Ping

Plugin: go.d.plugin Module: ping

Overview

This module measures round-tripe time and packet loss by sending ping messages to network hosts.

There are two operational modes:

• privileged (send raw ICMP ping, default). Requires CAP_NET_RAW capability or root privileges:

  Note: set automatically during Netdata installation.

  sudo setcap CAP_NET_RAW=eip <INSTALL_PREFIX>/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/go.d.plugin

• unprivileged (send UDP ping, Linux only). Requires configuring ping_group_range:

  sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ping_group_range="0 2147483647"

  To persist the change add net.ipv4.ping_group_range="0 2147483647" to /etc/sysctl.conf and execute sudo sysctl -p.

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

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.

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 host

These metrics refer to the remote host.

Labels:

Label	Description
host	remote host

Metrics:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
ping.host_rtt	min, max, avg	milliseconds
ping.host_std_dev_rtt	std_dev	milliseconds
ping.host_packet_loss	loss	percentage
ping.host_packets	received, sent	packets

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert name	On metric	Description
ping_host_reachable	ping.host_packet_loss	network host ${lab1el:host} reachability status
ping_packet_loss	ping.host_packet_loss	packet loss percentage to the network host ${label:host} over the last 10 minutes
ping_host_latency	ping.host_rtt	average latency to the network host ${label:host} over the last 10 seconds

Setup

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is go.d/ping.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/ping.conf

Options

The following options can be defined globally: update_every, autodetection_retry.

Config options

Name	Description	Default	Required
update_every	Data collection frequency.	5	no
autodetection_retry	Recheck interval in seconds. Zero means no recheck will be scheduled.	0	no
hosts	Network hosts.		yes
network	Allows configuration of DNS resolution. Supported options: ip (select IPv4 or IPv6), ip4 (select IPv4), ip6 (select IPv6).	ip	no
privileged	Ping packets type. "no" means send an "unprivileged" UDP ping, "yes" - raw ICMP ping.	yes	no
packets	Number of ping packets to send.	5	no
interval	Timeout between sending ping packets.	100ms	no

Examples

IPv4 hosts

An example configuration.

Config

jobs:
  - name: example
    hosts:
      - 192.0.2.0
      - 192.0.2.1

Unprivileged mode

An example configuration.

Config

jobs:
  - name: example
    privileged: no
    hosts:
      - 192.0.2.0
      - 192.0.2.1

Multi-instance

Note: When you define multiple jobs, their names must be unique.

Multiple instances.

Config

jobs:
  - name: example1
    hosts:
      - 192.0.2.0
      - 192.0.2.1

  - name: example2
    packets: 10
    hosts:
      - 192.0.2.3
      - 192.0.2.4

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

To troubleshoot issues with the ping 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 ping