下面是在官方收集到的文档，然后集合在一起的（http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg）：

What is MRTG ?

 

 

 

The MRTG 2.16.4 Linux/Unix Installation Guide

 

DESCRIPTION

MRTG comes to you in Source Code. This means that you have to compile parts of it before you can use it on a Unix machine. These instructions help you to do so.

PREPARATION

In order to compile and use mrtg you need a C compiler and a copy of perl installed on your machine. In most cases this will already be available. In case it is not, here are some starting points. Below I'll give you a detailed run through the whole compilation process.

GCC

The GNU C compiler comes preinstalled on most of the free Unicies out there. For commercial derivatives you may have to download and compile it first. If you have no compiler at all there is a chicken and egg problem, but there are also precompiled versions of gcc available for most operating systems.

 http://gcc.gnu.org/
Perl

Large parts of the MRTG system are written in the Perl scripting language. Make sure there is a recent copy of perl on your machine (try perl -v). At least version 5.005 is required for mrtg to work well. If you use SNMPV3 and other new features you should use at least 5.8.

You can get the latest perl from

 http://www.perl.com/

MRTG generates traffic graphs in the PNG format. To be able to do this it needs several 3rd party libraries. When compiling these libraries I urge you to make sure you compile them as static libraries. There is just much less trouble ahead if you are doing it like this. See the Instructions in the next section for inspiration. Note that many free unices have all the required libraries already in place so there is no need to install another copy. To check it is best to skip all the library instructions below and go straight into the mrtg compile.

If the first attempt fails and you do not get a working version of mrtg, try compiling new copies of all libraries as explained below. Do this BEFORE you send email to me about problems compiling mrtg.

gd

This is a basic graph drawing library created by Thomas Boutell. Note that all releases after Version 1.3 only create PNG p_w_picpaths. This is because a) Thomas got into trouble because the GIF format which it used to produce uses a compression technology patented by Unisys. b) PNG is more efficient and patent free. MRTG can work with old and new version of the GD library. You can get a recent copy of GD from:

 http://www.boutell.com/gd/
libpng

Is required by gd in order to produce PNG graphics files. Get it from:

 http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
zlib

Is needed by libpng to compress the graphics files you create. Get a copy from

 http://www.gzip.org/zlib

And last but not least you also need mrtg itself. In case you have not yet downloaded it, you can find a copy on my website:

 http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/pub

LIBRARY COMPILATION

In this section I will give you step by step instructions on how to compile the various libraries required for the compilation of mrtg. Note that these libraries may already be installed if you have a *BSD or Linux system so you can skip recompiling them. The wget program used below is a simple web downloader. You can also enter the address into your netscape if you don't have wget available.

First let's create a directory for the compilation. Note that this may already exist on your system. No problem, just use it.

 mkdir -p /usr/local/src
 cd /usr/local/src

If you do not have zlib installed:

 wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
 gunzip -c zlib-*.tar.gz | tar xf -
 rm zlib-*.tar.gz
 mv zlib-* zlib
 cd zlib
 ./configure
 make
 cd ..

If you don't have libpng installed

 wget ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/libpng/png/src/libpng-1.2.40.tar.gz
 gunzip -c libpng-1.2.34.tar.gz | tar xf -
 mv libpng-* libpng
 cd libpng
 env CFLAGS="-O3 -fPIC" ./configure --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR 
 make
 rm *.so.* *.so
 cd ..

And now you can compile gd

For versions up to 1.8.4, try:

 wget http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-1.8.4.tar.gz
 gunzip -c gd-*.tar.gz |tar xf -
 rm gd-*.tar.gz
 mv gd-* gd
 cd gd

The \ characters at the end of the following lines mean that all the following material should actually be written on a single line.

 perl -i~ -p -e s/gd_jpeg.o//g Makefile            
 make INCLUDEDIRS="-I. -I../zlib -I../libpng" \
      LIBDIRS="-L../zlib -L. -L../libpng" \
      LIBS="-lgd -lpng -lz -lm" \
      CFLAGS="-O -DHAVE_LIBPNG"
 cd ..

For versions starting around 2.0.11, try:

 wget http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-2.0.33.tar.gz
 gunzip -c gd-2.0.33.tar.gz |tar xf -
 mv gd-2.0.33 gd
 cd gd
 env CPPFLAGS="-I../zlib -I../libpng" LDFLAGS="-L../zlib -L../libpng" \
     ./configure --disable-shared --without-freetype --without-jpeg
 make
 cp .libs/* .
 

MRTG COMPILATION

Ok, now everything is ready for the mrtg compilation.

 cd /usr/local/src
 gunzip -c mrtg-2.16.4.tar.gz | tar xvf -
 cd mrtg-2.16.4

If all the libraries have been preinstalled on your system you can configure mrtg by doing a simple:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2

Otherwise you may have to give some hints on where to find the various libraries required to compile mrtg:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2       \
             --with-gd=/usr/local/src/gd      \
             --with-z=/usr/local/src/zlib     \
             --with-png=/usr/local/src/libpng

If you have RRDtool available you might want to tell mrtg about it so that you can opt to use rrdtool with mrtg. Check mrtg-rrd.

