[collectd] generic JMX plugin

[Florian Forster]

Hi everybody,

I have a prototype of this generic JMX plugin here, ready for testing.
You can get it by checking out the “ff/genericjmx” branch of the Git
repository.

On Sun, Aug 02, 2009 at 09:03:33AM -0400, matthew sporleder wrote:
> > I have yet to figure out how to simply connect to JVM on the local
> > host using the PID.
> 
> I don't know how this works, actually.

If you do, please let me know ;)

> I tried looking at the source for jps and jconsole, but the source
> browser wasn't generating links for each class, so it was hard to
> track stuff down.  (opengrok would be much better)

Where can I take a look at jconsole's source?

> I just assumed it opened a named pipe or similar when you had
> -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote set.

Yes, I think it's a UNIX domain socket, but I wasn't able to track it's
file system representation down nor found any documentation on how to
connect..

> > Inside the `MBean' block there are `Value' blocks which describe one
> > value list (one graph) each. `Attribute' specifies the MBean
> > attribute to query. If it is a numeric or string type, it's simply
> > converted to an integer or double and submitted (see `invocations'
> > and `runtime'). Values inside composite types can be accessed using
> > the dot as separator, see `LastGcInfo.GcThreadCount' in the example
> > config.
> 
> This should work for java.lang:type=MemoryPool,name=Tenured Gen for
> Usage.committed and Usage.used, right?

There are two concepts:

1) There are MBeans which are identified by an “ObjectName”. Examples
   for such an object name are:
     java.lang:type=MemoryPool,name=Tenured Gen
     java.lang:type=GarbageCollector,name=PS Scavenge
     java.lang:type=GarbageCollector,name=PS MarkSweep
     java.lang:type=Memory

   The code can work with wildcards, so you can specify something like
   this:
     java.lang:type=GarbageCollector,name=*

   Of course, the name of the mbean (or at least part or the name) needs
   to be present in the plugin instance to differentiate between, for
   example, a number of memory pools. This can be done using the
   `InstancePrefix' and `InstanceFrom' options. The syntax is roughly:
     <MBean "memory_pool">
       ObjectName "java.lang:type=MemoryPool,name=*"
       InstancePrefix "mempool-"
       InstanceFrom "name"
       :
     </MBean>
   This would, for example, create a values a la
     localhost/GenericJMX-mempool-Tenured Gen/…

2) There are attributes and the types of the attributes. The objects
   returned by the attributes can be of various so called “OpenType”s,
   most notably a “composite type”. You can access a specific value
   within a composite type by using the dot-syntax I've talked about
   before. For example, in the garbage collector MBean you can find this
   “LastGcInfo.GcThreadCount” example. Here “LastGcInfo” is the name of
   the attribute which is of type “CompositeType”. Within the returned
   object, there is an object of type integer which can be received by
   the key “GcThreadCount”.

   Of course, this also works for more levels of composite data, i. e.
   something like
     foo.bar.blah.when.is.this.going.to.end.Bytes
   would be possible, too.

> I was thinking of the javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport
> specifically, but if it's just as easy to define each attribute you
> want manually into a single graph, that's fine with me.

That's exactly the one I'm talking about here.

> If you were to try it, would you just keep going with the .dot syntax
> until you found a real value, or would you want to try and keep going
> until you found values?

The dot syntax above simply specifies the path to an object. How this
object is handled depends on the (new) “Table” setting:

  - If set to `false', the object will be cast to something numeric,
    i. e. a double or integer value. If it turns out not to be a numeric
    class, for example another “CompositeData”, that's an error.

  - If set to `true', the object returned must be a composite type.
    Scalar values, such as a string, will trigger an error in this case.
    The plugin will iterate over all keys in the composite type and will
    try to handle all values as numeric types. This means that composite
    values are not handled recursively. The key for each value will be
    used as type instance.

    In the “java.lang:type=Memory” example in the sample config file,
    you see the attribute “HeapMemoryUsage” being requested. This is a
    composite type. Because “Table” is set to `true', the plugin will
    iterate over all keys (“committed”, “init”, “max”, and “used”) and
    handle the associated objects as numeric types (gauge in this case).

    If the data set had multiple data sources, only those keys present
    in *all* attributes will be used!

Does this answer your questions? Or, does anyone have any further
comments / ideas?

> This is so useful it's scary.

I certainly hope so ;)

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