[collectd] Any concept for ancient .rrd files?

[Luboš Staněk]

Hi Florian,
I do not want to start any flame war.
I only wanted to get other opinions.

I asked the question because I had not found the answer in the
documentation or the source. I am using logrotate for collectd logs to
prevent troubles. It is not problem for me to create simple script or
use logrotate. Shortly I am not discussing my abilities but any possible
collectd's user.
This feature should be mentioned in the documentation and possibly
supported by the logrotate template or a simple script in the contrib/
space.
I will probably create some for inclusion.


Florian Forster napsal(a):
> Hello Lubos,
> 
> On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 09:54:42PM +0100, Lubo?? Stan??k wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 08:54:21PM +0100, Lubo?? Stan??k wrote:
>>>> is there any concept how to handle ancient .rrd files?
> 
> no, and I don't think collectd is the place for this. Sure, ignoring/
> unignoring plays an important role in not wasting precious space *cough
> cough* but I don't think any active removing of files should be done in
> collectd.
> 
>>> rm(1) ;-)
> 
> This is exactly what should be done. What about an script that runs via
> cron every `n' days and deletes all files that haven't changes for the
> last `m' days? I'd happily include such a script in `contrib/'.
> 
>> And what about small devices like routers?
> 
> That's why the network code was written: My router (an WRT54GS with
> OpenWRT) multicasts it's data happily into the LAN without any fear of
> ever running out of space.
> 

Do you think that the collectd server with plenty of collectd clients is
not touched by the threat of filling up or wasting any usable space?


>> I am working on the ignore list hard.  I have implemented really nice
>> features including posix regular expressions.  I will public it
>> probably next week. Several test are needed at least.
> 
> Nice :) Just send them in at any time and I'll be happy to test it (if I
> have some minutes ;)
> 

You can think about autoconf modifications required for multiplatform
POSIX regular expressions in advance.
I am using the regex functions provided by the glibc. But it is possible
to use pcre as well.


>> It cannot be solved by the ignore list with HAL.
> 
> Not even with selecting the mountpoints you want to collect, i. e. make
> `ignore' the default (think: IgnoreSelected ;)?
> 

As I said before, it is not possible without substantial changes in the
configuration of HAL, udev. I mean modifying it to behave the old way
and mounting removable media in one drive's mount point.
I do not want to discuss whether freedesktop.org recommendations are
good or bad.

I just cannot invent a way for monitoring space with df for HAL
devices/mount points. Is there any magic expression that is able to
cover any possible volume label to monitor or to ignore?
The only way is defining and maintaining only my labels - mount points
(!IgnoreSelected) and loosing next stats with an accidental relabel.
I would be able to define regex for my media supposedly strictly keeping
the labeling scheme.

Maybe the df plugin will require a modification to support other method
of defining mount points for HAL devices.

Best regards,
Lubos