Configure will make sure your environment is fit for building mrtg. If it finds a problem, it will tell you so and it will also tell you what to do about it. If everything is OK, you will end up with a custom Makefile for your system. Now type:

 make

This builds the rateup binary and edits all the perl pathnames in the scripts. You can now install mrtg by typing

 make install   (requires gnu install)

All the software required by MRTG is now installed under the /usr/local/mrtg-2 subdirectory.

You can now safely delete the libraries we compiled above. Then again, you might want to keep them around so that you have them available when compiling the next version of mrtg.

CONFIGURATION

The next step is to configure mrtg for monitoring a network device. This is done by creating an mrtg.cfg file which defines what you want to monitor. Luckily, you don't have to dive straight in and start writing your own configuration file all by yourself. Together with mrtg you also got a copy of cfgmaker. This is a script you can point at a router of your choice; it will create a mrtg configuration file for you. You can find the script in the bin subdirectory.

 cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /home/httpd/mrtg'  \
          --global 'Options[_]: bits,growright' \
          --output /home/mrtg/cfg/mrtg.cfg    \
           community@router.abc.xyz

This example above will create an mrtg config file in /home/mrtg/cfg assuming this is a directory visible on your webserver. You can read all about cfgmaker in cfgmaker. One area you might want to look at is the possibility of using --ifref=ip to prevent interface renumbering troubles from catching you.

If you want to start rolling your own mrtg configuration files, make sure you read mrtg-reference to learn all about the possible configuration options.

RUNNING MRTG

Once you have created a configuration file, try the following:

 /usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg /home/mrtg/cfg/mrtg.cfg

This will query your router and also create your first mrtg trafic graphs and webpages. When you run mrtg for the first time there will be a lot of complaints about missing log files. Don't worry, this is normal for the first 2 times you start mrtg. If it keeps complaining after this time you might want to look into the problem.

Starting mrtg by hand is not ideal in the long run. So when you are satisfied with the results you can automate the process of running mrtg in regular intervals (this means every 5 minutes by default).

You can either add mrtg to your crontab with a line like this:

 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * \
       <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \
                --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

or if you live in Linux Land the line may look like this if you are using crontab -e

 */5 * * * *  <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \
                       --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

or like this if you use /etc/crontab

 */5 * * * *  mrtg-user  <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \
                                 --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

You can also run mrtg as a daemon process by adding the line

 RunAsDaemon: Yes

to your mrtg configuration file and then creating a startup script in your system startup sequence. Unfortunately, adding startup scripts differs widely amongst different unix systems. The modern ones normally have a directory called /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d/init.d where you put scripts which starts the process you want to run when the system boots. Further you must create a symbolic link in /etc/rc3.d or /etc/rc.d/rc?.d called S65mrtg (this is just a sample name ... it is just important that it starts with S followed by a two digit number). If you are not sure about this, make sure you consult the documentation of your system to make sure you get this right.

A minimal script to put into init.d might look like this:

 #! /bin/sh
 cd /usr/local/mrtg-2.16.4/bin && ./mrtg --user=mrtg-user \
       /home/httpd/mrtg/mrtg.cfg  --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

Note that this will only work with RunAsDaemon: Yes in your mrtg.cfg file.

 

 

MRTG 2.16.4 configuration reference

 

OVERVIEW

The runtime behaviour of MRTG is governed by a configuration file. Run-of-the-mill configuration files can be generated with cfgmaker. (Check cfgmaker). But for more elaborate configurations some hand-tuning is required.

This document describes all the configuration options understood by the mrtg software.

SYNTAX

MRTG configuration file syntax follows some simple rules:

  • Keywords must start at the beginning of a line.
  • Lines which follow a keyword line which start with a blank are appended to the keyword line
  • Empty Lines are ignored
  • Lines starting with a # sign are comments.
  • You can add other files into the configuration file using

    Include: file

    Example: 

     Include: base-options.inc


    If included files are specified with relative paths, both the current working directory and the directory containing the main config file will be searched for the files. The current working directory will be searched first.

    If the included filename contains an asterisk, then this is taken as a wildcard for zero or more characters, and all matching files are included. Thus, you can use this statement to include all files in a specified subdirectory.

    Example: 

     Include: servers/*.cfg


    In this case, you should be very careful that your wildcard pattern does not find a match relative to the current working directory if you mean it to be relative to the main config file directory, since the working directory is checked for a match first (as with a normal Include directive). Therefore, use of something like '*/*' is discouraged.

GLOBAL KEYWORDS

 

WorkDir

WorkDir specifies where the logfiles and the webpages should be created.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg

OPTIONAL GLOBAL KEYWORDS

 

HtmlDir

HtmlDir specifies the directory where the html (or shtml, but we'll get on to those later) lives.

NOTE: Workdir overrides the settings for htmldir, p_w_picpathdir and logdir.

Example:

 Htmldir: /www/mrtg/

ImageDir

ImageDir specifies the directory where the p_w_picpaths live. They should be under the html directory.

Example:

 Imagedir: /www/mrtg/p_w_picpaths

LogDir

LogDir specifies the directory where the logs are stored. This need not be under htmldir directive.

Example:

 Logdir: /www/mrtg/logs

Forks (UNIX only)

With system that supports fork (UNIX for example), mrtg can fork itself into multiple instances while it is acquiring data via snmp.

