BOINC
BOINC
Plugin: python.d.plugin Module: boinc
Overview
This collector monitors task counts for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure Networking Computing (BOINC) distributed computing client.
It uses the same RPC interface that the BOINC monitoring GUI does.
This collector is supported on all platforms.
This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.
Default Behavior
Auto-Detection
By default, the module will try to auto-detect the password to the RPC interface by looking in /var/lib/boinc for this file (this is the location most Linux distributions use for a system-wide BOINC installation), so things may just work without needing configuration for a local system.
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.
Setup
Prerequisites
Boinc RPC interface
BOINC requires use of a password to access it’s RPC interface. You can find this password in the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file in your BOINC directory.
Configuration
File
The configuration file name for this integration is python.d/boinc.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 python.d/boinc.conf
Options
There are 2 sections:
- Global variables
- One or more JOBS that can define multiple different instances to monitor.
The following options can be defined globally: priority, penalty, autodetection_retry, update_every, but can also be defined per JOB to override the global values.
Additionally, the following collapsed table contains all the options that can be configured inside a JOB definition.
Every configuration JOB starts with a job_name value which will appear in the dashboard, unless a name parameter is specified.
| Name | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| update_every | Sets the default data collection frequency. | 5 | False |
| priority | Controls the order of charts at the netdata dashboard. | 60000 | False |
| autodetection_retry | Sets the job re-check interval in seconds. | 0 | False |
| penalty | Indicates whether to apply penalty to update_every in case of failures. | yes | False |
| name | Job name. This value will overwrite the job_name value. JOBS with the same name are mutually exclusive. Only one of them will be allowed running at any time. This allows autodetection to try several alternatives and pick the one that works. |
False | |
| hostname | Define a hostname where boinc is running. | localhost | False |
| port | The port of boinc RPC interface. | False | |
| password | Provide a password to connect to a boinc RPC interface. | False |
Examples
Configuration of a remote boinc instance
A basic JOB configuration for a remote boinc instance
remote:
hostname: '1.2.3.4'
port: 1234
password: 'some-password'
Multi-instance
Note: When you define multiple jobs, their names must be unique.
Collecting metrics from local and remote instances.
localhost:
name: 'local'
host: '127.0.0.1'
port: 1234
password: 'some-password'
remote_job:
name: 'remote'
host: '192.0.2.1'
port: 1234
password: some-other-password
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 BOINC instance
These metrics refer to the entire monitored application.
This scope has no labels.
Metrics:
| Metric | Dimensions | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| boinc.tasks | Total, Active | tasks |
| boinc.states | New, Downloading, Ready to Run, Compute Errors, Uploading, Uploaded, Aborted, Failed Uploads | tasks |
| boinc.sched | Uninitialized, Preempted, Scheduled | tasks |
| boinc.process | Uninitialized, Executing, Suspended, Aborted, Quit, Copy Pending | tasks |
Alerts
The following alerts are available:
| Alert name | On metric | Description |
|---|---|---|
| boinc_total_tasks | boinc.tasks | average number of total tasks over the last 10 minutes |
| boinc_active_tasks | boinc.tasks | average number of active tasks over the last 10 minutes |
| boinc_compute_errors | boinc.states | average number of compute errors over the last 10 minutes |
| boinc_upload_errors | boinc.states | average number of failed uploads over the last 10 minutes |
Troubleshooting
Debug Mode
To troubleshoot issues with the boinc collector, run the python.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.ddirectory, usually at/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that’s not the case on your system, opennetdata.confand look for thepluginssetting under[directories].cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/ -
Switch to the
netdatauser.sudo -u netdata -s -
Run the
python.d.pluginto debug the collector:./python.d.plugin boinc debug trace