metrics.sh

metrics.sh is a lightweight metrics collection and fowarding utility implemented in portable POSIX compliant shell scripts. A transparent interface based on hooks enables writing custom collectors and reporters in an elegant way.

Usage

$ ./metrics.sh --help

  Usage: ./metrics.sh [-d] [-h] [-v] [-c] [-m] [-r] [-i]

  Options:

    -c, --config   <file>      path to config file
    -m, --metrics  <metrics>   comma-separated list of metrics to collect
    -r, --reporter <reporter>  use specified reporter (default: stdout)
    -i, --interval <seconds>   collect metrics every n seconds (default: 2)
    -v, --verbose              enable verbose mode
    -d, --docs                 show documentation
    -h, --help                 show this text

Installation

$ git clone git@github.com:pstadler/metrics.sh.git

Requirements

metrics.sh has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04 and Mac OS X but is supposed to run on most *NIX-like operating systems. Some of the provided metrics require procfs to be available when running on *NIX. POSIX compliancy means that metrics.sh works with minimalistic command interpreters such as dash. Built-in metrics do not require root privileges.

Metrics

Metric	Description
cpu	CPU usage in %
memory	Memory usage in %
swap	Swap usage in %
network_io	Network I/O in kB/s, collecting two metrics: network_io.in and network_io.out
disk_io	Disk I/O in MB/s
disk_usage	Disk usage in %
heartbeat	System heartbeat
ping	Check whether a remote host is reachable

Reporters

Reporter	Description
stdout	Write to standard out (default)
file	Write to a file or named pipe
influxdb	Send data to InfluxDB
keen_io	Send data to Keen IO
stathat	Send data to StatHat

Configuration

A first step of configuration can be done by passing options to metrics.sh:

$ ./metrics.sh --help              # print help
$ ./metrics.sh -m cpu,memory -i 1  # report cpu and memory usage every second

Some of the metrics and reporters are configurable. Documentation is available from within metrics.sh and can be printed with --docs:

$ ./metrics.sh --docs | less

As an example, the disk_usage metric has a configuration variable DISK_USAGE_MOUNTPOINT which is set to a default value depending on the operating system metrics.sh is running on. Setting the variable before starting will overwrite it:

$ DISK_USAGE_MOUNTPOINT=/dev/vdb ./metrics.sh -m disk_usage
# reports disk usage of /dev/vdb

Configuration file

As maintaing all these options can become a cumbersome job, metrics.sh has support for configuration files.

$ ./metrics.sh -C > metrics.ini  # write configuration to metrics.ini
$ ./metrics.sh -c metrics.ini    # load configuration from metrics.ini

By default most lines in the configuration are commented out:

;[metric network_io]
;Network traffic in kB/s.
;NETWORK_IO_INTERFACE=eth0

To enable a metric, simply remove the comments and modify values where needed:

[metric network_io]
;Network traffic in kB/s.
NETWORK_IO_INTERFACE=eth1

Multiple metrics of the same type

Configuring and reporting multiple metrics of the same type is possible through the use of aliases:

[metric network_io:network_eth0]
NETWORK_IO_INTERFACE=eth0

[metric network_io:network_eth1]
NETWORK_IO_INTERFACE=eth1

network_eth0 and network_eth1 are aliases of the network_io metric with specific configurations. Data of both network interfaces will now be collected and reported independently:

network_eth0.in: 0.26
network_eth0.out: 0.14
network_eth1.in: 0.08
network_eth1.out: 0.03
...

Daemonize / init.d / upstart

TODO

Writing custom metrics / reporters

TODO