blackbird

What is blackbird?

blackbird is one like observation agent. At present (sending data part is pluggable, so blackbird can send data to besides it) blackbird send data to your zabbix server by using zabbix sender protocol. As sending data:

• Middleware statistics information
  • e.g: nginx stub_status, memcached stats, redis INFO and others!
• AWS resources usage and statistics (by using cloudwatch API)
  • e.g: Elastic Load Blancing, DynamoDB, RDS and others!

So, you need to create nightmare shell script for zabbix user parameters no longer.

What plugin do we create?

Nginx, memcached, redis, MySQL5.5, AWS Elastic Load Blancing, AWS RDS, AWS DynamoDB and others! Please see our plugins (repositories under the github organization Vagrants ).

How to install blackbird

Case of using pip.

pip install blackbird

Case of using setup.py.

python setup.py install

But if you installed on your PC, you may use python setup.py develop. The reason of using develop, it's easier to remove this when uninstalling blackbird.

Case of using rpm.

You need to create below .repo file.

[blackbird]
name=blackbird package repository
baseurl=https://vagrants.github.io/blackbird/repo/yum/6/x86_64
enabled=0
gpgcheck=0

yum install --enablerepo=blackbird blackbird

note: In some cases, you may use sudo to install blackbird at each command.

How to install blackbird plugins

Case of using rpm.

yum install --enablerepo=blackbird blackbird-nginx blackbird-redis blackbird-memcached

Configure to your blackbird

OK, now you have installed blackbird. In this section, let's configure your blackbird.

outline

1. Write blackbird configuration file.
2. Run your blackbird

Step1 Write blackbird configuration file

Write configuration file at first. Create following format file. In this step, you don't have to mind about configuration detail (We provide documentation at github Pages).

# global section configuration
[global]
# Execution user. Please change it if necessary.
user = nobody
# Execution user group. Please change it if necessary.
group = nobody
log_file = /tmp/blackbird.log
log_level = debug

# zabbix_sender module configuration
[zabbix_sender]
# Change your zabbix server hostname
server = YOUR_ZABBIX_SERVER
module = zabbix_server

# netstat module configuration
[netstat]
module = netstat

OK, your blackbird configuration file has been created. The strings surrounded by [] are section name. The section name is string to separate each configuration section.

Step2 Run your blackbird

In previous step, you have written blackbird configuration file. So, do let's run actually your blackbird.

blackbird --config YOUR_CONFIG_FILE_PATH --pid-file ./blackbird.pid --debug-mode

What do you see on your console(or terminal)? Perhaps, you can see that blackbird stacks data internal queue.