Semantic Coherence: collectd – Signal Evidence & AI Readability

collectd-6.0.0.rc3
collectd-5.12.0

collectd is a
daemon collecting system
and application performance metrics periodically and provides mechanisms to
store the values in a variety of ways, for example in RRD
files.
[H2] What does collectd do?
collectd gathers metrics from various sources, e.g. the operating system,
applications, logfiles and external devices, and stores this information or
makes it available over the network. Those statistics can be used to monitor
systems, find performance bottlenecks (i.e. performance analysis) and predict
future system load (i.e. capacity planning). Or if you just want pretty graphs
of your private server and are fed up with some homegrown solution you’re at the
right place, too ;).
A graph can say more than a thousand words, so here’s a graph showing the CPU
utilization of a system over the last
60 minutes:
[IMG: Graph of CPU utilization]
[H2] Why collectd?
There are other free, open source projects that are similar to collectd – a
few links are listed on the related sites page. So why should you
use collectd? There are some key differences we think set collectd apart. For
one, it’s written in C for performance and portability, allowing it to run on
systems without scripting language or cron daemon, such as embedded systems.
For example, collectd is popular on OpenWrt, a Linux distribution for home
routers.
At the same time it includes optimizations and features to handle hundreds of
thousands of metrics. The daemon comes with over
100 plugins which range from standard
cases to very specialized and advanced topics. It provides powerful networking
features and is extensible in numerous ways. Last but not least: collectd is
actively developed and supported and well documented. A more complete list of
features is available in our wiki.
[H3] Limitations
While collectd can do a lot for you and your operational needs,
there are limits to what it does:
It does not generate graphs. It can write to RRD
files, but it cannot generate graphs from
these files. There’s a tiny sample
script included in contrib/,
though.
You can take a look at
kcollectd,
an X frontend, and ddraw, a very
generic solution. More utility programs are listed on the related
projects page.

Monitoring functionality has been added in version 4.3, but is so far
limited to simple threshold checking. The document
Notifications and thresholds
describes collectd’s monitoring concept and has some details on the
limitations, too. Also, there’s a plugin for Nagios,
so it can use the metrics provided by collectd.

collectd-6.0.0.rc3
collectd-5.12.0

collectd is a
daemon collecting system
and application performance metrics periodically and provides mechanisms to
store the values in a variety of ways, for example in RRD
files.
[H2] What does collectd do?
collectd gathers metrics from various sources, e.g. the operating system,
applications, logfiles and external devices, and stores this information or
makes it available over the network. Those statistics can be used to monitor
systems, find performance bottlenecks (i.e. performance analysis) and predict
future system load (i.e. capacity planning). Or if you just want pretty graphs
of your private server and are fed up with some homegrown solution you’re at the
right place, too ;).
A graph can say more than a thousand words, so here’s a graph showing the CPU
utilization of a system over the last
60 minutes:
[IMG: Graph of CPU utilization]
[H2] Why collectd?
There are other free, open source projects that are similar to collectd – a
few links are listed on the related sites page. So why should you
use collectd? There are some key differences we think set collectd apart. For
one, it’s written in C for performance and portability, allowing it to run on
systems without scripting language or cron daemon, such as embedded systems.
For example, collectd is popular on OpenWrt, a Linux distribution for home
routers.
At the same time it includes optimizations and features to handle hundreds of
thousands of metrics. The daemon comes with over
100 plugins which range from standard
cases to very specialized and advanced topics. It provides powerful networking
features and is extensible in numerous ways. Last but not least: collectd is
actively developed and supported and well documented. A more complete list of
features is available in our wiki.
[H3] Limitations
While collectd can do a lot for you and your operational needs,
there are limits to what it does:
It does not generate graphs. It can write to RRD
files, but it cannot generate graphs from
these files. There’s a tiny sample
script included in contrib/,
though.
You can take a look at
kcollectd,
an X frontend, and ddraw, a very
generic solution. More utility programs are listed on the related
projects page.

Monitoring functionality has been added in version 4.3, but is so far
limited to simple threshold checking. The document
Notifications and thresholds
describes collectd’s monitoring concept and has some details on the
limitations, too. Also, there’s a plugin for Nagios,
so it can use the metrics provided by collectd.

