logfile(1) [redhat man page]

LOGFILE(1)							       mrtg								LOGFILE(1)

NAME

       logfile - description of the mrtg-2 logfile format

SYNOPSIS

       This document provides a description of the contents of the mrtg-2 logfile.

OVERVIEW

       The logfile consists of two main sections. A very short one at the beginning:

       The first Line
	   It stores the traffic counters from the most recent run of mrtg

       The rest of the File
	   Stores past traffic rate averates and maxima at increassing intervals

       The first number on each line is a unix time stamp. It represents the number of seconds since 1970.

DETAILS

       The first Line

       The first line has 3 numbers which are:

       A (1st column)
	   A timestamp of when MRTG last ran for this interface.  The timestamp is the number of non-skip seconds passed since the standard UNIX
	   "epoch" of midnight on 1st of January 1970 GMT.

       B (2nd column)
	   The "incoming bytes counter" value.

       C (3rd column)
	   The "outgoing bytes counter" value.

       The rest of the File

       The second and remaining lines of the file 5 numbers which are:

       A (1st column)
	   The Unix timestamp for the point in time the data on this line is relevant.	Note that the interval between timestamps increases as you
	   prograss through the file. At first it is 5 minutes and at the end it is one day between two lines.

	   This timestamp may be converted in EXCEL by using the following formula:

	    =(x+y)/86400+DATE(1970,1,1)

	   you can also ask perl to help by typing

	    perl -e 'print scalar localtime(x),"
"'

	   x is the unix timestamp and y is the offset in seconds from UTC. (Perl knows y).

       B (2nd column)
	   The average incoming transfer rate in bytes per second. This is valid for the time between the A value of the current line and the A
	   value of the previous line.

       C (3rd column)
	   The average outgoing transfer rate in bytes per second since the previous measurement.

       D (4th column)
	   The maximum incoming transfer rate in bytes per second for the current interval. This is calculated from all the updates which have
	   occured in the current interval. If the current interval is 1 hour, and updates have occured every 5 minutes, it will be the biggest 5
	   minute transferrate seen during the hour.

       E (5th column)
	   The maximum outgoing transfer rate in bytes per second for the current interval.

AUTHOR

       Butch Kemper <kemper@bihs.net> and Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch>

3rd Berkeley Distribution					      2.9.17								LOGFILE(1)

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://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/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

       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 data-
	   bases.

       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 demmand. Using a cgi script.

       At the moment there is no official script to do this, but two contributers have created such scripts:

       14all.cgi
	   Was the first program to take over the webpage creation and graphing task.  It has been developed by Rainer Bawidamann <Rainer.Baw-
	   idamann@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

       routers.cgi, servers.cgi and generic.cgi
	   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 Shipway <steve.shipway@adsweu.com>. You can find a copy in

	    http://www.cheshire.demon.co.uk/pub/

	   The scripts comes with their own installation instructions.

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 <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch>

3rd Berkeley Distribution					      2.9.17							       MRTG-RRD(1)