By default the nixstatsagent runs under it's own user nixstats. This prevents the monitoring agent to have access to certain data such as process level disk I/O.

Here is how to run the nixstatsagent as root user to unlock these statistics.

If you have a file at /etc/systemd/system/nixstatsagent.service your services run from systemd, else try the init.d method.

Systemd
Open /etc/systemd/system/nixstatsagent.service and change the line with User=nixstats to User=root

Run systemctl daemon-reload to reload the file change.

Init.d
Open /etc/init.d/nixstatsagent and edit the line proguser=nixstats to proguser=root

If you don't have this line in your file replace this one
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --name $NAME --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE --chuid nixstats --background --make-pidfile --startas $DAEMON
with this:
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --name $NAME --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE --chuid root --background --make-pidfile --startas $DAEMON

OpenBSD
Open /etc/rc.d/nixstatsagent and chagne the line with : ${nixstats_run_user="nixstats"} to : ${nixstats_run_user="root"}

After making these changes run service nixstatsagent restart.

Check if the agent is running as root:

root@test:~# ps aux | grep nixstats
root 1324 0.2 1.6 564592 16832 ? Ssl May16 293:31 /usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/nixstatsagent

Published on: 30 / 07 / 2018