Docs » Available host and application monitors » Configure application receivers for databases » Exec Input

Exec Input 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the Exec Input monitor type, an embedded form of the Telegraf Exec plugin, to receive metrics or logs from exec files.

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 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 Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring navigators.

  • Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Use the Metric Finder.

Installation 🔗

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

  1. Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:

  2. Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.

  3. Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration 🔗

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

  1. Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.

  2. Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.

Example 🔗

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

receivers:
  smartagent/exec:
    type: telegraf/exec
    ...  # Additional config

Next, include the monitor in a logs pipeline that utilizes an exporter that makes the event submission requests. Use a Resource Detection processor to ensure that host identity and other useful information is made available as event dimensions. For example:

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers:
        - smartagent/exec
      processors:
        - resourcedetection
      exporters:
        - signalfx

Configuration settings 🔗

The following tables show the configuration options for this monitor type:

Option

Required

Type

Description

commands

no

list of strings

command

no

string

timeout

no

int64

The default value is 0.

telegrafParser

no

object (see below)

telegrafParser is a nested object that defines configurations for a Telegraf parser. Refer to the Telegraf documentation for more information on Telegraf parsers.

signalFxCumulativeMetrics

no

list of strings

A list of metric names typed as “cumulative counters” in Observability Cloud. The Telegraf Exec plugin only emits untyped metrics, which are sent as gauges by default.

The nested telegrafParser configuration object has the following fields:

Option

Required

Type

Description

dataFormat

no

string

dataFormat specifies a data format to parse: json, value, influx, graphite, value, nagios, collectd, dropwizard, wavefront, grok, csv, or logfmt. The default value is influx.

defaultTags

no

map of strings

defaultTags are tags added to all metrics. (json, value, graphite, collectd, dropwizard, wavefront, grok, csv and logfmt only)

metricName

no

string

metricName applies to (json and value). This is the name of the measurement.

dataType

no

string

dataType specifies the value type to parse the value to: integer, float, long, string, or boolean. (value only)

JSONTagKeys

no

list of strings

A list of tag names to fetch from JSON data. (json only)

JSONStringFields

no

list of strings

A list of fields in JSON to extract and use as string fields. (json only)

JSONNameKey

no

string

A path used to extract the metric name in JSON data. (json only)

JSONQuery

no

string

A gjson path for json parser. (json only)

JSONTimeKey

no

string

The name of the timestamp key. (json only)

JSONTimeFormat

no

string

Specifies the timestamp format. (json only)

separator

no

string

Separator for Graphite data. (graphite only).

templates

no

list of strings

A list of templates for Graphite data. (graphite only).

collectdAuthFile

no

string

The path to the collectd authentication file (collectd only)

collectdSecurityLevel

no

string

Specifies the security level: none (default), sign, or encrypt. (collectd only)

collectdTypesDB

no

list of strings

A list of paths to collectd TypesDB files. (collectd only)

collectdSplit

no

string

Indicates whether to separate or join multivalue metrics. (collectd only)

dropwizardMetricRegistryPath

no

string

An optional gjson path used to locate a metric registry inside of JSON data. The default behavior is to consider the entire JSON document. (dropwizard only)

dropwizardTimePath

no

string

An optional gjson path used to identify the drop wizard metric timestamp. (dropwizard only)

dropwizardTimeFormat

no

string

The format used for parsing the drop wizard metric timestamp. The default format is time.RFC3339. (dropwizard only)

dropwizardTagsPath

no

string

An optional gjson path used to locate drop wizard tags. (dropwizard only)

dropwizardTagPathsMap

no

map of strings

A map of gjson tag names and gjson paths used to extract tag values from the JSON document. This is only used if dropwizardTagsPath is not specified. (dropwizard only)

grokPatterns

no

list of strings

A list of patterns to match. (grok only)

grokNamedPatterns

no

list of strings

A list of named grok patterns to match. (grok only)

grokCustomPatterns

no

string

Custom grok patterns. (grok only)

grokCustomPatternFiles

no

list of strings

List of paths to custom grok pattern files. (grok only)

grokTimezone

no

string

Specifies the timezone. The default is UTC time. Other options are Local for the local time on the machine, UTC, and Canada/Eastern (unix style timezones). (grok only)

CSVDelimiter

no

string

The delimiter used between fields in the csv. (csv only)

CSVComment

no

string

The character used to mark rows as comments. (csv only)

CSVTrimSpace

no

bool

Indicates whether to trim leading white from fields. (csv only) The default value is false.

CSVColumnNames

no

list of strings

List of custom column names. All columns must have names. Unnamed columns are ignored. This configuration must be set when CSVHeaderRowCount is 0. (csv only)

CSVColumnTypes

no

list of strings

List of types to assign to columns. Acceptable values are int, float, bool, or string (csv only).

CSVTagColumns

no

list of strings

List of columns added as tags. Unspecified columns are added as fields. (csv only)

CSVMeasurementColumn

no

string

The name of the column to extract the metric name from (csv only)

CSVTimestampColumn

no

string

The name of the column to extract the metric timestamp from. CSVTimestampFormat must be set when using this option. (csv only)

CSVTimestampFormat

no

string

The format to use for extracting timestamps. (csv only)

CSVHeaderRowCount

no

integer

The number of rows that are headers. By default, no rows are treated as headers. (csv only) The default value is 0.

CSVSkipRows

no

integer

The number of rows to ignore before looking for headers. (csv only) The default value is 0.

CSVSkipColumns

no

integer

The number of columns to ignore before parsing data on a given row. (csv only) The default value is 0.

Metrics 🔗

The agent does not do any built-in filtering of metrics coming out of this monitor.

By default, all metrics are emitted as gauges. If you have cumulative counter metrics that you want properly typed in Splunk Observability Cloud, use one of the following options:

  • Set the configuration option signalFxCumulativeCounters to the list of metric names to be considered as counters. Note that these names are the full names that are sent to Observability Cloud (for example, <metric>.<field>).

  • Set a tag named signalfx_type on the metric emitted by the exec script to cumulative. All other values are ignored. Note that you must allow this tag value through in your parser configuration if the parser ignores certain fields. For example, the JSON parser requires adding signalfx_type to the JSONTagKeys configuration option.

Troubleshooting 🔗

If you are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, try these tips:

To learn about even more support options, see Splunk Customer Success.