For situations with high latency or a great number of devices this will speed things up considerably. It will not make things faster, though, if you query a single switch sitting next door.

As far as I know NT can not fork so this option is not available on NT.

Example:

 Forks: 4

EnableIPv6

When set to yes, IPv6 support is enabled if the required libraries are present (see the mrtg-ipv6 manpage). When IPv6 is enabled, mrtg can talk to routers using SNMP over IPv6 and targets may be specified by their numeric IPv6 addresses as well as by hostname or IPv4 address.

If IPv6 is enabled and the target is a hostname, mrtg will try to resolve the hostname to an IPv6 address and, if this fails, to an IPv4 address. Note that mrtg will only use IPv4 if you specify an IPv4 address or a hostname with no corresponding IPv6 address; it will not fall back to IPv4 if it simply fails to communicate with the target using IPv6. This is by design.

Note that many routers do not currently support SNMP over IPv6. Use the IPv4Only per target option for these routers.

IPv6 is disabled by default.

Example:

 EnableIPv6: Yes

EnableSnmpV3

When set to yes, uses the Net::SNMP module instead of the SNMP_SESSION module for generating snmp queries. This allows the use of SNMPv3 if other snmpv3 parameters are set.

SNMPv3 is disabled by default.

Example:

 EnableSnmpV3: yes

Refresh

How many seconds apart should the browser (Netscape) be instructed to reload the page? If this is not defined, the default is 300 seconds (5 minutes).

Example:

 Refresh: 600

Interval

How often do you call mrtg? The default is 5 minutes. If you call it less often, you should specify it here. This does two things:

  • The generated HTML page contains the right information about the calling interval ...
  • A META header in the generated HTML page will instruct caches about the time-to-live of this page .....

In this example, we tell mrtg that we will be calling it every 10 minutes. If you are calling mrtg every 5 minutes, you can leave this line commented out.

Example:

 Interval: 10

Note that unless you are using rrdtool you can not set Interval to less than 5 minutes. If you are using rrdtool you can set interval in the format

 Interval: MM[:SS]

Down to 1 second. Note though, setting the Interval for an rrdtool/mrtg setup will influence the initial creation of the database. If you change the interval later, all existing databases will remain at the resolution they were initially created with. Also note that you must make sure that your mrtg-rrd Web-frontend can deal with this kind of Interval setting.

MaxAge

MRTG relies heavily on the real time clock of your computer. If the time is set to a wrong value, especially if it is advanced far into the future, this will cause mrtg to expire lots of supposedly old data from the log files.

To prevent this, you can add a 'reasonability' check by specifying a maximum age for log files. If a file seems to be older, mrtg will not touch it but complain instead, giving you a chance to investigate the cause.

Example:

 MaxAge: 7200

The example above will make mrtg refuse to update log files older than 2 hours (7200 seconds).

WriteExpires

With this switch mrtg will generate .meta files for CERN and Apache servers which contain Expiration tags for the html and gif files. The *.meta files will be created in the same directory as the other files, so you will have to set "MetaDir ." and "MetaFiles on" in your apache.conf or .htaccess file for this to work

NOTE: If you are running Apache-1.2 or later, you can use the mod_expire to achieve the same effect ... see the file htaccess.txt

Example:

 WriteExpires: Yes

NoMib2

Normally we ask the SNMP device for 'sysUptime' and 'sysName' properties. Some do not have these. If you want to avoid getting complaints from mrtg about these missing properties, specify the nomib2 option.

An example of agents which do not implement base mib2 attributes are Computer Associates - Unicenter TNG Agents. CA relies on using the base OS SNMP agent in addition to its own agents to supplement the management of a system.

Example:

 NoMib2: Yes

SingleRequest

Some SNMP implementations can not deal with requests asking for multiple snmp variables in one go. Set this in your cfg file to force mrtg to only ask for one variable per request.

Examples

 SingleRequest: Yes

SnmpOptions

Apart from the per target timeout options, you can also configure the behaviour of the snmpget process on a more profound level. SnmpOptions accepts a hash of options. The following options are currently supported:

 timeout       	  	   => $default_timeout,
 retries 		   => $default_retries,
 backoff 		   => $default_backoff,
 default_max_repetitions   => $max_repetitions,
 use_16bit_request_ids     => 1,
 lenient_source_port_matching => 0,
 lenient_source_address_matching => 1

The values behind the options indicate the current default value. Note that these settings OVERRIDE the per target timeout settings.

A per-target SnmpOptions[] keyword will override the global settings. That keyword is primarily for SNMPv3.

The 16bit request ids are the only way to query the broken SNMP implementation of SMC Barricade routers.

Example:

 SnmpOptions: retries => 2, only_ip_address_matching => 0

Note that AS/400 snmp seems to be broken in a way which prevents mrtg from working with it unless

 SnmpOptions: lenient_source_port_matching => 1

is set.

IconDir

If you want to keep the mrtg icons in someplace other than the working (or p_w_picpathdir) directory, use the IconDir variable for defining the url of the icons directory.

Example:

 IconDir: /mrtgicons/

LoadMIBs

Load the MIB file(s) specified and make its OIDs available as symbolic names. For better efficiancy, a cache of MIBs is maintained in the WorkDir.

