If Name is supplied, it will be used as the type-instance instead
of the comment or the number.
Plugin "irq"
Irq Irq
Select this irq. By default these irqs will then be collected. For
a more detailed description see IgnoreSelected below.
IgnoreSelected true|false
If no configuration if given, the irq-plugin will collect data from
all irqs. This may not be practical, especially if no interrupts
happen. Thus, you can use the Irq-option to pick the interrupt
you’re interested in. Sometimes, however, it’s easier/preferred to
collect all interrupts except a few ones. This option enables you
to do that: By setting IgnoreSelected to true the effect of Irq is
inversed: All selected interrupts are ignored and all other
interrupts are collected.
Plugin "libvirt"
This plugin allows CPU, disk and network load to be collected for
virtualized guests on the machine. This means that these
characteristics can be collected for guest systems without installing
any software on them - collectd only runs on the hosting system. The
statistics are collected through libvirt (<http://libvirt.org/>).
Only Connection is required.
Connection uri
Connect to the hypervisor given by uri. For example if using Xen
use:
Connection "xen:///"
Details which URIs allowed are given at
<http://libvirt.org/uri.html>.
RefreshInterval seconds
Refresh the list of domains and devices every seconds. The default
is 60 seconds. Setting this to be the same or smaller than the
Interval will cause the list of domains and devices to be refreshed
on every iteration.
Refreshing the devices in particular is quite a costly operation,
so if your virtualization setup is static you might consider
increasing this. If this option is set to 0, refreshing is disabled
completely.
Domain name
BlockDevice name:dev
InterfaceDevice name:dev
IgnoreSelected true|false
Select which domains and devices are collected.
If IgnoreSelected is not given or false then only the listed
domains and disk/network devices are collected.
If IgnoreSelected is true then the test is reversed and the listed
domains and disk/network devices are ignored, while the rest are
collected.
The domain name and device names may use a regular expression, if
the name is surrounded by /.../ and collectd was compiled with
support for regexps.
The default is to collect statistics for all domains and all their
devices.
Example:
BlockDevice "/:hdb/"
IgnoreSelected "true"
Ignore all hdb devices on any domain, but other block devices (eg.
hda) will be collected.
HostnameFormat name|uuid|hostname|...
When the libvirt plugin logs data, it sets the hostname of the
collected data according to this setting. The default is to use the
guest name as provided by the hypervisor, which is equal to setting
name.
uuid means use the guest’s UUID. This is useful if you want to
track the same guest across migrations.
hostname means to use the global Hostname setting, which is
probably not useful on its own because all guests will appear to
have the same name.
You can also specify combinations of these fields. For example name
uuid means to concatenate the guest name and UUID (with a literal
colon character between, thus "foo:1234-1234-1234-1234").
Plugin "logfile"
LogLevel debug|info|notice|warning|err
Sets the log-level. If, for example, set to notice, then all events
with severity notice, warning, or err will be written to the
logfile.
Please note that debug is only available if collectd has been
compiled with debugging support.
File File
Sets the file to write log messages to. The special strings stdout
and stderr can be used to write to the standard output and standard
error channels, respectively. This, of course, only makes much
sense when collectd is running in foreground- or non-daemon-mode.
Timestamp true|false
Prefix all lines printed by the current time. Defaults to true.
Plugin "mbmon"
The "mbmon plugin" uses mbmon to retrieve temperature, voltage, etc.
Be default collectd connects to localhost (127.0.0.1), port 411/tcp.
The Host and Port options can be used to change these values, see
below. "mbmon" has to be running to work correctly. If "mbmon" is not
running timeouts may appear which may interfere with other statistics..
"mbmon" must be run with the -r option ("print TAG and Value format");
Debian’s /etc/init.d/mbmon script already does this, other people will
need to ensure that this is the case.
Host Hostname
Hostname to connect to. Defaults to 127.0.0.1.
Port Port
TCP-Port to connect to. Defaults to 411.
Plugin "memcached"
The "memcached plugin" connects to a memcached server and queries
statistics about cache utilization, memory and bandwidth used.
<http://www.danga.com/memcached/>
Host Hostname
Hostname to connect to. Defaults to 127.0.0.1.
Port Port
TCP-Port to connect to. Defaults to 11211.
