The v1.30.0 release of Netdata brings major improvements to our packaging and completely replaces Google Analytics/GTM for product telemetry. We're also releasing the first changes in an upcoming overhaul to both our dashboard UI/UX and the suite of preconfigured alarms that comes with every installation.

v1.30.0 contains 3 new collectors, 3 enhancements to notifications method, 38 improvements (13 in the dashboard), 16 documentation updates, and 17 bug fixes.

At a glance

The ACLK-NG is a much faster method of securely connecting a node to Netdata Cloud. In addition, there are no external dependencies to our custom libmosquitto and libwebsockets libraries, which means there's no more need to build these during installation. To enable ACLK-NG on a node that's already running the Netdata Agent, reinstall with the --aclk-ng option:

bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh) --aclk-ng --reinstall

We replaced Google Analytics/GTM, which we used for collecting product telemetry, with a self-hosted instance of the open-source PostHog project. When sending statistics to PostHog, any fields that might contain identifiable information, such as an IP address or URL, are hardcoded. If you previously opted-out of anonymous statistics, this migration does not change your existing settings.

We also published a developer environment (devenv) to simplify contributing to the Netdata Agent. The devenv packages everything you need to develop improvements on the Netdata Agent itself, or its collectors, in a single Docker image. Read more about this devenv, and get started, in the Netdata community repo.

Acknowledgments

• @aazedo for adding collection of attribute 233 (Media Wearout Indicator (SSD)) to the smartd_log collector
• @ossimantylahti for fixing a typo in the email notifications readme
• @KickerTom for renaming abs to ABS to avoid clash with standard definitions
• @Steve8291 for improving email, cron and ups groups in the apps_group.conf
• @liepumartins for adding wireguard to the vpn group in the apps_group.conf
• @eltociear for fixing typos in main.h, backend_prometheus.c and dashboard_info.js
• @Habetdin for fixing broken external links in the WEB GUI
• @salazarp for updating the syntax for Caddy v2
• @RaitoBezarius for adding support to change IRC_PORT

Improvements

• Support VS Code container devenv. (#10723, @OdysLam)
• Add check for children connecting to a parent agent with an unsupported memory mode. (#10787, @stelfrag)
• Add lock check to avoid shutdown when compiled with internal and locking checks. (#10835, @stelfrag)
• Update chart's metadata in database when it already exists during creation. (#10728, @stelfrag)
• ACLK separate HTTPS client. (#10784, @underhood)
• Add new ACLK implementation (ACLK-NG). (#10315, @underhood)
• Add CPU statistics per ALCK query thread. (#10634, @MrZammler)
• Add _aclk_impl label to the /api/v1/info endpoint. (#10778, @underhood)
• Add a new chart parameter to the /api/v1/alarm_log endpoint. (#10788, @MrZammler)
• Add data query support for archived charts. (#10771, @stelfrag)
• Add HTTP cookie (SameSite, Secure). (#10676, @thiagoftsm)
• Add statistics per Cloud query type. (#10602, @underhood)
• Add support for changing the number of pages per database engine extent. (#10593, @mfundul)
• Add the ability to store chart labels in the database. (#10718, @stelfrag)
• Enable metadata persistence in all memory modes. (#10742, @stelfrag)
• Increase curl connect-timeout and decrease number of claim attempts. (#10800, @ilyam8)
• Increase the ACLK exponential backoff randomness. (#10373, @underhood)
• Log ACLK Cloud commands to access.log. (#10697, @stelfrag)
• Remove an unused function warning in legacy version of the ACLK. (#10731, @underhood)
• Remove unreachable #else directives in plugins. (#10523, @vkalintiris)
• Rename struct avl to avl_element and the typedef to avl_t. (#10735, @vkalintiris)
• Replace Google Analytics with PostHog for backend telemetry events. (#10636, @andrewm4894)
• Skip C++ incompatible header in main libnetdata header. (#10737, @vkalintiris)
• Try to keep all pages from extents read from disk in the cache. (#10558, @mfundul)
• Use a parameter name that is not a reserved keyword in C++. (#10738, @vkalintiris)
• Use of out-of-line struct definitions. (#10739, @vkalintiris)

Dashboard

• Add max value to the nvidia_smi.fan_speed gauge. (#10780, @ilyam8)
• Add state map to duplex and operstate charts. (#10752, @vlvkobal)
• Add supervisord to dashboard_info.js. (#10754, @ilyam8)
• Fix broken external links. (#10586, @Habetdin)
• Make network state map syntax consistent in dashboard_info.js. (#10849, @ilyam8)
• dashboard@v2.13.28 (#10761, @jacekkolasa)
  • Fix alarms log export.
  • Persist relative timeframe.
  • Allow multirow names in the replicated nodes list.
  • Fix the date & time picker overlap.
  • Update Font Awesome.
  • Truncate long names.
  • Update links: change docs.netdata.cloud to learn.netdata.cloud.
  • Remove Google's GA & GTM completely, in favor of open-source PostHog.

