Cheshire Cat Computing

Hello my name is Ioannis (greek) and I have been using mrtg for years where I work (it department,networks section in large institution). The number of ports that I am monitoring has increased a lot over the years so the i/o and cpu load of the single server I was using for mrtg had grown too much, so I decided to start taking steps.
I first decided to split the load among additional servers which certainly eased things a little. However I am planning for a better solution using rrdtool and creating graphs on demand so as it is natural your book and work caught my attention.
I have bought the book in adobe digital form and I am trying to set up the software components in a new system I have setup for experimental purposes before I try to enforce it to the rest of the infrastructure.
The system is a virtual server based on vmware esxi 4.1, the guest os is ubuntu server 11.10 64 bit.
I m using the latest mrtg compiled from source, also latest rrd compiled from source, I have installed the necessary libraries (cairo, pango, gd lib, zlib, etc7) through ubuntu software center. For routers2 I downloaded the script package available on your website.
I have unpacked under /usr/local so the routers 2 dir is /usr/local/routers2, mrtg is located under /usr/local/mrtg-2, configs under /usr/local/mrtg-2/etc, rrdtool is under /opt/rrdtool-1.4.5 .
I run install.pl in the routers2 dir and after the installation dialog the script warns me about overwritting the existing configuration file. After I accept and the install terminates succesfully, the routers2 web page reports that it can't find any configuration files for the devices. So I check the routers2.conf file and it's empty. I have done the same process twice and I get the same. I tried modifying the backup config included with the package but I must be missing things because when I do, I'm loosing icons and items from the user interface.
Any ideas?
Thank you for all the work you have done. Without you, tobi and a few other guys I don't know where network management would be..
Btw I know what you are writing about vm systems and clock skew but I m using ntp here for everything and don't have problems so far, even with heavy loads. My production systems for mrtg run under opensuse 11.x versions, all virtual for the last 2 years, physical before that.
Ioannis Theodoridis
Network & Systems Engineer

It is not clear from your post, but did you install to the same location that you unpacked to? You would not normally get an 'overwirte' warning unless you were upgrading a previous install. If so, then the default routers2.conf would try to copy over the top of itself and end up with a blank file.

Try unpacking to (eg) /usr/local/src/routers2, then install to /usr/local/routers2 or similar.

_________________
Steve Shipway
UNIX Systems, ITSS, University of Auckland, NZ
Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning... -- Isaiah 5:11