FORUM(1) mrtg FORUM(1)NAME
forum - Interactive Help for MRTG users
SYNOPSIS
There is a lot of written documentation for mrtg. But never the less you may have a problem where you can't find the solution. In this
case some Human Help may be necessary. With MRTG there are several ways to get Humans to help you.
MAILING-LIST
There are three mailing lists for MRTG available.
mrtg
for discussion among mrtg users
mrtg-announce
for announcements regarding new versions of mrtg related software
mrtg-developers
for discussion among people who write software in connection with mrtg or who hack mrtg itself.
THE RULES
Please note, that the memebers of the mrtg mailinglist value politeness highly. This means behave in a way you would like others to behave
towards you.
o No shouting. (NO CAPS)
o No rude language
o No demands. everybody is on the list out of their own free will. If you do not get an answer to your question, chances are high that
you did not give sufficent details about the nature of your problem or that the answer to your problem is in the documentation.
o If you do not follow the rules you will be unsubscribed from the list with no further questions asked.
o Decisions about your unsubscription from the list will be taken by
Alex van den Bogaerdt <alex@slot.hollandcasino.nl>
Paul C. Williamson <pwilliamson@MANDTBANK.COM>
If you feel that you have been treated unfairly, you may send mail to me and explain the situation.
Tobi Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch>
SUBSCRIBING
These lists are managed by a mailing-list management software (listar). It allows you to subscribe to these lists by sending a message
with the subject: subscribe to the following address:
listname-request@list.ee.ethz.ch
You will then get a message asking you to confirm your subscription.
For posting to the lists use the following address
listname@list.ee.ethz.ch
Note that only people who are subscribed to the list can post.
Further information about the usage of the mailing lists is available by sending a message with the subject line help to either one of the
request addresses.
For past activity there is also a mailing list archive available:
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/mrtg
There is also a web interface to manage your mailing-list subscription.
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/lsg2.cgi
NEWSGROUP
For discussion of MRTG or related topics on the Usenet, please send your posts to:
news:comp.dcom.net-management
Many MRTG users are in this forum and will help you. You can also find an archive of past activity from this Newsgroup on:
http://www.deja.com/usenet
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> and many contributors
3rd Berkeley Distribution 2.9.17 FORUM(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
MRTG(1) mrtg MRTG(1)NAME
mrtg - What is MRTG
SYNOPSIS
The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing GIF
images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic. Check http://www.stat.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg/ to see what it does.
Go to http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg for all the details about mrtg.
USER PAGES
MRTG is written in Perl and C and works under UNIX and Windows NT. MRTG is being successfully used on many sites around the net. Check the
MRTG-Site-Map on:
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/users.html
HIGHLIGHTS
Portable
MRTG works on most UNIX platforms and Windows NT.
Perl
MRTG is written in perl and comes with full source.
Portable SNMP
MRTG Uses a highly portable SNMP implementation written entirely in Perl thanks to Simon Leinen. There is no need to install any exter-
nal SNMP package.
SNMPv2c support
MRTG can read the new SNMPv2c 64bit counters. No more counter wrapping.
Reliable Interface Identification
Router interfaces can be identified by IP address, Description and Ethernet address in addition to the normal Interface number.
Constant size Logfiles
MRTG's logfiles do NOT grow. Thanks to the use of a unique data consolidation algorithm.
Automatic Configuration
MRTG comes with a set configuration tools which make configuration and setup very simple.
Performance
Time critical routines are written in C thanks to the initiative of Dave Rand my Co-Author.
GIF free Graphics
Graphics are generated directly in PNG format, using the GD library by Thomas Boutell.
Customizability
The look of the webpages produced by MRTG is highly configurable.
RRDtool
MRTG has built in hooks for using RRDtool. If you are straped for performance this may help.
DETAILS
MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to read the traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program which logs the traffic
data and creates beautiful graphs representing the traffic on the monitored network connection. These graphs are embedded into webpages
which can be viewed from any modern Web-browser.
In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates visual representations of the traffic seen during the last seven days, the last
four weeks and the last twelve months. This is possible because MRTG keeps a log of all the data it has pulled from the router. This log is
automatically consolidated, so that it does not grow over time, but still contains all the relevant data for all the traffic seen over the
last two years. This is all performed in an efficient manner. Therefore you can monitor 200 or more network links from any halfway decent
UNIX box.
MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic though, it is possible to monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can even use an external pro-
gram to gather the data which should be monitored via MRTG. People are using MRTG, to monitor things such as System Load, Login Sessions,
Modem availability and more. MRTG even allows you to accumulate two or more data sources into a single graph.
HISTORY
In 1994 I was working at a site where we had one 64kbit line to the outside world. Obviously everybody was interested in knowing how the
link was performing. So I wrote a quick hack which created a constantly updated graph on the web, showing the traffic load on our Internet
link. This eventually evolved into a rather configurable Perl script called MRTG-1.0 which I released in spring 1995. After a few updates I
left my job at DMU, to start work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Due to lack of time I had to put MRTG aside. One day in
January of 1996, I received email from Dave Rand asking if I had any ideas why MRTG was so slow. Actually I did. MRTG's programming was not
very efficient and it was written entirely in Perl. After a week or so, Dave wrote back to me and said he had tried what I had suggested
for improving MRTG's speed. Since the changes did not help much, he had decided to rewrite the time-critical sections of MRTG in C. The
code was attached to his email. His tool increased the speed of MRTG by a factor of 40! This got me out of my 'MRTG ignorance' and I
started to spend my spare time developing of MRTG-2.
Soon after MRTG-2 development had begun I started to give beta copies to interested parties. In return I got many feature patches, a lot of
user feedback and bug fixes. The product you are getting now is wouldnt be in this state if it hadn't been for the great contributions and
suport I received from of many people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. (See the files CHANGES for a long list of
folk people who helped to make MRTG what it is today)
READ ON
Learn more about MRTG by going to the mrtg home page on: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> and many contributors
3rd Berkeley Distribution 2.9.17 MRTG(1)