=== System Socket Metricset

beta[]

This metricset is available on Linux only and requires kernel 2.6.14 or newer.

The system `socket` metricset reports an event for each new TCP socket that it
sees. It does this by polling the kernel periodically to get a dump of all
sockets. You set the polling interval by configuring the `period` option.
Specifying a short polling interval with this metricset is important to avoid
missing short-lived connections. For example:

[source,yaml]
----
metricbeat.modules:
- module: system
  metricsets: [cpu, memory]
- module: system
  metricsets: [socket] <1>
  period: 1s
----

<1> You can configure the `socket` metricset separately to specify a different
`period` value than the other metricsets.

The metricset reports the process that has the socket open. In order to provide
this information, Metricbeat must be running as root. Root access is also
required to read the file descriptor information of other processes.

You can configure the metricset to perform a reverse lookup on the remote IP,
and the returned hostname will be added to the event and cached. If a hostname
is found, then the eTLD+1 (effective top-level domain plus one level) value will
also be added to the event. Reverse lookups are disabled by default.

The following example shows the full configuration for the metricset along with
the defaults.

[source,yaml]
----
- module: system
  metricsets: [socket]
  socket.reverse_lookup.enabled: false
  socket.reverse_lookup.success_ttl: 60s
  socket.reverse_lookup.failure_ttl: 60s
----