Plugin "mysql"
The "mysql plugin" requires mysqlclient to be installed. It connects to
the database when started and keeps the connection up as long as
possible. When the connection is interrupted for whatever reason it
will try to re-connect. The plugin will complaint loudly in case
anything goes wrong.
This plugin issues "SHOW STATUS" and evaluates "Bytes_{received,sent}",
"Com_*" and "Handler_*" which correspond to mysql_octets.rrd,
mysql_commands-*.rrd and mysql_handler-*.rrd. Also, the values of
"Qcache_*" are put in mysql_qcache.rrd and values of "Threads_*" are
put in mysql_threads.rrd. Please refer to the MySQL reference manual,
5.2.4. Server Status Variables for an explanation of these values.
Use the following options to configure the plugin:
Host Hostname
Hostname of the database server. Defaults to localhost.
User Username
Username to use when connecting to the database.
Password Password
Password needed to log into the database.
Database Database
Select this database. Defaults to no database which is a perfectly
reasonable option for what this plugin does.
Plugin "netlink"
The "netlink" plugin uses a netlink socket to query the Linux kernel
about statistics of various interface and routing aspects.
Interface Interface
VerboseInterface Interface
Instruct the plugin to collect interface statistics. This is
basically the same as the statistics provided by the "interface"
plugin (see above) but potentially much more detailed.
When configuring with Interface only the basic statistics will be
collected, namely octets, packets, and errors. These statistics are
collected by the "interface" plugin, too, so using both at the same
time is no benefit.
When configured with VerboseInterface all counters except the basic
ones, so that no data needs to be collected twice if you use the
"interface" plugin. This includes dropped packets, received
multicast packets, collisions and a whole zoo of differentiated RX
and TX errors. You can try the following command to get an idea of
what awaits you:
ip -s -s link list
If Interface is All, all interfaces will be selected.
QDisc Interface [QDisc]
Class Interface [Class]
Filter Interface [Filter]
Collect the octets and packets that pass a certain qdisc, class or
filter.
QDiscs and classes are identified by their type and handle (or
classid). Filters don’t necessarily have a handle, therefore the
parent’s handle is used. The notation used in collectd differs
from that used in tc(1) in that it doesn’t skip the major or minor
number if it’s zero and doesn’t print special ids by their name.
So, for example, a qdisc may be identified by "pfifo_fast-1:0" even
though the minor number of all qdiscs is zero and thus not
displayed by tc(1).
If QDisc, Class, or Filter is given without the second argument,
i. .e. without an identifier, all qdiscs, classes, or filters that
are associated with that interface will be collected.
Since a filter itself doesn’t necessarily have a handle, the
parent’s handle is used. This may lead to problems when more than
one filter is attached to a qdisc or class. This isn’t nice, but we
don’t know how this could be done any better. If you have a idea,
please don’t hesitate to tell us.
As with the Interface option you can specify All as the interface,
meaning all interfaces.
Here are some examples to help you understand the above text more
easily:
<Plugin netlink>
VerboseInterface "All"
QDisc "eth0" "pfifo_fast-1:0"
QDisc "ppp0"
Class "ppp0" "htb-1:10"
Filter "ppp0" "u32-1:0"
</Plugin>
IgnoreSelected
The behaviour is the same as with all other similar plugins: If
nothing is selected at all, everything is collected. If some things
are selected using the options described above, only these
statistics are collected. If you set IgnoreSelected to true, this
behavior is inversed, i. e. the specified statistics will not be
collected.
Plugin "network"
Listen Host [Port]
Server Host [Port]
The Server statement sets the server to send datagrams to. The
statement may occur multiple times to send each datagram to
multiple destinations.
The Listen statement sets the interfaces to bind to. When multiple
statements are found the daemon will bind to multiple interfaces.
The argument Host may be a hostname, an IPv4 address or an IPv6
address. If the argument is a multicast address the daemon will
join that multicast group.
If no Listen statement is found the server tries join both, the
default IPv6 multicast group and the default IPv4 multicast group.
If no Server statement is found the client will try to send data to
the IPv6 multicast group first. If that fails the client will try
the IPv4 multicast group.
The default IPv6 multicast group is "ff18::efc0:4a42". The default
IPv4 multicast group is 239.192.74.66.
