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.

netdata user needs the following permissions on all the directories in pathname that lead to the file/dir:

files monitoring: execute.
directories monitoring: read and execute.

If you need to modify the permissions we suggest to use file access control lists:

setfacl -m u:netconfig:rx file ...

Warning: For security reasons, this should not be applied recursively, but only to the exact set of directories that lead to the file/dir you want to monitor.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Directories

Directories monitoring example configuration.

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

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.

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
```

Industry

Technology

Use cases