Why is the collectd interval not working?

[jamessevenerlmc]

I'm working on a solution to send metrics from a number of Linux servers running RHEL 7.5.

I've got collectd installed and sending data via an Http Event Collector. The issue is that no matter where I set the Interval setting, I'm still seeing metrics written every 10 seconds (the default according to https://collectd.org/documentation/manpages/collectd.conf.5.shtml#synopsis)

Has anyone run into this? I'm looking to set Interval to 300 seconds.

Interval 300 in /etc/collectd.conf and /etc/collectd.d/myApp.conf haven't done anything.

[MuS]

Hi jamessevenerlmco,

I don't see how this can be a Splunk question ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but since you got my attention .... here we go 🙂

You are right in setting the Interval option, remember it can be set globally or per plugin.
Have to run collectd -t to test your config and more important have you run collectd -h to get the information about the default config file location?

Because running it with collectd 5.7.1 tells me the default location of the config file is /etc/collectd/collectd.conf not /etc/collectd.conf.

Maybe this can helps as well https://github.com/collectd/collectd/issues/2444

If this all does not help you can always strace the pid and see which config file it really loads.

hope this helps ...

cheers, MuS

[jamessevenerlmc]

MuS, thanks for replying! You are correct, it's not directly a splunk question, but since it is the suggested way to get linux metrics into splunk, I thought I'd ask here.

On RHEL 7.5 running collectd 5.8.0, collectd -t and collectd -T return fine. -h tells me the default config file is /etc/collectd.conf

I've looked at that bug you linked, so I un-commented the interval line in /etc/collectd.conf, and set it to 300. (As it is set to 10 by default)

I've grep'd Interval in /etc/collectd.conf and /etc/collectd.d/* and looked for any other Interval settings that could override it, and there aren't any.

I do know it's using the correct config file, because all of my plugins are being loaded!

I'm leaning towards it's a bug in RedHat's release of collectd. I've got a ticket open with them. I'll update here.