The optional Port argument sets the port to use. It can either be
given using a numeric port number or a service name. If the
argument is omitted the default port 25826 is assumed.
TimeToLive 1-255
Set the time-to-live of sent packets. This applies to all, unicast
and multicast, and IPv4 and IPv6 packets. The default is to not
change this value. That means that multicast packets will be sent
with a TTL of 1 (one) on most operating systems.
Forward true|false
If set to true, write packets that were received via the network
plugin to the sending sockets. This should only be activated when
the Listen- and Server-statements differ. Otherwise packets may be
send multiple times to the same multicast group. While this results
in more network traffic than necessary it’s not a huge problem
since the plugin has a duplicate detection, so the values will not
loop.
CacheFlush Seconds
For each host/plugin/type combination the "network plugin" caches
the time of the last value being sent or received. Every Seconds
seconds the plugin searches and removes all entries that are older
than Seconds seconds, thus freeing the unused memory again. Since
this process is somewhat expensive and normally doesn’t do much,
this value should not be too small. The default is 1800 seconds,
but setting this to 86400 seconds (one day) will not do much harm
either.
Plugin "nginx"
This plugin collects the number of connections and requests handled by
the "nginx daemon" (speak: engine X), a HTTP and mail server/proxy. It
queries the page provided by the "ngx_http_stub_status_module" module,
which isn’t compiled by default. Please refer to
<http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxStubStatusModule> for more
information on how to compile and configure nginx and this module.
The following options are accepted by the "nginx plugin":
URL http://host/nginx_status
Sets the URL of the "ngx_http_stub_status_module" output.
User Username
Optional user name needed for authentication.
Password Password
Optional password needed for authentication.
VerifyPeer true|false
Enable or disable peer SSL certificate verification. See
<http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html> for details. Enabled by
default.
VerifyHost true|false
Enable or disable peer host name verification. If enabled, the
plugin checks if the "Common Name" or a "Subject Alternate Name"
field of the SSL certificate matches the host name provided by the
URL option. If this identity check fails, the connection is
aborted. Obviously, only works when connecting to a SSL enabled
server. Enabled by default.
CACert File
File that holds one or more SSL certificates. If you want to use
HTTPS you will possibly need this option. What CA certificates come
bundled with "libcurl" and are checked by default depends on the
distribution you use.
Plugin "ntpd"
Host Hostname
Hostname of the host running ntpd. Defaults to localhost.
Port Port
UDP-Port to connect to. Defaults to 123.
ReverseLookups true|false
Sets wether or not to perform reverse lookups on peers. Since the
name or IP-address may be used in a filename it is recommended to
disable reverse lookups. The default is to do reverse lookups to
preserve backwards compatibility, though.
Plugin "nut"
UPS upsname@hostname[:port]
Add a UPS to collect data from. The format is identical to the one
accepted by upsc(8).
Plugin "perl"
This plugin embeds a Perl-interpreter into collectd and provides an
interface to collectd’s plugin system. See collectd-perl(5) for its
documentation.
Plugin "ping"
Host IP-address
Host to ping periodically. This option may be repeated several
times to ping multiple hosts.
TTL 0-255
Sets the Time-To-Live of generated ICMP packets.
Plugin "powerdns"
The "powerdns" plugin queries statistics from an authoritative PowerDNS
nameserver and/or a PowerDNS recursor. Since both offer a wide variety
of values, many of which are probably meaningless to most users, but
may be useful for some. So you may chose which values to collect, but
if you don’t, some reasonable defaults will be collected.
<Plugin "powerdns">
<Server "server_name">
Collect "latency"
Collect "udp-answers" "udp-queries"
Socket "/var/run/pdns.controlsocket"
</Server>
<Recursor "recursor_name">
Collect "questions"
Collect "cache-hits" "cache-misses"
Socket "/var/run/pdns_recursor.controlsocket"
</Recursor>
LocalSocket "/opt/collectd/var/run/collectd-powerdns"
</Plugin>
Server and Recursor block
The Server block defines one authoritative server to query, the
Recursor does the same for an recursing server. The possible
options in both blocks are the same, though. The argument defines a
name for the server / recursor and is required.
Collect Field
Using the Collect statement you can select which values to
collect. Here, you specify the name of the values as used by
the PowerDNS servers, e. g. "dlg-only-drops", "answers10-100".
The method of getting the values differs for Server and
Recursor blocks: When querying the server a "SHOW *" command is
issued in any case, because that’s the only way of getting
multiple values out of the server at once. collectd then picks
out the values you have selected. When querying the recursor, a
command is generated to query exactly these values. So if you
specify invalid fields when querying the recursor, a syntax
error may be returned by the daemon and collectd may not
collect any values at all.
If no Collect statement is given, the following Server values
will be collected:
latency
packetcache-hit
packetcache-miss
packetcache-size
query-cache-hit
query-cache-miss
recursing-answers
recursing-questions
tcp-answers
tcp-queries
udp-answers
udp-queries
The following Recursor values will be collected by default:
noerror-answers
nxdomain-answers
servfail-answers
sys-msec
user-msec
qa-latency
cache-entries
cache-hits
cache-misses
questions
Please note that up to that point collectd doesn’t know what
values are available on the server and values that are added do
not need a change of the mechanism so far. However, the values
must be mapped to collectd’s naming scheme, which is done using
a lookup table that lists all known values. If values are added
in the future and collectd does not know about them, you will
get an error much like this:
powerdns plugin: submit: Not found in lookup table: foobar = 42
In this case please file a bug report with the collectd team.
Socket Path
Configures the path to the UNIX domain socket to be used when
connecting to the daemon. By default
"/var/run/pdns.controlsocket" will be used for an authoritative
server and "/var/run/pdns_recursor.controlsocket" will be used
for the recursor.
LocalSocket Path
Querying the recursor is done using UDP. When using UDP over UNIX
domain sockets, the client socket needs a name in the file system,
too. You can set this local name to Path using the LocalSocket
option. The default is "prefix/var/run/collectd-powerdns".
Plugin "processes"
Process Name
Select more detailed statistics of processes matching this name.
The statistics collected for these selected processes are size of
the resident segment size (RSS), user- and system-time used, number
of processes and number of threads, and minor and major pagefaults.
Plugin "rrdtool"
You can use the settings StepSize, HeartBeat, RRARows, and XFF to fine-
tune your RRD-files. Please read rrdcreate(1) if you encounter problems
using these settings. If you don’t want to dive into the depths of
RRDTool, you can safely ignore these settings.
DataDir Directory
Set the directory to store RRD-files under. Per default RRD-files
are generated beneath the daemon’s working directory, i. e. the
BaseDir.
StepSize Seconds
Force the stepsize of newly created RRD-files. Ideally (and per
default) this setting is unset and the stepsize is set to the
interval in which the data is collected. Do not use this option
unless you absolutely have to for some reason. Setting this option
may cause problems with the "snmp plugin", the "exec plugin" or
when the daemon is set up to receive data from other hosts.
HeartBeat Seconds
Force the heartbeat of newly created RRD-files. This setting should
be unset in which case the heartbeat is set to twice the StepSize
which should equal the interval in which data is collected. Do not
set this option unless you have a very good reason to do so.
RRARows NumRows
The "rrdtool plugin" calculates the number of PDPs per CDP based on
the StepSize, this setting and a timespan. This plugin creates RRD-
files with three times five RRAs, i. e. five RRAs with the CFs MIN,
AVERAGE, and MAX. The five RRAs are optimized for graphs covering
one hour, one day, one week, one month, and one year.
So for each timespan, it calculates how many PDPs need to be
consolidated into one CDP by calculating:
number of PDPs = timespan / (stepsize * rrarows)
Bottom line is, set this no smaller than the width of you graphs in
pixels. The default is 1200.
RRATimespan Seconds
Adds an RRA-timespan, given in seconds. Use this option multiple
times to have more then one RRA. If this option is never used, the
built-in default of (3600, 86400, 604800, 2678400, 31622400) is
used.
For more information on how RRA-sizes are calculated see RRARows
above.
XFF Factor
Set the "XFiles Factor". The default is 0.1. If unsure, don’t set
this option.