Health

Bug fixes

• Fix delaying CLEAR notifications when using the repeat feature. (#10846, @thiagoftsm)
• Fix wrong count of entries in the alarm.log. (#10564, @thiagoftsm)

Alarms

• Add wmi_ prefix to the wmi collector network alarms. (#10782, @ilyam8)
• Add collector prefix to the external collectors alarms. (#10830, @ilyam8)
• Apply adapter_raid alarms for every logical/physical device. (#10820, @ilyam8)
• Apply megacli alarms for every adapter/physical disk. (#10834, @ilyam8)
• Exclude cgroups network interfaces from packets dropped alarms. (#10806, @ilyam8)
• Fix various alarms critical and warning thresholds hysteresis. (#10779, @ilyam8)
• Improve alarms info fields. (#10853, @ilyam8)
• Make VerneMQ alarms less sensitive. (#10770, @ilyam8)
• Make alarms less sensitive. (#10688, @ilyam8)
• Remove exporting_metrics_lost template. (#10829, @ilyam8)
• Remove ram_in_swap alarm. (#10789, @ilyam8)
• Use separate packets_dropped_ratio alarms for wireless network interfaces. (#10785, @ilyam8)

Notifications

• Add ability to change port number when using IRC notification method. (#10824, @RaitoBezarius)
• Add dump_methods parameter to alarm-notify.sh.in. (#10772, @MrZammler)
• Log an error if there is a failure during an email alarm notification. (#10818, @ilyam8)

Collectors

New

• Add monitoring of synchronization system calls to the eBPF collector. (#10814, @thiagoftsm)
• Add monitoring of Linux page cache to the eBPF collector. (#10693, @thiagoftsm)

Improvements

• Add k6.conf to the StatsD collector. (#10733, @OdysLam)
• Clean up the eBPF collector. (#10680, @thiagoftsm)
• Use working set for memory utilization in the cgroups collector. (#10712, @vlvkobal)
• Add new configuration parameters to the example Python collector. (#10777, @andrewm4894)
• Add carrier and MTU charts for network interfaces. (#10866, @vlvkobal)
• Improve email, cron, and UPS groups in the apps.plugin configuration. (#9313, @Steve8291)
• Add Wireguard to the vpn group in the apps.plugin configuration. (#10743, @liepumartins)
• Add alarm values collection to the Python alarms collector. (#10675, @andrewm4894)
• Add attribute 233 (Media Wearout Indicator (SSD)) collection to the python smartd_log collector. (#10711, @aazedo)
• Move network interface speed, duplex, and operstate variables to charts. (#10740, @vlvkobal)
• Update go.d.plugin version to v0.28.1. (#10826, @ilyam8)
• Add a noauthcodecheck workaround flag to the freeipmi collector. (#10701, @vlvkobal)

Bug fixes

• Fix eBPF collector compatibility with kernels v5.11+. (#10707, @thiagoftsm)
• Fix disks identification in the diskstats collector. (#10843, @vlvkobal)
• Fix the count of cpuset.cpus in the cgroups collector. (#10757, @ilyam8)
• Fix disk utilization and backlog charts in the diskstats collector. (#10705, @vlvkobal)

Exporting

Bug fixes

• Fix adding duplicate _total suffixes for the Prometheus collector. (#10674, @vlvkobal)

Packaging and installation

• Add JSON output option for buildinfo. (#10706, @Ferroin)
• Add information about the --aclk-ng option to the netdata-installer script. (#10852, @underhood)
• Add support for claiming nodes as part of installation. (#10084, @Ferroin)
• Assorted updater fixes (#10613, @Ferroin)
• Fix claiming via environment variables in a Docker container (#10811, @ilyam8)
• Fix detection of already claimed node in Docker images (#10720, @Ferroin)
• Fix handling of perf.plugin capabilities (#10766, @Ferroin)
• Fix handling of permissions for some plugins (#10490, @Ferroin)

Documentation

• Add guide: Develop a custom data collector for Netdata in Python. (#10710, @joelhans)
• Add guide: LAMP stack monitoring. (#10698, @joelhans)
• Add guide: Unsupervised anomaly detection for Raspberry Pi monitoring. (#10713, @joelhans)
• Add guide: How to use any StatsD data source with Netdata. (#10719, @OdysLam)
• Convert references to service to systemctl. (#10703, @joelhans)
• Fix broken link in StatsD guide. (#10831, @joelhans)
• Fix broken links in active alarms doc. (#10678, @joelhans)
• Improve the Kubernetes deployment documentation. (#10662, @joelhans)
• Revamp StatsD docs. (#10637, @OdysLam)
• Update guide: Kubernetes monitoring with Netdata: Overview and visualizations. (#10691, @joelhans)
• Update screenshots and text for new Cloud navigation. (#10664, @joelhans)
• Comment out memory mode mention in StatsD example. (#10751, @OdysLam)
• Fix a typo in the email notifications doc. (#10668, @ossimantylahti)
• Update syntax for Caddy v2. (#10823, @salazarp)

Bug fixes

• Fix a typo in main.h. (#10858, @eltociear)
• Fix a typo in backend_prometheus.c. (#10716, @eltociear)
• Fix a typo in dashboard_info.js. (#10775, @eltociear)
• Fix segfault due to misalignment between global and StatsD memory modes. (#10732, @stelfrag)
• Fix zombie alarms for charts that are obsolete/removed. (#10804, @vlvkobal)
• Fix a Coverity warning in the new MQTT library. (#10851, @underhood)
• Fix a parameter binding issue when storing chart names in the database. (#10717, @stelfrag)
• Fix crash when executing data query with context and non-existing chart_label_key. (#10844, @stelfrag)
• Fix claiming behind Squid proxy. (#10734, @underhood)
• Fix Coverity issue (CID 367566). (#10813, @stelfrag)
• Fix memory leak when archived data is requested. (#10837, @stelfrag)
• Fix clash with C++ standard definitions by changing abs to ABS. (#10354, @KickerTom)