MRTG-RRD(1)                          mrtg                          MRTG-RRD(1)



NNAAMMEE
       mrtg-rrd - How to use RRDtool with MRTG

SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS
       After using MRTG for some time you may find some limitations, mostly in
       the areas of performance and graphing flexibility. These are exactly
       the areas addressed by RRDtool. To learn more about RRDtool check out
       its website on

        http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool

RRRRDDTTOOOOLL IINNTTEEGGRRAATTIIOONN
       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

       to your mrtg config file.

       MRTG needs access to both the RRDtool perl module RRRRDDss..ppmm and to the
       rrrrddttooooll executable.

       If these two items are not installed in locations where perl can find
       them on its own, then you can use the following two parameters to sup-
       ply the appropriate directories.

       For the location of the rrrrddttooooll 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 ccoonnvveerrtt 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 rrrrddttooooll 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 nnoott 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 mmuucchh faster.
       Expect the runtime to drop to 20% of the previous 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 vveerryy fast,
       you are also gaining some time by neither creating graphs nor updating
       webpages.  The idea behind this is that it is more efficient to create
       graphs and webpages on demand by using a cgi script.

       At the moment there is no ooffffiicciiaall script to do this, but two con-
       tributers have created such scripts:

       One4All aka 14all.cgi
           This was the first program to take over the webpage creation and
           graphing task.  It has been developed by Rainer Bawidamann
           rainer.bawidamann@web.de. You can find a copy on Rainers website:
           http://my14all.sourceforge.net/ The program comes with its own doc-
           umentation

       rroouutteerrss..ccggii,, sseerrvveerrss..ccggii aanndd ggeenneerriicc..ccggii
           These are other cgi frontends to mrtg running with rrdtool. The
           main difference between this and 14all is that the web pages it
           creates are much more stylish than the ones from mrtg. These tools
           have been written by Steve Shipway steve@steveshipway.org. You can
           find a copy in http://www.steveshipway.org/software/ The programs
           come with their own installation instructions.

       mmrrttgg--rrrrdd
           The mrtg-rrd script is a CGI/FastCGI application by Jan "Yenya"
           Kasprzak for displaying MRTG graphs from data in the RRDtool for-
           mat. It is an intended replacement for the 14all.cgi script. It can
           make your monitoring system faster because MRTG does not have to
           generate all the PNG files with graphs every 5 minutes or so.
           Instead of this the graphs are generated on-demand when the user
           wants to see them. http://www.fi.muni.cz/~kas/mrtg-rrd/

       Paul C. Williamson has written a more in-depth page on how the whole
       process works, including some performance figures. You can find his
       page on http://www.geocities.com/paulcwilliamson/mrtg/rateup2rrd.html

FFUUTTUURREE
       Just as a side note: MRTG-3 will be based entirely on rrdtool technol-
       ogy.  But don't wait for it ... get going nnooww!

AAUUTTHHOORR
       Tobias Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>



2.16.2                            2008-05-16                       MRTG-RRD(1)