CacheFlush Seconds
When the "rrdtool plugin" uses a cache (by setting CacheTimeout,
see below) it writes all values for a certain RRD-file if the
oldest value is older than (or equal to) the number of seconds
specified. If some RRD-file is not updated anymore for some reason
(the computer was shut down, the network is broken, etc.) some
values may still be in the cache. If CacheFlush is set, then the
entire cache is searched for entries older than CacheTimeout
seconds and written to disk every Seconds seconds. Since this is
kind of expensive and does nothing under normal circumstances, this
value should not be too small. 900 seconds might be a good value,
though setting this to 7200 seconds doesn’t normally do much harm
either.
CacheTimeout Seconds
If this option is set to a value greater than zero, the "rrdtool
plugin" will save values in a cache, as described above. Writing
multiple values at once reduces IO-operations and thus lessens the
load produced by updating the files. The trade off is that the
graphs kind of "drag behind" and that more memory is used.
Plugin "sensors"
The "sensors plugin" uses lm_sensors to retrieve sensor-values. This
means that all the needed modules have to be loaded and lm_sensors has
to be configured (most likely by editing /etc/sensors.conf. Read
sensors.conf(5) for details.
The lm_sensors homepage can be found at
<http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/>.
Sensor chip-bus-address/type-feature
Selects the name of the sensor which you want to collect or ignore,
depending on the IgnoreSelected below. For example, the option
"Sensor it8712-isa-0290/voltage-in1" will cause collectd to gather
data for the voltage sensor in1 of the it8712 on the isa bus at the
address 0290.
IgnoreSelected true|false
If no configuration if given, the sensors-plugin will collect data
from all sensors. This may not be practical, especially for
uninteresting sensors. Thus, you can use the Sensor-option to pick
the sensors you’re interested in. Sometimes, however, it’s
easier/preferred to collect all sensors except a few ones. This
option enables you to do that: By setting IgnoreSelected to true
the effect of Sensor is inversed: All selected sensors are ignored
and all other sensors are collected.
Plugin "snmp"
Since the configuration of the "snmp plugin" is a little more
complicated than other plugins, its documentation has been moved to an
own manpage, collectd-snmp(5). Please see there for details.
Plugin "syslog"
LogLevel debug|info|notice|warning|err
Sets the log-level. If, for example, set to notice, then all events
with severity notice, warning, or err will be submitted to the
syslog-daemon.
Please note that debug is only available if collectd has been
compiled with debugging support.
Plugin "tail"
The "tail plugin" plugins follows logfiles, just like tail(1) does,
parses each line and dispatches found values. What is matched can be
configured by the user using (extended) regular expressions, as
described in regex(7).
<Plugin "tail">
<File "/var/log/exim4/mainlog">
Instance "exim"
<Match>
Regex "S=([1-9][0-9]*)"
DSType "CounterAdd"
Type "ipt_bytes"
Instance "total"
</Match>
<Match>
Regex "\\<R=local_user\\>"
DSType "CounterInc"
Type "email_count"
Instance "local_user"
</Match>
</File>
</Plugin>
The config consists of one or more File blocks, each of which
configures one logfile to parse. Within each File block, there are one
or more Match blocks, which configure a regular expression to search
for.
The Instance option in the File block may be used to set the plugin
instance. So in the above example the plugin name "tail-foo" would be
used. This plugin instance is for all Match blocks that follow it,
until the next Instance option. This way you can extract several plugin
instances from one logfile, handy when parsing syslog and the like.
Each Match block has the following options to describe how the match
should be performed:
Regex regex
Sets the regular expression to use for matching against a line. The
first subexpression has to match something that can be turned into
a number by strtoll(3) or strtod(3), depending on the value of
"CounterAdd", see below. Because extended regular expressions are
used, you do not need to use backslashes for subexpressions! If in
doubt, please consult regex(7). Due to collectd’s config parsing
you need to escape backslashes, though. So if you want to match
literal parentheses you need to do the following:
Regex "SPAM \\(Score: (-?[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+)\\)"
DSType Type
Sets how the values are cumulated. Type is one of:
GaugeAverage
Calculate the average.
GaugeMin
Use the smallest number only.
GaugeMax
Use the greatest number only.
GaugeLast
Use the last number found.
CounterSet
The matched number is a counter. Simply sets the internal
counter to this value.
CounterAdd
Add the matched value to the internal counter.