Example:

 LoadMIBs: /dept/net/mibs/netapp.mib,/usr/local/lib/ft100m.mib

Language

Switch output format to the selected Language (Check the translate directory to see which languages are supported at the moment. In this directory you can also find instructions on how to create new translations).

Currently the following laguages are supported:

big5 brazilian bulgarian catalan chinese croatian czech danish dutch eucjp french galician gb gb2312 german greek hungarian icelandic indonesia iso2022jp italian korean lithuanian malay norwegian polish portuguese romanian russian russian1251 serbian slovak slovenian spanish swedish turkish ukrainian

Example:

 Language: danish

LogFormat

Setting LogFormat to 'rrdtool' in your mrtg.cfg file enables rrdtool mode. In rrdtool mode, mrtg relies on rrdtool to do its logging. See mrtg-rrd.

Example:

 LogFormat: rrdtool

LibAdd

If you are using rrdtool mode and your rrdtool Perl module (RRDs.pm) is not installed in a location where perl can find it on its own, you can use LibAdd to supply an appropriate path.

Example:

 LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/

PathAdd

If the rrdtool executable can not be found in the normal PATH, you can use this keyword to add a suitable directory to your path.

Example:

 PathAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/bin/

RRDCached

If you are running RRDTool 1.4 or later with rrdcached, then you can configure MRTG to take advantage of this for updates, either by using the RRDCACHED_ADDRESS environment variable, or by setting the RRDCached keyword in the configuration file. Note that, if both are set, the configuration file keyword will take precedence.

Only UNIX domain sockets are fully supported prior to RRDTool v1.5, and you should note that using RRDCached mode will disable all Threshold checking normally done by MRTG. Appropriate warning messages will be printed if necessary.

Examples:

 RRDCached: unix:/var/tmp/rrdcached.sock

 RRDCached: localhost:42217

RunAsDaemon

The RunAsDaemon keyword enables daemon mode operation. The purpose of daemon mode is that MRTG is launched once and not repeatedly (as it is with cron). This behavior saves computing resourses as loading and parsing of configuration files happens only once on startup, and if the configuration file is modified.

Using daemon mode MRTG itself is responible for timing the measurement intervals. Therfore its important to set the Interval keyword to an apropiate value.

Note that when using daemon mode MRTG should no longer be started from cron as each new process runs forever. Instead MRTG should be started from the command prompt or by a system startup script.

If you want mrtg to run under a particular user and group (it is not recomended to run MRTG as root) then you can use the --user=user_name and --group=group_name options on the mrtg commandline.

 mrtg --user=mrtg_user --group=mrtg_group mrtg.cfg

Also note that in daemon mode restarting the process is required in order to activate changes in the config file.

Under UNIX, the Daemon switch causes mrtg to fork into background after checking its config file. On Windows NT the MRTG process will detach from the console, but because the NT/2000 shell waits for its children you have to use this special start sequence when you launch the program:

 start /b perl mrtg mrtg.cfg

You may have to add path information equal to what you add when you run mrtg from the commandline.

Example

 RunAsDaemon: Yes
 Interval:    5

This makes MRTG run as a daemon beginning data collection every 5 minutes

If you are daemontools and still want to run mrtg as a daemon you can additionally specify

 NoDetach:     Yes

this will make mrtg run but without detaching it from the terminal.

If the modification date on the configuration file changes during operation, then MRTG will re-read the configuration on the next polling cycle. Note that sub-files which are included from the main configuration do not have their modification times monitored, only the top-level file is so checked.

ConversionCode

Some devices may produce non-numeric values that would nevertheless be useful to graph with MRTG if those values could be converted to numbers. The ConversionCode keyword specifies the path to a file containing Perl code to perform such conversions. The code in this file must consist of one or more Perl subroutines. Each subroutine must accept a single string argument and return a single numeric value. When RRDtool is in use, a decimal value may be returned. When the name of one of these subroutines is specified in a target definition (see below), MRTG calls it twice for that target, once to convert the the input value being monitored and a second time to convert the output value. The subroutine must return an undefined value if the conversion fails. In case of failure, a warning may be posted to the MRTG log file using Perl's warn function. MRTG imports the subroutines into a separate name space (package MRTGConversion), so the user need not worry about pollution of MRTG's global name space. MRTG automatically prepends this package declaration to the user-supplied code.

Example: Suppose a particular OID returns a character string whose length is proportional to the value to be monitored. To convert this string to a number that can be graphed by MRTG, create a file arbitrarily named "MyConversions.pl" containing the following code:

 # Return the length of the string argument
 sub Length2Int {
   my $value = shift;
   return length( $value );
 }

Then include the following global keyword in the MRTG configuration file (assuming that the conversion code file is saved in the mrtg/bin directory along with mrtg itself):

 ConversionCode: MyConversions.pl

This will cause MRTG to include the definition of the subroutine Length2Int in its execution environment. Length2Int can then be invoked on any target by appending "|Length2Int" to the target definition as follows:

 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1&1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1:public@mydevice|Length2Int

See "Extended Host Name Syntax" below for complete target definition syntax information.

PER TARGET CONFIGURATION

Each monitoring target must be identified by a unique name. This name must be appended to each parameter belonging to the same target. The name will also be used for naming the generated webpages, logfiles and p_w_picpaths for this target.

