Find the New Relic Wikipedia Example plugin in the New Relic storefront
Find the New Relic Wikipedia plugin in Plugin Central
- A New Relic account. Sign up for a free account here
- Java Runtime (JRE) environment Version 1.6 or later
- Network access to New Relic (authenticated proxies are not currently supported, see details below)
This plugin can be installed one of the following ways:
Option 1 - New Relic Platform InstallerOption 2 - Chef and Puppet Install Scripts- Option 3 - Manual Install
The latest version of the plugin can be downloaded here. Once the plugin is on your box, extract it to a location of your choosing.
note - This plugin is distributed in tar.gz format and can be extracted with the following command on Unix-based systems (Windows users will need to download a third-party extraction tool or use the New Relic Platform Installer):
tar -xvzf newrelic_wikipedia_plugin-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
Check out the configuration information section for details on configuring your plugin.
To run the plugin, execute the following command from a terminal or command window (assuming Java is installed and on your path):
java -Xmx128m -jar plugin.jar
Note: Though it is not necessary, the '-Xmx128m' flag is highly recommended due to the fact that when running the plugin on a server class machine, the java command will start a JVM that may reserve up to one quarter (25%) of available memory, but the '-Xmx128m' flag will limit heap allocation to a more reasonable 128MBs.
For more information on JVM server class machines and the -Xmx JVM argument, see:
- http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/vm/server-class.html
- http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E22289_01/html/821-1274/configuring-the-default-jvm-and-java-arguments.html
Step 3 showed you how to run the plugin; however, there are several problems with running the process directly in the foreground (For example, when the machine reboots the process will not be started again). That said, there are several common ways to keep a plugin running, but they do require more advanced knowledge or additional tooling. We highly recommend considering using the New Relic Platform Installer or Chef/Puppet scripts for installing plugins as they will take care of most of the heavy lifting for you.
If you prefer to be more involved in the maintaince of the process, consider one of these tools for managing your plugin process (bear in mind that some of these are OS-specific):
You will need to modify two configuration files in order to set this plugin up to run. The first (newrelic.json) contains configurations used by all Platform plugins (e.g. license key, logging information, proxy settings) and can be shared across your plugins. The second (plugin.json) contains data specific to each plugin such as a list of hosts and port combination for what you are monitoring. Templates for both of these files should be located in the 'config' directory in your extracted plugin folder.
The plugin.json file has a provided template in the config directory named plugin.template.json. If you are installing manually, make a copy of this template file and rename it to plugin.json (the New Relic Platform Installer will automatically handle creation of configuration files for you).
Below is an example of the plugin.json file's contents, you can add multiple objects to the "agents" array to monitor different instances:
{
"agents": [
{
"name" : "Apache offical",
"host" : "apache.org",
"metrics" : [
{"name":"Total Accesses", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"Total kBytes", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"CPULoad", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"Uptime", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"ReqPerSec", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"BytesPerSec", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"BytesPerReq", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"BusyWorkers", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"IdleWorkers", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"ConnsTotal", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"ConnsAsyncWriting", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"ConnsAsyncKeepAlive", "unit":"#" },
{"name":"ConnsAsyncClosing", "unit":"#" }
]
}
]
}
note - The "name" attribute is used to identify specific instances in the New Relic UI.
The newrelic.json file also has a provided template in the config directory named newrelic.template.json. If you are installing manually, make a copy of this template file and rename it to newrelic.json (again, the New Relic Platform Installer will automatically handle this for you).
The newrelic.json is a standardized file containing configuration information that applies to any plugin (e.g. license key, logging, proxy settings), so going forward you will be able to copy a single newrelic.json file from one plugin to another. Below is a list of the configuration fields that can be managed through this file:
Your New Relic license key is the only required field in the newrelic.json file as it is used to determine what account you are reporting to. If you do not know what your license key is, you can learn about it here.
Example:
{
"license_key": "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY_HERE"
}
By default Platform plugins will have their logging turned on; however, you can manage these settings with the following configurations:
log_level - The log level. Valid values: [debug, info, warn, error, fatal]. Defaults to info.
log_file_name - The log file name. Defaults to newrelic_plugin.log.
log_file_path - The log file path. Defaults to logs.
log_limit_in_kbytes - The log file limit in kilobytes. Defaults to 25600 (25 MB). If limit is set to 0, the log file size would not be limited.
Example:
{
"license_key": "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY_HERE"
"log_level": "debug",
"log_file_path": "/var/logs/newrelic"
}
If you are running your plugin from a machine that runs outbound traffic through a proxy, you can use the following optional configurations in your newrelic.json file:
proxy_host - The proxy host (e.g. webcache.example.com)
proxy_port - The proxy port (e.g. 8080). Defaults to 80 if a proxy_host is set
proxy_username - The proxy username
proxy_password - The proxy password
Example:
{
"license_key": "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY_HERE",
"proxy_host": "proxy.mycompany.com",
"proxy_port": 9000
}
Plugin support and troubleshooting assistance can be obtained by visiting support.newrelic.com
Q: I've started this plugin, now what?
A: Once you have a plugin reporting with the proper license key, log into New Relic here. If everything was successful, you should see a new navigation item appear on the left navigation bar identifying your new plugin (This may take a few minutes). Click on this item to see the metrics for what you were monitoring (bear in mind, some details -- such as summary metrics -- may take several minutes to show values).