You define collectors to determine what properties the system
collects from (or assigns to) your servers. The collector assigned to a server
is like a blueprint for the server's manifest.
The Collectors
section of the Servers module ( ) lists the available collectors
and allows you to create new collectors.
A collector consists of a series of properties which are assigned to any
server that uses the collector. However, the specific values of the properties
can vary from server to server, because a collector is a set of instructions
for collecting data.
You can define several types of properties in a collector:
- Set Value
- These properties simply assign a named, static value to the server. Specify
the property name and the value. The same value is assigned to all servers
that use the collector.
- The system recognizes values with special names as defining behavior for
a server. These special values begin with the underscore (_) character. See Special Set Value Properties for a list
of these.
- Built-in
- These properties return information about the server. For a list of built-ins,
see Built-in Properties Reference. When you choose
this type, the system allows you to pick a built-in from a list.
- Run Command
- For these properties, you define a command for the system to run. The
command's output is used to populate the property value in the manifest. You
can use a regular expression to specify what part of the command's output
to use.
- To define a Run Command property, fill out the following fields:
- Property
- The name of the property, for the manifest.
- Command
- A command to run on the server.
- Regular Expression
- A Perl regular expression. Optional. If specified, the system tries to
match the regular expression against each line of output from the command.
The first time a line matches, it retrieves the value of $1 (a Perl convention),
and uses it as the value for that property. The regular expression must include
at least one set of parentheses so that it returns a value. Consult Perl documentation
for more information on constructing Perl regular expressions.
Note: If you
do not specify a regular expression, the system uses up to the first 255
characters of output from the command to populate the property in the
manifest.
- .include
- These allow you to nest collectors. When you create a .include property,
you specify the name of another collector as its value. When it creates or
updates the manifest, the system inserts the properties from the referenced
collector.
Note: The system applies collector properties in the order they
are listed in the collector, and later properties of the same name override earlier
ones. Use this feature when you include one collector within another one.
If you want to use some of the properties of a collector but not all, override
the ones you do not want to use.
The system also applies a few properties automatically, such as the BF_NAME
property that contains the logical name of the server. See Special Manifest Properties.