Target

With the Target keyword you tell mrtg what it should monitor. The Target keyword takes arguments in a wide range of formats:

Basic

The most basic format is "port:community@router" This will generate a traffic graph for the interface 'port' of the host 'router' (dns name or IP address) and it will use the community 'community' (snmp password) for the snmp query.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain

If your community contains a "@" or a " " these characters must be escaped with a "\".

 Target[bla]: 2:stu\ pi\@d@router
SNMPv2c

If you have a fast router you might want to try to poll the ifHC* counters. This feature gets activated by switching to SNMPv2c. Unfortunately not all devices support SNMPv2c yet. If it works, this will prevent your counters from wraping within the 5 minute polling interval, since we now use 64 bit instead of the normal 32 bit.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@router1:::::2
SNMPv3

As an alternative to SNMPv2c, SNMPv3 provides access to the ifHC* counters, along with encryption. Not all devices support SNMPv3, and you will also need the perl Net::SNMP library in order to use it. It is recommended that cfgmaker be used to generate configurations involving SNMPv3, as it will check if the Net::SNMP library is loadable, and will switch to SNMPv2c if v3 is unavailable.

SNMP v3 requires additional authentication parameters, passed using the SnmpOptions[] per-target keyword.

Example: Target[myrouter]: 2:router1:::::3 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1'

noHC

Not all routers that support SNMPv2 or SNMPv3 provide the ifHC* counters on every interface. The noHC[] per-target keyword signals that the low-speed counters ifInOctets and ifOutOctets should be queried instead. cfgmaker will automatically insert this tag if SNMPv2 or SNMPv3 is specified but the ifHC* counters are unavailable.

Example: Target[myrouter]: #Bri0:router1:::::3 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1' noHC[myrouter]: yes

Reversing

Sometimes you are sitting on the wrong side of the link, and you would like to have mrtg report Incoming traffic as Outgoing and vice versa. This can be achieved by adding the '-' sign in front of the "Target" description. It flips the incoming and outgoing traffic rates.

Example:

 Target[ezci]: -1:public@ezci-ether.domain
Explicit OIDs

You can also explicitly define which OID to query by using the following syntax 'OID_1&OID_2:community@router' The following example will retrieve error counts for input and output on interface 1. MRTG needs to graph two variables, so you need to specify two OID's such as temperature and humidity or error input and error output.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14.1&1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.20.1:public@myrouter
MIB Variables

MRTG knows a number of symbolic SNMP variable names. See the file mibhelp.txt for a list of known names. One example are the ifInErrors and ifOutErrors. This means you can specify the above as:

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors.1&ifOutErrors.1:public@myrouter
SnmpWalk

It may be that you want to monitor an snmp object that is only reachable by 'walking'. You can get mrtg to walk by prepending the OID with the string WaLK or if you want a particular entry from the table returned by the walk you can use WaLKx where x is a number starting from 0 (!).

Example:

  Target[myrouter]: WaLKstrangeOid.1&WaLKstrangeOid.2:public@myrouter

  Target[myrouter]: WaLK3strangeOid.1&WaLK4strangeOid.2:public@myrouter
SnmpGetNext

A special case of an snmp object that is only reachable by 'walking' occurs when a single snmpgetnext will return the correct value, but snmpwalk fails. This may occur with snmp V2 or V3, as the snmpgetbulk method is used in these versions. You can get mrtg to use getnext instead of getbulk by prepending the OID with the string GeTNEXT.

Example:

  Target[myrouter]: GeTNEXTstrangeOid&GeTNEXTstrangeOid:public@myrouter
Counted SNMP Walk

In other situations, an snmpwalk is needed to count rows, but the actual data is uninteresting. For example, counting the number of mac-addresses in a CAM table, or the number of simultaneous dialup sessions. You can get MRTG to count the number of instances by prepending the OID with the string CnTWaLK. The following will retrieve the number of simultaneous VOIP calls on some routers:

Example:

   Target[myrouter]: CnTWaLK1.3.6.1.4.1.9.10.55.1.1.1.1.3&CnTWaLK1.3.6.1.4.1.9.10.55.1.1.1.1.3:public@myrouter
Interface by IP

Sometimes SNMP interface index can change, like when new interfaces are added or removed. This can cause all Target entries in your config file to become offset, causing MRTG to graphs wrong instances etc. MRTG supports IP address instead of ifindex in target definition. Then MRTG will query snmp device and try to map IP address to the current ifindex. You can use IP addresses in every type of target definition by adding IP address of the numbered interface after OID and separation char '/'.

Make sure that the given IP address is used on your same target router, especially when graphing two different OIDs and/or interface split by '&' delimiter.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=ip.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: /1.2.3.4:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -/1.2.3.4:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors/1.2.3.4&ifOutErrors/1.2.3.4:public@myrouter
Interface by Description

If you can not use IP addresses you might want to use the interface names. This works similar to the IP address aproach except that the prefix to use is a \ instead of a /

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=descr.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: \My-Interface2:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -\My-Interface2:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors\My-If2&ifOutErrors\My-If3:public@myrouter

If your description contains a "&", a ":", a "@" or a " " you can include them but you must escape with a backlash:

 Target[myrouter]: \fun\:\ ney\&ddd:public@hello.router
Interface by Name

This is the only sensible way to reference the interfaces of your switches.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=name.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: #2/11:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -#2/11:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors#3/7&ifOutErrors#3/7:public@myrouter

If your description contains a "&", a ":", a "@" or a " " you can include them but you must escape with a backlash:

 Target[myrouter]: #\:\ fun:public@hello.router

Note that the # sign will be interpreted as a comment character if it is the first non white-space character on the line.