On this page you can download the collectd sources as GZip or BZip2 compressed
tar archive. Some Linux distributions provide binary packages of
collectd – you can find links to the package description pages where
appropriate. Also on this page are links to numerous user-provided binary
packages which are provided as-is – we object any responsibility for
these packages!
The packages available are:
Source packages
Git repository
Daily snapshots

Debian packages
Fedora
RPM packages
FreeBSD port
Solaris
OpenWrt package
T2 SDE
Windows client
Older files
[H2] Source packages
These tarballs hold the collectd sources as published by the collectd
developers. These are the supported versions, previous versions will not get
updates.
Version 6.0.0.rc3
collectd-6.0.0.rc3.tar.bz2
SHA-256: 395326ab534722677ee46ae295ba073c9b7021887cac212a9000f2b24e442f84

Version 5.12.0
collectd-5.12.0.tar.bz2
SHA-256: 5bae043042c19c31f77eb8464e56a01a5454e0b39fa07cf7ad0f1bfc9c3a09d6

[H3] How to compile source packages
To compile these source packages you may need to install other libraries first, depending on the
features you want your built to have. A summary at the end of the ./configure run will tell
you which libraries could be found and the appropriate plugins will be enabled automatically based on
that. If one or more plugins that you need are disabled, check the ”Prerequisites“ section in
the README file to find out which libraries your are missing.
After downloading the package you need to unpack, compile and install the sources:
tar xf collectd-.tar.bz2
cd collectd-
./configure
make all install
[H3] Git repository
The Git repository, along with issue tracker and Pull Requests, is hosted on GitHub at
http://github.com/collectd/collectd/.
git clone git://github.com/collectd/collectd.git
More information is available in the development documentation.
[H3] Daily snapshots
Sebastian Harl provides daily snapshot tarballs of the
development Git repository. Since they’re automatically pulled from the repository they may be in any state
possible, from including untested new code to being totally broken and not even build at all. Using these
tarballs on a production system is highly discouraged. Using these tarballs to test new features and report bugs
is very welcome, of course :)
http://snapshots.tokkee.org/collectd/
[H2] Debian / Ubuntu packages
Both, Debian and Ubuntu provide packages for collectd.
apt-get install collectd
Note: The package does not depend on all packages that are
required by all of the plugins. The file
/usr/share/doc/collectd-core/README.Debian.plugins
lists which additional packages are required for each plugin.
Our continuous integration environment also builds Debian and Ubuntu packages if you need more
up-to-date versions. Add the following Apt source:
# File /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pkg.ci.collectd.org.list
deb http://pkg.ci.collectd.org/deb ${distribution} ${component}
# Example:
# deb http://pkg.ci.collectd.org/deb trusty collectd-5.6
Where distribution is one of:
jessie
precise
squeeze
trusty
wheezy
xenial
And component is one of:
master
collectd-5.6
collectd-5.5
To verify downloaded packages, you need to add our continous integration PGP key to Apt:
gpg --recv-keys 3994D24FB8543576
gpg --export -a 3994D24FB8543576 | apt-key add -
[H2] Fedora
Information about the collectd Fedora package is available at
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/collectd/overview/.
[H2] RPM packages
Packages for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) are contained in the
server:monitoring project.
You can search the openSUSE
package repositories for suitable RPM packages.
For Red Hat, CentOS and fedora, there are
collectd RPM packages
in Dag Wieers’ repository.
[H3] Building an source-RPM package
collectd includes sample .spec files in the
contrib/ directory in the tarball. Unfortunately these files are usually out-of-date, but you
can use them as a starting point for your own packages.
[H2] FreeBSD port
A FreeBSD port is available
(FreshPorts.org page). You can install the
collectd (binary) package using:
pkg_add -r collectd
To install the port (source package), use:
cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/collectd
make clean install
Thanks to Matt Peterson for creating this port and
Krzysztof Stryjek for maintaining it. By the way, in case you were wondering, a “port” is
basically the FreeBSD word for a “source package” - you can configure and compile
collectd under FreeBSD without sourcecode modifications and without port,
too.
[H2] Solaris
collectd is available for Solaris from OpenCSW.
Packages are available for Solaris 10/11 on x86 and SPARC. The available packages are:
collectd
Collects system performance statistics periodically
collectd_plugins_all
CollectD Metapackage that pulls in all plugins
Use the following command to install the package:
pkgadd -d http://get.opencsw.org/now
/opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -i collectd
[H2] OpenWrt package
collectd on the WRT54G
This client only binary package adds collectd to an
OpenWrt Whiterussian installation. The main plugins (network, cpu, interfaces,
load, …) are in the main package, the other packages are optional and provide further plugins. Since
many of these packages are untested please report back wether they have been working for you or not.
collectd_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-csv_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-df_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-disk_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-entropy_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-exec_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-iptables_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-irq_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-netlink_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-ping_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-processes_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-swap_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
collectd-wireless_4.1.0-1_mipsel.ipk
[H2] T2 SDE
Users of the T2 SDE can include
collectd into their build directly.
Information about the collectd T2 package can be
found on the T2 web site.
[H2] Windows client
Support for Microsoft Windows is provided by SSC Serv,
a native Windows application that can collect and dispatch performance data using the collectd network
protocol. More information and a free-of-cost trial is available at
https://ssc-serv.com/.
[H2] Older files
Files of previous versions are still available.
However, please use a recent version if possible. If a bug in collectd prevents
you to upgrade to a new version, by all means, please
issue a bugreport.
Bugs are usually only fixed in the two most recent versions. If you ask on the mailing list about such bugs
you’re likely to get an unamiable answer.
Older files
You have been warned

collectd’s documentation consists primarily of the manpages that come with the daemon, accompanied with some special
documents on certain aspects. A more generic source of information is the file
README that’s included in the source tarball. Also, some
more specialized documentation, including a getting started guide, can be found below.
[H2] Manual pages
The manpages, that come with the daemon, are provided here in HTML form for your convenience. Since converting them to
HTML format is not fully automatic they may be a little outdated here. If in doubt, please refer to the manpages that
come with the distribution.
collectd(1)
collectdmon(1)
collectd.conf(5)
collectd-email(5)
collectd-exec(5)
collectd-nagios(1)
collectd-perl(5)
collectd-python(5)
collectd-java(5)
collectd-snmp(5)
collectd-tg(1)
collectd-unixsock(5)
types.db(5)
[H2] collectd Wiki
In order to make it easier to contribute documentation, we have moved some of the documentation into a
wiki. You can switch to the wiki (and back to the homepage) using the buttons in the upper right corner of
the site. Or follow this link:
collectd Wiki
[H2] Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to frequent questions are available on our FAQ page.
[H2] Special documentation
The following documentation describes some special aspects of the daemon.
First steps with collectd
Networking introduction
Inside the RRDtool plugin
Notifications and thresholds
Introduction to chains, collectd’s filtering mechanism.
collectd v3 to v4 migration guide
General development information and documentation
How to Report Bugs Effectively
[H2] Reference documentation
A lot of projects refer to their technical documentation under "reference documentation". If
you’re looking for that, please read the manual pages above. We provide links
to specific parts of our documentation here.
Plugins
A list of all plugins, together with a short description for each, can be found in the
README
file included in the source code distribution.
There’s also the Table of Plugins wiki page.

Libraries / Dependencies
A list of all supported libraries and which plugins make use of each library is documented in the
README file under "Prerequisites".

Configuration options
All configuration options, both, for the server and for all plugins, are documented in
collectd.conf(5).

Contributors
A list of all contributors can be found in the file
AUTHORS included in the source code distribution.
[H2] Help writing documentation!
Writing documentation is, along with reporting bugs, an easy and very much appreciated way of contributing to an open
source project. You can do this without any coding skills whats-o-ever and everybody will benefit from it - users
and developers alike. If you have written something up, or plan to, let us know :)
[H2] External documentation
The following documentation has been found on the web or has been submitted by users.
"Overview of the Monitoring System"
in the RightScale wiki
Entry "collectd"
in the monitoring-fr.org wiki (french)