collectd.conf(5) - Linux man page

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.
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 "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 "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.
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 "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 "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 "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
    </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.
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>

Referenced By

collectd-email(5), collectd-nagios(1), collectdmon(1)