TYPES.DB(5) collectd TYPES.DB(5)
NAME
types.db - Data-set specifications for the system statistics collection
daemon collectd
SYNOPSIS
bitrate value:GAUGE:0:4294967295
counter value:COUNTER:U:U
if_octets rx:COUNTER:0:4294967295, tx:COUNTER:0:4294967295
DESCRIPTION
The "types.db" file contains collectd's metric type specifications.
Each line describes one metric type, which is called "data set" in
collectd. Each line consists of two or more fields delimited by spaces
and/or horizontal tabs.
For example, the following defines two data sets, "bytes" and
"total_bytes".
bytes value:GAUGE:0:U
total_bytes value:DERIVE:0:U
The first field defines the name of the data set. By convention, data
set names use lower-case alphanumeric characters and underscores ("_")
only. Also by convention, if a metric makes sense both as a cumulative
metric (e.g. "DERIVE") and a non-cumulative metric (i.e. "GAUGE"), the
cumulative metric gets a "total_" prefix. For example, "bytes" is a
"GAUGE" and "total_bytes" is a "DERIVE".
The second and each following field defines a named metric value,
called "data source". New data sets with multiple data sources are
strongly discouraged. Each field is a colon-separated tuple of the
data source name, value type, minimum and maximum values: ds-name:ds-
type:min:max.
o ds-name is, by convention, a lower-case alphanumeric string. If the
data set contains a single data source, it is called "value" by
convention. Data source names must be unique within a data set.
o ds-type may be DERIVE, GAUGE, or COUNTER. For historic reasons a
type called ABSOLUTE is also supported, but its use is strongly
discouraged, and it should not be used for new metric type
definitions.
o min and max define the range of valid values this data source.
Either or both may be unbounded, which is specified by providing
"U" instead of a number. For cumulative metric values, min and max
apply to the value's rate, not the raw cumulative metric value.
FILES
The location of the types.db file is defined by the TypesDB
configuration option (see collectd.conf(5)). It defaults to collectd's
shared data directory, i. e. prefix/share/collectd/.
CUSTOM TYPES
If you want to specify custom types, you should do so by specifying a
custom file in addition to the default one (see FILES) above. You can
do that by having multiple TypesDB statements in your configuration
file or by specifying more than one file in one line.
For example:
TypesDB "/opt/collectd/share/collectd/types.db"
TypesDB "/opt/collectd/etc/types.db.custom"
Note: Make sure to make this file available on all systems if you're
sending values over the network.
SEE ALSO
collectd(1), collectd.conf(5), rrdcreate(1)
AUTHOR
collectd has been written by Florian Forster <octo at collectd.org>.
This manpage has been written by Sebastian Harl <sh at tokkee.org>.
5.12.0 2020-09-03 TYPES.DB(5)