Files and directories

Plugin: go.d.plugin Module: filecheck

Overview

This collector monitors files and directories.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

This collector requires the DAC_READ_SEARCH capability, but it is set automatically during installation, so no manual configuration is needed.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

This integration doesn't support auto-detection.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

The default configuration for this integration is not expected to impose a significant performance impact on the system.

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per Files and directories instance

TBD

This scope has no labels.

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
filecheck.file_existence	a dimension per file	boolean
filecheck.file_mtime_ago	a dimension per file	seconds
filecheck.file_size	a dimension per file	bytes
filecheck.dir_existence	a dimension per directory	boolean
filecheck.dir_mtime_ago	a dimension per directory	seconds
filecheck.dir_num_of_files	a dimension per directory	files
filecheck.dir_size	a dimension per directory	bytes

Alerts

There are no alerts configured by default for this integration.

Setup

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is go.d/filecheck.conf.

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config go.d/filecheck.conf

Options

The following options can be defined globally: update_every, autodetection_retry.

Config options

Name	Description	Default	Required
update_every	Data collection frequency.	10	no
autodetection_retry	Recheck interval in seconds. Zero means no recheck will be scheduled.	0	no
files	List of files to monitor.		yes
dirs	List of directories to monitor.		yes
discovery_every	Files and directories discovery interval.	60	no

files

Files matching the selector will be monitored.

• Logic: (pattern1 OR pattern2) AND !(pattern3 or pattern4)
• Pattern syntax: shell file name pattern
• Syntax:

files:
  includes:
    - pattern1
    - pattern2
  excludes:
    - pattern3
    - pattern4

dirs

Directories matching the selector will be monitored.

• Logic: (pattern1 OR pattern2) AND !(pattern3 or pattern4)
• Pattern syntax: shell file name pattern
• Syntax:

dirs:
  includes:
    - pattern1
    - pattern2
  excludes:
    - pattern3
    - pattern4

Examples

Files

Files monitoring example configuration.

Config

jobs:
  - name: files_example
    files:
      include:
        - '/path/to/file1'
        - '/path/to/file2'
        - '/path/to/*.log'

Directories

Directories monitoring example configuration.

Config

jobs:
  - name: files_example
    dirs:
      collect_dir_size: no
      include:
        - '/path/to/dir1'
        - '/path/to/dir2'
        - '/path/to/dir3*'

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

To troubleshoot issues with the filecheck collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

• Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].

  cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/

• Switch to the netdata user.

  sudo -u netdata -s

• Run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

  ./go.d.plugin -d -m filecheck