Cheshire Cat Computing

Steve, et al,

I poll every interface on every switch though often there are some or even many interfaces that are unused. I don't want to exclude those interfaces from being polled in the cfg file as I want to be able to see when a port does come active. I'd also prefer not to rebuild config files on an interval.

What I'm hoping is that Routers can help me by only graphing RRDs that have actual activity automagically by checking that rate > 0 and ignoring the interface if if rate = 0.
I'm hoping that might speed up the graphing and page building process as well as making it easier to look at only interesting graphs that actually contain data. Even with Speedy, a page for 240 interfaces with bandwidth AND error graphing just takes painfully long to build. Plus, I only want to see an error graph when errors actually occur.

Is this possible now? If not, could this be a feature request possible inclusion in a future version?

Thanks,

Eric Brander

If I understand correctly, what you want is to have a userdefined summary page -- or userdefined summary In/Out graph -- where membership is determined by LastValue>0.

At the moment, all targets identified as interfaces are automatically members of the Summary page, and of the Incoming/Outgoing graphs.

Something like,

routers.cgi*InOut[_]: active
routers.cgi*InSummary[_]: active

maybe, so that the Incoming/Outgoing userdefineds only have active interfaces, and the summary page only has actives? Or,

routers.cgi*Summary[xxx]: Active_Ports active

for each active interface target xxx.

This wouldn't be too hard to do in theory, but it would mess up the internal config caching. The config files are only read once and then cached - but this dynamic reconfiguration would require them to either be recalculated each iteration, or else have a special case option...

Maybe I could have a per-summary option (rather than per-target) to enable the only-if-active option? Or, a per-target option that affects ALL userdefined graphs and summaries that the Target is a member of?

Let me know if this is what you were thinking of...

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

OK, here's what I can do now (2.17b5)

With a new userdefined graph or summary, add an option 'active' to suppress any inactive targets in that graph/summary.

For the Incoming/Outgoing graphs, and the Auto Summary page, you can add these options using

routers.cgi*Summary: active
routers.cgi*InOut: active

The drawbacks - well, it is per-graph/summary rather than a per-target-per-graph/summary option. Also, it slows things down a bit (its another read of the RRD MAX rra for each Target) and its a bit awkward to define.

On the plus side, it is recalculated each time rather than cached, and only needs to be defined in one place.

There are still some problem with this option when using historical graphs from the archived RRDs, as it seems to use the *current* data to determine inactivity, and everything matches...

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

Steve,

That sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. What I neglected to mention yet you figured it out anyway was that I wanted this feature for the summary page.

I wonder if it will net a loss or gain in performance when graphing a summary page of 250 graphs yet 70% of them are inactive and thus skipped.

Eric Brander

I have this working now in 2.17b5. It takes a little time to verify if the target is 'active', but since the graphs will not need to be created for inactive targets it must be faster to some extent.

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

Steve,

Thank you very much. If you need some help testing, please let me know.

Testing it now and it seems to be working quite well. I have noticed a caveat:

I use some 6-hour graphs with 1-minute interval. If I switch from a 1-minute interval graph to a 5-minute interval graph (while viewing the 6-hour graphs), Routers2 keeps the 6-hour graph parameter to build the images. I actually like this so I've not questioned it before.

However, if I have this Active option set on a 5-minute interval config and try to view 6-hour graphs, none of the graphs are built... Which makes sense, since there is no active data in that interval.

Certainly not a big deal, just wanted to let you know.

Thanks again!

Eric

Hmm, if the rrd does not have 1-minute data, then it is supposed to change to a daily graph and remove the 6-hour time option. The only thing that might confuse this is if the rrd is 5-min but for some reason there is Interval:1 in the .cfg file. To save time, routers2 will believe the config file and doesnt check the interval in the rrd. This might be a mistake...

Since the time period is preserved when you change graphs, this can confuse the sanity-checker when the new graph doesnt support the requested time period. I suspect it is either not working, or testing for active before checking the time period. I'll look into it.

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

Steve,

Just wanted to let you know that I am just loving this feature in the current beta!!!

!!!!


!!!

Thank you!!

Eric