Interface by Ethernet Address

When the SNMP interface index changes, you can key that interface by its 'Physical Address', sometimes called a 'hard address', which is the SNMP variable 'ifPhysAddress'. Internally, MRTG matches the Physical Address from the *.cfg file to its current index, and then uses that index for the rest of the session.

You can use the Physical Address in every type of target definition by adding the Physical Address after the OID and the separation char '!' (analogous to the IP address option). The Physical address is specified as '-' delimited octets, such as "0a-0-f1-5-23-18" (omit the double quotes). Note that some routers use the same Hardware Ethernet Address for all of their Interfaces which prevents unique interface identification. Mrtg will notice such problems and alert you.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate configuration files with hardware ethernet address references by using the option --ifref=eth.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: !0a-0b-0c-0d:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -!0-f-bb-05-71-22:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14!0a-00-10-23-44-51& *BREAK*
            1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14!0a-00-10-23-44-51:public@myrouter
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors!0a-00-10-23-44-51& *BREAK*
            ifOutErrors!0a-00-10-23-44-51:public@myrouter

Join the lines at *BREAK* ...

Interface by Type

It seems that there are devices that try to defy all monitoring efforts: the interesting interfaces have neither ifName nor a constant ifDescr not to mention a persistent ifIndex. The only way to get a constant mapping is by looking at the interface type, because the interface you are interested in is unique in the device you are looking at ...

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=type.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: %13:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -%13:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors%13&ifOutErrors%14:public@myrouter
Extended positioning of ifIndex

There are OIDs that contain the interface index at some inner position within the OID. To use the above mentioned Interface by IP/Description/Name/Type methods in the target definition the keyword 'IndexPOS' can be used to indicate the position of ifIndex. If 'IndexPOS' is not used the ifIndex will be appended at the end of the OID.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: OID.IndexPOS.1/1.2.3.4&OID.IndexPOS.1/1.2.3.4:public@myrouter

Replace OID by your numeric OID.

Extended Host Name Syntax

In all places where ``community@router'' is accepted, you can add additional parameters for the SNMP communication using colon-separated suffixes. You can also append a pipe symbol ( | ) and the name of a numeric conversion subroutine as described under the global keyword "ConversionCode" above. The full syntax is as follows:

 community@router[:[port][:[timeout][:[retries][:[backoff][:[version]][|name]]]]]

where the meaning of each parameter is as follows:

 

port

the UDP port under which to contact the SNMP agent (default: 161)

The complete syntax of the port parameter is

 remote_port[!local_address[!local_port]]

Some machines have additional security features that only allow SNMP queries to come from certain IP addresses. If the host doing the query has multiple interface, it may be necessary to specify the interface the query should come from.

The port parameter allows the specification of the port of the machine being queried. In addition, the IP address (or hostname) and port of the machine doing the query may be specified.

Examples:

 somehost
 somehost:161
 somehost:161!192.168.2.4!4000 use 192.168.2.4 and port 4000 as source
 somehost:!192.168.2.4 use 192.168.2.4 as source
 somehost:!!4000 use port 4000 as source
timeout

initial timeout for SNMP queries, in seconds (default: 2.0)

retries

number of times a timed-out request will be retried (default: 5)

backoff

factor by which the timeout is multiplied on every retry (default: 1.0).

version

for SNMP version. If you have a fast router you might want to put a '2' here. For authenticated or encrypted SNMP, you can try to put a '3' here. This will make mrtg try to poll the 64 bit counters and thus prevent excessive counter wrapping. Not all routers support this though. SNMP v3 requires additional setup, see SnmpOptions[] for full details.

Example:

 3:public@router1:::::2
name

the name of the subroutine that MRTG will call to convert the input and output values to integers. See the complete example under the global keyword "ConversionCode" above.

Example:

 1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1&1.3.6.1.4.1.999.2:public@mydevice:161::::2|Length2Int

This would retrieve values from the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1 for input and .2 for output on mydevice using UDP port 161 and SNMP version 2, and would execute the user-defined numeric conversion subroutine Length2Int to convert those values to integers.

 

A value that equals the default value can be omitted. Trailing colons can be omitted, too. The pipe symbol followed by the name parameter, if present, must come at the end. There must be no spaces around the colons or pipe symbol.

Example:

  Target[ezci]: 1:public@ezci-ether.domain:9161::4

This would refer to the input/output octet counters for the interface with ifIndex 1 on ezci-ether.domain, as known by the SNMP agent listening on UDP port 9161. The standard initial timeout (2.0 seconds) is used, but the number of retries is set to four. The backoff value is the default.

Numeric IPv6 addresses

If IPv6 is enabled you may also specify a target using its IPv6 address. To avoid ambiguity with the port number, numeric IPv6 addresses must be placed in square brackets.

