[collectd] What are "interesting results" mentioned in FAQ?

[Sebastian Harl]

Hi Piotr,

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 04:45:43PM +0100, Piotr Hosowicz wrote:
> Florian Forster pisze:
> > On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 03:22:04PM +0100, Piotr Hosowicz wrote:
> >> I am running a Python script that checks some stats and sends them to
> >> stdout and further to the collectd server via exec plugin. I watched
> >> the graphs and I saw very strange results. When I dumped collected RRD
> >> files to XML i saw that data was not normal at all, I expectd it to be
> >> numerial thousends / tens of thousands. Instead in the dumpo I saw a
> >> lot of NaN's , fractional "almost zeroes" and very hight numbers in
> >> the order of millions. Is this said interesting result? - I foubnd in
> >> the FAQ:
> > 
> > sounds weird, right enough ;) Can you be a bit more specific what you're
> > feeding the exec plugin? Some lines printed by your script, for
> > instance?
> 
> The daemon that I watch produces on TCP port:
> 
> something:value
> something2:value2

What kind of values are those? How do they change over time?

> ... each time it receives a newline. Values are integers. My Python
> script connects to the daemon, then sends newline, receives values, then
> waits 60 seconds and so on. Each time it reads values it makes PUTVAL
> lines and sends them to the standard output. This works, as I see that
> the data collected locally as CSV is perfectly OK.

Could you please provide a few sample PUTVAL commands your script
issues? What collectd type do you use? To me, that sounds like you're
sending GAUGE values but using a COUNTER type [1]. That would result in
lots of overflows which in turn would cause the very high numbers. The
csv plugin does not care about the difference (unless you enable
StoreRates in the config file), so you won't see the problem there.

Cheers,
Sebastian

[1] See the rrdcreate(1) manpage for details - the meaning of GAUGE and
    COUNTER is borrowed from there.

-- 
Sebastian "tokkee" Harl +++ GnuPG-ID: 0x8501C7FC +++ http://tokkee.org/

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.         -- Benjamin Franklin

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