[collectd] more discussion of rrdtool plugin?

[N. Tucker]

Hi, I'm looking for documentation that provides a general discussion of how
the rrdtool plugin works and how it should be used.  The only docs I'm able
to find are the manpage info on the plugin's configuration options and the
"Inside the RRDTool plugin" page, which sounds exactly like what I'm looking
for, but turns out to focus pretty much exclusively on the narrow issue of
"IO hell".

In particular, I'm looking for information on the options the plugin uses
for the creation of individual RRD archives, and whether I can control the
parameters when creating individual .rrd's.  I would like to collect some
data points that do not use the global default step size, and I am unsure
whether I'm supposed to create the archives manually or if there is
something I'm supposed to do when reporting the values that provides some
meta-info about how the RRD should be created.  Help or pointers to more
documentation would be appreciated.

Another question I have is how I can coordinate access to the RRD files if I
want to modify them.  Does the rrdtool plugin follow any sort of advisory
file locking scheme so that I can safely modify an RRD without having to
shut down collectd?  Is there another way I can indicate to collectd that it
should suspend flushing but continue collecting data?

-Neal
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