How much Performance data should a plugin return?

How much Performance data should a plugin return? should we stick with the 4K limit? or extend that?

Most plugins I have seen returned very limited Performance data. Would there be a downside of returning 40K of performance data?

nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/pluginapi.html:
“Plugin Output Length Restrictions
Nagios will only read the first 4 KB of data that a plugin returns. This is done in order to prevent runaway plugins from dumping megs or gigs of data back to Nagios. This 4 KB output limit is fairly easy to change if you need. Simply edit the value of the MAX_PLUGIN_OUTPUT_LENGTH definition in the include/nagios.h.in file of the source code distribution and recompile Nagios. There’s nothing else you need to change!”

What kind of plugin would need to return more than 4K of data? just curious… :slight_smile: