[collectd] Re: increase time interval to 1 minute?

[Florian Forster]

Hi Christophe,

On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 12:53:29PM -0400, Christophe Kalt wrote:
> The "step" setting should be configurable at runtime and per plugin.
> Haven't looked at your main loop but it shouldn't be very hard to do.

Making the step configurable at runtime is no problem. To make it
configurable on a per-plugin basis is not as easy or, to be more
precise, not as easy to be useful. The problem is, that (right now) all
plugins are queried in the same interval. Having a configurable step
therefore only makes sense if the plugins can be read at different
(independent) intervals.

> Now as far as the RRAs go, you're absolutely right.  You
> can't hard code these.  Again, my advice is to make them
> configurable per plugin, at runtime.  (Default RRAs as well)

How do you suggest to configure that? I somehow dislike to have the
RRDTool syntax in collectd's configfile. I'd prefer a syntax like the
one outlined below, but before doing that I'll drop `libconfig' and
write my own configfile parser, since the interface sucks.
Heres how I think the configfile should look like:
<Plugin name>
  ...
  <RRADefinition>
    <RRA>
      PDPs 123
      Rows 234
      [XFF  0.1]
      [Type Min,Max,Average,Last] # Default: Average,Min,Max
    </RRA>
    <RRA>
      ...
    </RRA>
  </RRADefinition>
</Pluin>

> You will never please everyone by setting your own RRAs, even if you
> do it dynamically.

The reasons for doing it (close to) statically were:
1) I want to have collectd as easy to configure as anyhow possible.
   _Optional_ confi items are less a problem, but they add to the
   overall complexity nontheless..
2) I've seen people shooting themselves in the foot dozens of times. I
   somehow want to hide the complexity of RRDTool from users who don't
   want to deal with it. Ideally Joe Everbody doesn't even know the
   .rrd-files even have a `step'.

Regards,
-octo
-- 
Florian octo Forster
Hacker in training
GnuPG: 0x91523C3D
http://verplant.org/
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