MRTG-RRD(1) mrtg MRTG-RRD(1) NNNNAAAAMMMMEEEE mrtg-rrd - How to use RRDtool with MRTG SSSSYYYYNNNNOOOOPPPPSSSSIIIISSSS After using MRTG for some time you may find some limita- tions. Mostly in the areas of performance and graphing flexibility. These are exactly the areas addressed by rrd- tool. To learn more about RRDtool check out its website on http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool RRRRRRRRDDDDTTTTOOOOOOOOLLLL IIIINNNNTTTTEEEEGGGGRRRRAAAATTTTIIIIOOOONNNN When using mrtg with RRDtool you are replacing _r_a_t_e_u_p with the RRDtool perl module _R_R_D_s_._p_m. To enable RRDtool support in mrtg you have to add the line LogFormat: rrdtool MRTG needs access to both the RRDtool perl module RRRRRRRRDDDDssss....ppppmmmm and to the rrrrrrrrddddttttoooooooollll executable. If these two items are not installed in locations where perl can find them on its own, then you can use the fol- lowing two parameters to supply the appropriate directo- ries. For the location of the rrrrrrrrddddttttoooooooollll executable you put PathAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/bin/ or PathAdd: c:\rrdtool\bin For the location of the perl module it would be: LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/ or LibAdd: c:\rrdtool\bin\lib\perl When you have made this modification to the configuration file, several things will happen when you run mrtg again with the new config file: 1. mrtg will take all your old ".log" files and ccccoooonnnnvvvveeeerrrrtttt them to ".rrd" format. (The ".log" files don't get touched in the process, so if things don't work out they are still there.) 2. mrtg will use rrrrrrrrddddttttoooooooollll to update its databases. These will have a new format called _r_r_d which is totally different than the native _l_o_g format of the classic mrtg. 3. mrtg will nnnnooootttt create any webpages of graphs anymore. It will only query the routers for traffic information and update its _r_r_d databases. The advantage of whole thing is that the mrtg will become mmmmuuuucccchhhh faster. Expect the runtime to drop to 20% of the pre- vious value. (I would like to get some feedback on this from folks with large installations) Mind you though, while the logging process of RRDtool is vvvveeeerrrryyyy fast, you are also gaining some time by neither cre- ating graphs nor updating webpages. The idea behind this is that it is more efficient to create graphs and webpages on demmand. Using a cgi script. At the moment there is no ooooffffffffiiiicccciiiiaaaallll script to do this, but two contributers have created such scripts: 11114444aaaallllllll....ccccggggiiii Was the first program to take over the webpage cre- ation and graphing task. It has been developed by Rainer Bawidamann <Rainer.Bawidamann@informatik.uni- ulm.de>. You can find a copy on Rainers website: http://www.uni-ulm.de/~rbawidam/mrtg-rrd/ The program comes with its own documentation rrrroooouuuutttteeeerrrrssss....ccccggggiiii, sssseeeerrrrvvvveeeerrrrssss....ccccggggiiii and ggggeeeennnneeeerrrriiiicccc....ccccggggiiii are other cgi frontends to mrtg running with rrdtool. Thier main difference to 14all is, that the web pages it creates are much more stylish than the ones from mrtg. These tools have been written by Steve Ship- way <steve.shipway@adsweu.com>. You can find a copy in http://www.cheshire.demon.co.uk/pub/ The scripts comes with their own installation instruc- tions. FFFFUUUUTTTTUUUURRRREEEE Just as a side note: MRTG-3 will be based entirely on rrd- tool technology. But don't wait for it ... get going nnnnoooowwww! AAAAUUUUTTTTHHHHOOOORRRR Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> 2001-06-05 2.9.17 MRTG-RRD(1)