CounterInc
Increase the internal counter by one. This DSType is the only
one that does not use the matched subexpression, but simply
counts the number of matched lines. Thus, you may use a regular
expression without submatch in this case.
As you’d expect the Gauge* types interpret the submatch as a
floating point number, using strtod(3). The CounterSet and
CounterAdd interpret the submatch as an integer using strtoll(3).
CounterInc does not use the submatch at all and it may be omitted
in this case.
Type Type
Sets the type used to dispatch this value. Detailed information
about types and their configuration can be found in types.db(5).
Instance TypeInstance
This optional setting sets the type instance to use.
Plugin "teamspeak2"
The "teamspeak2 plugin" connects to the query port of a teamspeak2
server and polls interesting global and virtual server data. The plugin
can query only one physical server but unlimited virtual servers. You
can use the following options to configure it:
Host hostname/ip
The hostname or ip which identifies the physical server. Default:
127.0.0.1
Port port
The query port of the physical server. This needs to be a string.
Default: "51234"
Server port
This option has to be added once for every virtual server the
plugin should query. If you want to query the virtual server on
port 8767 this is what the option would look like:
Server "8767"
This option, although numeric, needs to be a string, i. e. you must
use quotes around it! If no such statement is given only global
information will be collected.
Plugin "tcpconns"
The "tcpconns plugin" counts the number of currently established TCP
connections based on the local port and/or the remote port. Since there
may be a lot of connections the default if to count all connections
with a local port, for which a listening socket is opened. You can use
the following options to fine-tune the ports you are interested in:
ListeningPorts true|false
If this option is set to true, statistics for all local ports for
which a listening socket exists are collected. The default depends
on LocalPort and RemotePort (see below): If no port at all is
specifically selected, the default is to collect listening ports.
If specific ports (no matter if local or remote ports) are
selected, this option defaults to false, i. e. only the selected
ports will be collected unless this option is set to true
specifically.
LocalPort Port
Count the connections to a specific local port. This can be used to
see how many connections are handled by a specific daemon, e. g.
the mailserver. You have to specify the port in numeric form, so
for the mailserver example you’d need to set 25.
RemotePort Port
Count the connections to a specific remote port. This is useful to
see how much a remote service is used. This is most useful if you
want to know how many connections a local service has opened to
remote services, e. g. how many connections a mail server or news
server has to other mail or news servers, or how many connections a
web proxy holds to web servers. You have to give the port in
numeric form.
Plugin "unixsock"
SocketFile Path
Sets the socket-file which is to be created.
SocketGroup Group
If running as root change the group of the UNIX-socket after it has
been created. Defaults to collectd.
SocketPerms Permissions
Change the file permissions of the UNIX-socket after it has been
created. The permissions must be given as a numeric, octal value as
you would pass to chmod(1). Defaults to 0770.
Plugin "uuid"
This plugin, if loaded, causes the Hostname to be taken from the
machine’s UUID. The UUID is a universally unique designation for the
machine, usually taken from the machine’s BIOS. This is most useful if
the machine is running in a virtual environment such as Xen, in which
case the UUID is preserved across shutdowns and migration.
The following methods are used to find the machine’s UUID, in order:
· Check /etc/uuid (or UUIDFile).
· Check for UUID from HAL
(<http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/hal>) if present.
· Check for UUID from "dmidecode" / SMBIOS.
· Check for UUID from Xen hypervisor.
If no UUID can be found then the hostname is not modified.
UUIDFile Path
Take the UUID from the given file (default /etc/uuid).
Plugin "vmem"
The "vmem" plugin collects information about the usage of virtual
memory. Since the statistics provided by the Linux kernel are very
detailed, they are collected very detailed. However, to get all the
details, you have to switch them on manually. Most people just want an
overview over, such as the number of pages read from swap space.
Verbose true|false
Enables verbose collection of information. This will start
collecting page "actions", e. g. page allocations, (de)activations,
steals and so on. Part of these statistics are collected on a "per
zone" basis.
Plugin "vserver"
This plugin doesn’t have any options. VServer support is only available
for Linux. It cannot yet be found in a vanilla kernel, though. To make
use of this plugin you need a kernel that has VServer support built in,
i. e. you need to apply the patches and compile your own kernel, which
will then provide the /proc/virtual filesystem that is required by this
plugin.
The VServer homepage can be found at <http://linux-vserver.org/>.
THRESHOLD CONFIGURATION
Starting with version 4.3.0 collectd has support for monitoring. By
that we mean that the values are not only stored or sent somewhere, but
that they are judged and, if a problem is recognized, acted upon. The
only action collectd takes itself is to generate and dispatch a
"notification". Plugins can register to receive notifications and
perform appropriate further actions.
Since systems and what you expect them to do differ a lot, you can
configure thresholds for your values freely. This gives you a lot of
flexibility but also a lot of responsibility.
Every time a value is out of range a notification is dispatched. This
means that the idle percentage of your CPU needs to be less then the
configured threshold only once for a notification to be generated.
There’s no such thing as a moving average or similar - at least not
now.
Also, all values that match a threshold are considered to be relevant
or "interesting". As a consequence collectd will issue a notification
if they are not received for twice the last timeout of the values. If,
for example, some hosts sends it’s CPU statistics to the server every
60 seconds, a notification will be dispatched after about 120 seconds.
It may take a little longer because the timeout is checked only once
each Interval on the server.
Here is a configuration example to get you started. Read below for more
information.
<Threshold>
<Type "foo">
WarningMin 0.00
WarningMax 1000.00
FailureMin 0.00
FailureMax 1200.00
Invert false
Instance "bar"
</Type>
<Plugin "interface">
Instance "eth0"
<Type "if_octets">
FailureMax 10000000
DataSource "rx"
</Type>
</Plugin>
<Host "hostname">
<Type "cpu">
Instance "idle"
FailureMin 10
</Type>
<Plugin "memory">
<Type "memory">
Instance "cached"
WarningMin 100000000
</Type>
</Plugin>
</Host>
</Threshold>
There are basically two types of configuration statements: The "Host",
"Plugin", and "Type" blocks select the value for which a threshold
should be configured. The "Plugin" and "Type" blocks may be specified
further using the "Instance" option. You can combine the block by
nesting the blocks, though they must be nested in the above order,
i. e. "Host" may contain either "Plugin" and "Type" blocks, "Plugin"
may only contain "Type" blocks and "Type" may not contain other blocks.
If multiple blocks apply to the same value the most specific block is
used.
The other statements specify the threshold to configure. They must be
included in a "Type" block. Currently the following statements are
recognized:
FailureMax Value
WarningMax Value
Sets the upper bound of acceptable values. If unset defaults to
positive infinity. If a value is greater than FailureMax a FAILURE
notification will be created. If the value is greater than
WarningMax but less than (or equal to) FailureMax a WARNING
notification will be created.
FailureMin Value
WarningMin Value
Sets the lower bound of acceptable values. If unset defaults to
negative infinity. If a value is less than FailureMin a FAILURE
notification will be created. If the value is less than WarningMin
but greater than (or equal to) FailureMin a WARNING notification
will be created.
DataSource DSName
Some data sets have more than one "data source". Interesting
examples are the "if_octets" data set, which has received ("rx")
and sent ("tx") bytes and the "disk_ops" data set, which holds
"read" and "write" operations. The system load data set, "load",
even has three data sources: "shortterm", "midterm", and
"longterm".
Normally, all data sources are checked against a configured
threshold. If this is undesirable, or if you want to specify
different limits for each data source, you can use the DataSource
option to have a threshold apply only to one data source.
Invert true|false
If set to true the range of acceptable values is inverted, i. e.
values between FailureMin and FailureMax (WarningMin and
WarningMax) are not okay. Defaults to false.
Persist true|false
Sets how often notifications are generated. If set to true one
notification will be generated for each value that is out of the
acceptable range. If set to false (the default) then a notification
is only generated if a value is out of range but the previous value
was okay.
This applies to missing values, too: If set to true a notification
about a missing value is generated once every Interval seconds. If
set to false only one such notification is generated until the
value appears again.
SEE ALSO
collectd(1), collectd-exec(5), collectd-perl(5), collectd-unixsock(5),
types.db(5), hddtemp(8), kstat(3KSTAT), mbmon(1), rrdtool(1),
sensors(1)
AUTHOR
Florian Forster <octo@verplant.org>