collectd on Debian
==================

General notes:
--------------

- This package is split up into several packages to prevent you from having to
  install dependencies (or recommended packages) that you don't actually need.
  Any plugin that has dependencies other than libc gets its own package.

Configuring collectd:
---------------------

- collectd uses a similar configuration layout as openvpn does. That is to
  say that one daemon process is started for each configuration file found in
  /etc/collectd/.

- See collectd.conf(5) for details about configuring collectd.

Building your own plugins:
--------------------------

- If you want to contribute plugins to the official distribution you should
  read http://collectd.org/dev-info.shtml.

- If you want to build plugins for your personal use only simply install the
  collectd-dev package and use /usr/share/doc/collectd-dev/examples/myplugin.c
  as a starting point (Note: This is already a working example, though it does
  not collect any useful data).
  
  The resulting file can be compiled as follows:

    gcc -shared -o myplugin.so myplugin.c

  Copy myplugin.so to /usr/lib/collectd and add the following line to your
  collectd config file:

    LoadPlugin myplugin

  Restart collectd and you're done.