CollectD - installation and configuration with InfluxDB on Debian/Ubuntu

I wanted/needed some statistics on few my machines. I saw earlier grafana and was impressed so this was starting point. Then I started reading about graphite, carbon and whisper, and then… I found InfluxDB. Project is young but looks promising¹.

Installation of collectd is easy on Debian because packages are in default repo. One problem is that packages may be old, ex. on wheezy it version 5.1. But in backports/backports-sloppy² you may find current 5.5, so enable backports first:

Enable Debian backports for newer collectd

echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports main contrib non-free" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports-sloppy main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list

Install package:

Install collectd from backports or default repo

apt-get update
apt-get install -y -t backports-sloppy collectd collectd-utils
# or on recent system just
apt-get install -y collectd collectd-utils

Now edit configuration /etc/collectd/collectd.conf and add network section:

Example collectd network plugin configuration

LoadPlugin network

<Plugin "network">
Server "localhost" "8096"
</Plugin>

Use your InfluxDB hostname:port.

Now select and add enable some plugins - list here and restart service:

Restart collectd service

service collectd restart

That’s all - now install InfluxDB .