Example:

 Target[IPv6test]: 2:public@[2001:760:4::]:6161::4
External Monitoring Scripts

If you want to monitor something which does not provide data via snmp you can use some external program to do the data gathering.

The external command must return 4 lines of output:

 

Line 1

current state of the first variable, normally 'incoming bytes count'

Line 2

current state of the second variable, normally 'outgoing bytes count'

Line 3

string (in any human readable format), telling the uptime of the target.

Line 4

string, telling the name of the target.

 

Depending on the type of data your script returns you might want to use the 'gauge' or 'absolute' arguments for the Options keyword.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: `/usr/local/bin/df2mrtg /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s0`

Note the use of the backticks (`), not apostrophes (') around the command.

If you want to use a backtick in the command name this can be done but you must escape it with a backslash ...

If your script does not have any data to return but does not want mrtg to complain about invalid data, it can return 'UNKNOWN' instead of a number. Note though that only rrdtool is realy equipped to handle unknown data well.

Multi Target Syntax

You can also combine several target definitions in a mathematical expression. Any syntactically correct expression that the Perl interpreter can evaluate to will work. An expression could be used, for example, to aggregate both B channels in an ISDN connection or to calculate the percentage hard disk utilization of a server from the absolute used space and total capacity.

Examples:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@wellfleetA + 1:public@wellfleetA

 Target[myrouter]: .1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1&.1.3.6.1.4.1.999.2:public@mydevice /
     .1.3.6.1.4.1.999.3&.1.3.6.1.4.1.999.4:public@mydevice * 100

Note that whitespace must surround each target definition in the expression. Target definitions themselves must not contain whitespace, except in interface descriptions and interface names, where each whitespace character is escaped by a backslash.

MRTG automatically rounds the result of the expression to an integer unless RRDTool logging is in use and the gauge option is in effect for the target. Internally MRTG uses Perl's Math::BigFloat package to calculate the result of the expression with 40 digits of precision. Even in extreme cases, where, for example, you take the difference of two 64-bit integers, the result of the expression should be accurate.

SNMP Request Optimization

MRTG is designed to economize on its SNMP requests. Where a target definition appears more than once in the configuration file, MRTG requests the data from the device only once per round of data collection and uses the collected data for each instance of a particular target. Recognition of two target definitions as being identical is based on a simple string match rather than any kind of deeper semantic analysis.

Example:

 Target[Targ1]: 1:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ2]: 2:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ3]: 1:public@CiscoA + 2:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ4]: 1:public@CISCOA

This results in a total of three SNMP requests. Data for 1:public@CiscoA and 2:public@CiscoA are requested only once each, and used for Targ1, Targ2, and Targ3. Targ4 causes another SNMP request for 1:public@CISCOA, which is not recognized as being identical to 1:public@CiscoA.

MaxBytes

The maximum value either of the two variables monitored are allowed to reach. For monitoring router traffic this is normally the bytes per second this interface port can carry.

If a number higher than MaxBytes is returned, it is ignored. Also read the section on AbsMax for further info. The MaxBytes value is also used in calculating the Y range for unscaled graphs (see the section on Unscaled).

Since most links are rated in bits per second, you need to divide their maximum bandwidth (in bits) by eight (8) in order to get bytes per second. This is very important to make your unscaled graphs display realistic information. T1 = 193000, 56K = 7000, 10 MB Ethernet = 1250000, 100 MB Ethernet = 12500000. The MaxBytes value will be used by mrtg to decide whether it got a valid response from the router.

If you need two different MaxBytes values for the two monitored variables, you can use MaxBytes1 and MaxBytes2 instead of MaxBytes.

Example:

 MaxBytes[myrouter]: 1250000

Title

Title for the HTML page which gets generated for the graph.

Example:

 Title[myrouter]: Traffic Analysis for Our Nice Company

OPTIONAL PER TARGET KEYWORDS

 

PageTop

Things to add to the top of the generated HTML page. Note that you can have several lines of text as long as the first column is empty.

Note that the continuation lines will all end up on the same line in the html page. If you want linebreaks in the generated html use the '\n' sequence.

Example:

 PageTop[myrouter]: <H1>Traffic Analysis for ETZ C95.1</H1>
   Our Campus Backbone runs over an FDDI line\n
   with a maximum transfer rate of 12.5 megabytes per
   Second.

RouterUptime

In cases where you calculate the used bandwidth from several interfaces you normaly don't get the router uptime and router name displayed on the web page.

If these interfaces are on the same router and the uptime and name should be displayed you have to specify its community and address again with the RouterUptime keyword.

If you want to use a special OID for queriing the router uptime, use prepend the oid.

Example:

 Target[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1:public@194.64.66.250 + 2:public@194.64.66.250
 RouterUptime[kacisco.comp.edu]: public@194.64.66.250

 RouterUptime[kacisco.comp.edu]: hrSystemUptime.0:public@194.64.66.250

RouterName

If the default name of the router is incorrect/uninformative, you can use RouterName to specify a different OID on either the same or a different host.

A practical example: sysName on BayTech DS72 units always display "ds72", no matter what you set the Unit ID to be. Instead, the Unit ID is stored at 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0, so we can have MRTG display this instead of sysName.

