systemd-logind monitoring with Netdata

Monitors active sessions, users, and seats tracked by systemd-logind or elogind.

It provides the following charts:

1. Sessions Tracks the total number of sessions.

   • Graphical: Local graphical sessions (running X11, or Wayland, or something else).
   • Console: Local console sessions.
   • Remote: Remote sessions.

2. Users Tracks total number of unique user logins of each type.

   • Graphical
   • Console
   • Remote

3. Seats Total number of seats in use.

   • Seats

Enable the collector

The logind collector is disabled by default. To enable it, use edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata, to edit the python.d.conf file.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory, if different

sudo ./edit-config python.d.conf

Change the value of the logind setting to yes. Save the file and restart the Netdata Agent with sudo systemctl restart netdata, or the appropriate method for your system, to finish enabling the logind collector.

Configuration

This module needs no configuration. Just make sure the netdata user can run the loginctl command and get a session list without having to specify a path.

This will work with any command that can output data in the exact same format as loginctl list-sessions --no-legend. If you have some other command you want to use that outputs data in this format, you can specify it using the command key like so:

command: '/path/to/other/command'

Edit the python.d/logind.conf configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory, if different

sudo ./edit-config python.d/logind.conf

Notes

• This module's ability to track logins is dependent on what PAM services are configured to register sessions with logind. In particular, for most systems, it will only track TTY logins, local desktop logins, and logins through remote shell connections.

• The users chart counts usernames not UID's. This is potentially important in configurations where multiple users have the same UID.

• The users chart counts any given user name up to once for each type of login. So if the same user has a graphical and a console login on a system, they will show up once in the graphical count, and once in the console count.

• Because the data collection process is rather expensive, this plugin is currently disabled by default, and needs to be explicitly enabled in /etc/netdata/python.d.conf before it will run.

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