systemd

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the Collectd Systemd monitor. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the collectd/systemd monitor type to collect metrics about the state of configured systemd services.

This integration is available on Kubernetes and Linux.

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Requirements

This integration reads the status of systemd services from /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket. You must mount the host location to the container in which the Collector or the Smart Agent is running. The agent container must also run in privileged mode. The following example shows an excerpt of the docker run command:

docker run ...\
  --privileged \
  -v /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket:/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket:ro \
...

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
- Install on Kubernetes
- Install on Linux
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/systemd:
    type: collectd/systemd
    ...  # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/systemd]

Advanced examples

The following is an excerpt of a YAML configuration for monitoring the state of docker and ubuntu-fan services:

receivers:
  smartagent/systemd:
    type: collectd/systemd
    intervalSeconds: 10
    services:
      - docker
      - ubuntu-fan

By default, the gauge.substate.running metrics, which indicates whether a service is running or not, is the only metric reported. Configure additional metrics using the sendActiveState, sendSubState, and sendLoadState configuration flags, as shown in the following example:

receivers:
  smartagent/systemd:
    type: collectd/systemd
    intervalSeconds: 10
    services:
      - docker
      - ubuntu-fan
    sendActiveState: true

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for this monitor:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`services`	Yes	`list of strings`	Services to report on.
`sendActiveState`	No	`bool`	Flag for sending metrics about the state of systemd services. The default value is `false`.
`sendSubState`	No	`bool`	Flag for sending more detailed metrics about the state of systemd services. The default value is `false`.
`sendLoadState`	No	`bool`	Flag for sending metrics about the load state of systemd services. The default value is `false`.

A service is in the state that a metric represents if the metric value is 1 and not in that state if the metric value is 0. The integration assigns the name of monitored services to the systemd_service dimension.

Metrics

The following metrics are available for this integration:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector/main/internal/signalfx-agent/pkg/monitors/collectd/systemd/metadata.yaml

Notes

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types.
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics.

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups.

Documentation