How to install CollectD on Debian / Ubuntu

install collectd on debian and ubuntu
CollectD is one of the best daemons for collecting system metrics periodically.
Today we will focus on installing and running CollectD on Debian Linux the easy way.

Install CollectD

Since we will compile CollectD from source, we need a compiler:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

1	sudo apt-get install build-essential

Next we download, compile and install CollectD 5.5.0:

cd /tmp/
wget https://collectd.org/files/collectd-5.5.0.tar.bz2
tar -jxf collectd-5.5.0.tar.bz2
cd collectd-5.5.0

sudo ./configure
sudo make all install

cd /tmp/

wget https://collectd.org/files/collectd-5.5.0.tar.bz2

tar -jxf collectd-5.5.0.tar.bz2

cd collectd-5.5.0

sudo ./configure

sudo make all install

By default you will find:

The configuration file at /opt/collectd/etc/collectd.conf
The collectd binary at /opt/collectd/sbin/collectd

Start CollectD on startup

An easier way to manage CollectD on Debian is using an init script.

sudo wget -O /etc/init.d/collectd https://raw.githubusercontent.com/martin-magakian/collectd-script/master/collectd.init
sudo chmod 744 /etc/init.d/collectd

1 2	sudo wget -O /etc/init.d/collectd https://raw.githubusercontent.com/martin-magakian/collectd-script/master/collectd.init sudo chmod 744 /etc/init.d/collectd

CollectD will now run at startup, but you can still manage it manually:

service collectd start
service collectd stop
service collectd status
service collectd restart

service collectd start

service collectd stop

service collectd status

service collectd restart

Send Metrics to Database

CollectD is pretty useless by itself. You need to send its metrics frequently to a database for monitoring:

System and App monitoring with CollectD

By default CollectD only monitors CPU, memory, interface and load.
You can configure CollectD to monitor much more:

Monitor & detect anomalies with Anomaly.io