COLLECTD(1)							     collectd							       COLLECTD(1)

NAME

       collectd - System statistics collection daemon

SYNOPSIS

       collectd [options]

DESCRIPTION

       collectd is a daemon that receives system statistics and makes them available in a number of ways. The main daemon itself doesn't have any
       real functionality apart from loading, querying and submitting to plugins. For a description of available plugins please see "PLUGINS"
       below.

OPTIONS

       Most of collectd's configuration is done using using a configfile. See collectd.conf(5) for an in-depth description of all options.

       -C <config-file>
	   Specify an alternative config file. This is the place to go when you wish to change collectd's behavior. The path may be relative to
	   the current working directory.

       -t  Test the configuration only. The program immediately exits after parsing the config file. A return code not equal to zero indicates an
	   error.

       -T  Test the plugin read callbacks only. The program immediately exits after invoking the read callbacks once. A return code not equal to
	   zero indicates an error.

       -P <pid-file>
	   Specify an alternative pid file. This overwrites any settings in the config file. This is thought for init-scripts that require the
	   PID-file in a certain directory to work correctly. For everyday-usage use the PIDFile config-option.

       -f  Don't fork to the background. collectd will also not close standard file descriptors, detach from the session nor write a pid file.
	   This is mainly thought for 'supervising' init replacements such as runit.

       -h  Output usage information and exit.

PLUGINS

       As noted above, the real power of collectd lies within it's plugins. A (hopefully complete) list of plugins and short descriptions can be
       found in the README file that is distributed with the sourcecode. If you're using a package it's a good bet to search somewhere near
       /usr/share/doc/collectd.

       There are two big groups of plugins, input and output plugins:

       o   Input plugins are queried periodically. They somehow acquire the current value of whatever they where designed to work with and submit
	   these values back to the daemon, i. e. they "dispatch" the values. As an example, the "cpu plugin" reads the current cpu-counters of
	   time spent in the various modes (user, system, nice, ...) and dispatches these counters to the daemon.

       o   Output plugins get the dispatched values from the daemon and does something with them. Common applications are writing to RRD-files,
	   CSV-files or sending the data over a network link to a remote box.

       Of course not all plugins fit neatly into one of the two above categories. The "network plugin", for example, is able to send (i. e.
       "write") and receive (i. e. "dispatch") values. Also, it opens a socket upon initialization and dispatches the values when it receives them
       and isn't triggered at the same time the input plugins are being read. You can think of the network receive part as working asynchronous if
       it helps.

       In addition to the above, there are "logging plugins". Right now those are the "logfile plugin" and the "syslog plugin". With these plugins
       collectd can provide information about issues and significant situations to the user.  Several loglevels let you suppress uninteresting
       messages.

       Starting with version 4.3.0 collectd has support for monitoring. This is done by checking thresholds defined by the user. If a value is out
       of range, a notification will be dispatched to "notification plugins". See collectd.conf(5) for more detailed information about threshold
       checking.

       Please note that some plugins, that provide other means of communicating with the daemon, have manpages of their own to describe their
       functionality in more detail. In particular those are collectd-email(5), collectd-exec(5), collectd-perl(5), collectd-snmp(5), and
       collectd-unixsock(5)

SIGNALS

       collectd accepts the following signals:

       SIGINT, SIGTERM
	   These signals cause collectd to shut down all plugins and terminate.

       SIGUSR1
	   This signal causes collectd to signal all plugins to flush data from internal caches. E. g. the "rrdtool plugin" will write all pending
	   data to the RRD files. This is the same as using the "FLUSH -1" command of the "unixsock plugin".

SEE ALSO

       collectd.conf(5), collectd-email(5), collectd-exec(5), collectd-perl(5), collectd-snmp(5), collectd-unixsock(5), types.db(5),
       <http://collectd.org/>

AUTHOR

       Florian Forster <octo@verplant.org>

5.1.0								    2012-04-02							       COLLECTD(1)