MRTG-WEBSERVER(1) mrtg MRTG-WEBSERVER(1)NAME
mrtg-webserver - hints for web server configuration
SYNOPSIS
If you want people to actually see the results of your network monitoring efforts you will need a webserver.
This document lists some configuration hints for webservers. Contributions welcome.
APACHE
Configuring mod_expire
A big issue with mrtg monitoring data is the expiry time. All these nice graphs you can create are only valid for a short time. If you do
not take special action some webbrowsers will not notice this and you may end up with people seeing old data because of caching issues.
The apache module mod_expire allows you to setup special expiry properties for individual file.
Here is an example for how this may look for an mrtg web directory. The configuration directives can be stored into a .htaccess file.
############################################################
# Example .htaccess for use with apache-1.2 and mod_expire.
# (mod_expire come with apache-1.2 but you have to explicitly
# activate it when compiling the httpd ...)
#############################################################
#
<Files "*-day.png">
ExpiresActive On # enable expirations
# five minutes
ExpiresDefault M300
</Files>
<Files "*-week.png">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault M1800
</Files>
<Files "*-month.png">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault M7200
</Files>
<Files "*-year.png">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault M86400
</Files>
<Files "*.html">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault M300
</Files>
# index.html is not automatically generated
<Files "index.html">
ExpiresActive Off
</Files>
AUTHOR
Unknown
2.17.4 2012-01-12 MRTG-WEBSERVER(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
MRTG-RRD(1) mrtg MRTG-RRD(1)NAME
mrtg-rrd - How to use RRDtool with MRTG
SYNOPSIS
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
RRDTOOL INTEGRATION
When using mrtg with RRDtool you are replacing rateup with the RRDtool perl module RRDs.pm. 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 RRDs.pm and to the rrdtool 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
supply the appropriate directories.
For the location of the rrdtool executable you put
PathAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/bin/
or
PathAdd: c:
rdtoolin
For the location of the perl module it would be:
LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/
or
LibAdd: c:
rdtoolinlibperl
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 convert 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 rrdtool to update its databases. These will have a new format called rrd which is totally different than the native log
format of the classic mrtg.
3. mrtg will not create any webpages of graphs anymore. It will only query the routers for traffic information and update its rrd
databases.
The advantage of whole thing is that the mrtg will become much 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 very 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 official script to do this, but two contributers 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
documentation
routers2.cgi
This is another CGI frontend for 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, plus they support User Defined summary graphs and different levels of Authentication and
Authorisation. This has been written by Steve Shipway (steve@steveshipway.org). You obtain a copy, and find a forum and demonstration
system at http://www.steveshipway.org/software/ The program comes with its own installation instructions and install script.
mrtg-rrd
The mrtg-rrd script is a CGI/FastCGI application by Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak for displaying MRTG graphs from data in the RRDtool format. 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/
FUTURE
Just as a side note: MRTG-3 will be based entirely on rrdtool technology. But don't wait for it ... get going now!
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>
2.17.4 2012-01-12 MRTG-RRD(1)