1=head1 NAME 2 3mrtg-rrd - How to use RRDtool with MRTG 4 5=head1 SYNOPSIS 6 7After using MRTG for some time you may find some limitations, mostly in the 8areas of performance and graphing flexibility. These are exactly the areas 9addressed by RRDtool. To learn more about RRDtool check out its website on 10 11 http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool 12 13=head1 RRDTOOL INTEGRATION 14 15When using mrtg with RRDtool you are replacing F<rateup> with the 16RRDtool perl module F<RRDs.pm>. To enable RRDtool support in mrtg 17you have to add the line 18 19 LogFormat: rrdtool 20 21to your mrtg config file. 22 23MRTG needs access to both the RRDtool perl module B<RRDs.pm> and to the 24B<rrdtool> executable. 25 26If these two items are not installed in locations where perl can find them 27on its own, then you can use the following two parameters to supply the 28appropriate directories. 29 30For the location of the B<rrdtool> executable you put 31 32 PathAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/bin/ 33 34or 35 36 PathAdd: c:\rrdtool\bin 37 38For the location of the perl module it would be: 39 40 LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/ 41 42or 43 44 LibAdd: c:\rrdtool\bin\lib\perl 45 46When you have made this modification to the configuration file, several 47things will happen when you run mrtg again with the new config file: 48 49=over 50 51=item 1. 52 53mrtg will take all your old C<.log> files and B<convert> them to C<.rrd> 54format. (The C<.log> files don't get touched in the process, so if things 55don't work out they are still there.) 56 57=item 2. 58 59mrtg will use B<rrdtool> to update its databases. These will have a new format 60called I<rrd> which is totally different than the native I<log> format of 61the classic mrtg. 62 63=item 3. 64 65mrtg will B<not> create any webpages of graphs anymore. 66It will only query the routers for traffic information and update its I<rrd> 67databases. 68 69=back 70 71The advantage of whole thing is that the mrtg will become B<much> 72faster. Expect the runtime to drop to 20% of the previous value. (I would like 73to get some feedback on this from folks with large installations.) 74 75Mind you, though, while the logging process of RRDtool is B<very> fast, you 76are also gaining some time by neither creating graphs nor updating webpages. 77The idea behind this is that it is more efficient to create 78graphs and webpages on demand by using a cgi script. 79 80At the moment there is no B<official> script to do this, but two 81contributers have created such scripts: 82 83=over 84 85=item One4All aka 14all.cgi 86 87This was the first program to take over the webpage creation and graphing task. 88It has been developed by Rainer Bawidamann 89rainer.bawidamann@web.de. You can find a copy 90on Rainers website: http://my14all.sourceforge.net/ 91The program comes with its own documentation 92 93=item B<routers2.cgi> 94 95This is another CGI frontend for mrtg running with rrdtool. The main difference between this and 14all is 96that the web pages it creates are much more stylish than the ones from mrtg, plus they support User 97Defined summary graphs and different levels of Authentication and Authorisation. This has been written by 98Steve Shipway (steve@steveshipway.org). You obtain a copy, and find a forum and demonstration system at 99http://www.steveshipway.org/software/ 100The program comes with its own installation instructions and install script. 101 102=item B<mrtg-rrd> 103 104The mrtg-rrd script is a CGI/FastCGI application by Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak for 105displaying MRTG graphs from data in the RRDtool format. It is an intended 106replacement for the 14all.cgi script. It can make your monitoring system 107faster because MRTG does not have to generate all the PNG files with graphs 108every 5 minutes or so. Instead of this the graphs are generated on-demand 109when the user wants to see them. http://www.fi.muni.cz/~kas/mrtg-rrd/ 110 111=back 112 113=head1 FUTURE 114 115Just as a side note: MRTG-3 will be based entirely on rrdtool technology. 116But don't wait for it ... get going B<now>! 117 118=head1 AUTHOR 119 120Tobias Oetiker E<lt>tobi@oetiker.chE<gt> 121