Example:

 RouterName[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0

A different OID on a different host can also be specified:

 RouterName[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0:public@194.64.66.251

MaxBytes1

Same as MaxBytes, for variable 1.

MaxBytes2

Same as MaxBytes, for variable 2.

IPv4Only

Many IPv6 routers do not currently support SNMP over IPv6 and must be monitored using IPv4. The IPv4Only option forces mrtg to use IPv4 when communicating with the target, even if IPv6 is enabled. This is useful if the target is a hostname with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; without the IPv4Only keyword, monitoring such a router will not work if IPv6 is enabled.

If set to no (the default), mrtg will use IPv6 unless the target has no IPv6 addresses, in which case it will use IPv4. If set to yes, mrtg will only use IPv4.

Note that if this option is set to yes and the target does not have an IPv4 address, communication with the target will fail.

This option has no effect if IPv6 is not enabled.

Example:

 Target[v4onlyrouter_1]: 1:public@v4onlyrouter
 IPv4Only[v4onlyrouter_1]: Yes

SnmpOptions (V3)

SNMPv3 requires a fairly rich set of options. This per-target keyword allows access to the User Security Model of SNMPv3. Options are listed in the same syntax as a perl hash.

Security Modes

SNMPv3 has three security modes, defined on the device being polled. For example, on Cisco routers the security mode is defined by the snmp-server group global configuration command.

NoAuthNoPriv

Neither Authentication nor Privacy is defined. Only the Username option is specified for this mode.

Example:

 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1'
AuthNoPriv

Uses a Username and a password. The password can be hashed using the snmpkey application, or passed in plain text along with the ContextEngineID

Example:

 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1',authpassword=>'example',
   contextengineid=>'80000001110000004000000'
Priv

Both Authentication and Privacy is defined. The default privacy protocol is des.

Example: SnmpOptions[myrouter]: authkey=>'0x1e93ab5a396e2af234c8920e61cfe2028072c0e2', authprotocol=>'sha',privprotocol=>'des',username=>'user1', privkey=>'0x498d74940c5872ed387201d74b9b25e2'

snmp options

The following option keywords are recognized:

username

The user associated with the User Security Model

contextname

An SNMP agent can define multiple contexts. This keyword allows them to be polled.

contextengineid

A unique 24-byte string identifying the snmp-agent.

authpassword

The plaintext password for a user in either AuthNoPriv or Priv mode.

authkey

A md5 or sha hash of the plain-text password, along with the engineid. Use the snmpkey commandline program to generate this hash, or use Net::SNMP::Security::USM in a script.

authprotocol {sha|md5}

The hashing algorithm defined on the SNMP client. Defaults to md5.

privpassword

A plaintext pre-shared key for encrypting snmp packets in Priv mode.

privkey

A hash of the plain-text pre-shared key, along with the engineid. Use the snmpkey commandline program to generate this hash, or use Net::SNMP::Security::USM in a script.

privprotocol {des|3desede|aescfb128|aescfb192|aescfb256}

Specifies the encryption method defined on the snmp agent. The default is des.

PageFoot

Things to add to the bottom of the generated HTML page. Note that you can have several lines of text as long as the first column is empty.

Note that the continuation lines will all end up on the same line in the html page. If you want linebreaks in the generated html use the '\n' sequence.

The material will be added just before the </BODY> tag:

Example:

 PageFoot[myrouter]: Contact <A HREF="mailto:peter@x.yz">Peter</A>
  if you have questions regarding this page

AddHead

Use this tag like the PageTop header, but its contents will be added between </TITLE> and </HEAD>.

Example:

 AddHead[myrouter]: <link rev="made" href="mailto:mrtg@blabla.edu">

BodyTag

BodyTag lets you supply your very own <body ...> tag for the generated webpages.

Example:

 BodyTag[myrouter]: <BODY LEFTMARGIN="1" TOPMARGIN="1" 
                      BACKGROUND="/stats/p_w_picpaths/bg.neo2.gif">

AbsMax

If you are monitoring a link which can handle more traffic than the MaxBytes value. Eg, a line which uses compression or some frame relay link, you can use the AbsMax keyword to give the absolute maximum value ever to be reached. We need to know this in order to sort out unrealistic values returned by the routers. If you do not set AbsMax, rateup will ignore values higher than MaxBytes.

Example:

 AbsMax[myrouter]: 2500000

Unscaled

By default each graph is scaled vertically to make the actual data visible even when it is much lower than MaxBytes. With the Unscaled variable you can suppress this. It's argument is a string, containing one letter for each graph you don't want to be scaled: d=day w=week m=month y=year. There is also a special case to unset the variable completely: n=none. This could be useful in the event you need to override a global configuration. In the example scaling for the yearly and the monthly graph are suppressed.

Example:

 Unscaled[myrouter]: ym

WithPeak

By default the graphs only contain the average values of the monitored variables - normally the transfer rates for incoming and outgoing traffic. The following option instructs mrtg to display the peak 5 minute values in the [w]eekly, [m]onthly and [y]early graph. In the example we define the monthly and the yearly graph to contain peak as well as average values.

Examples:

 WithPeak[myrouter]: ym

Suppress

By default mrtg produces 4 graphs. With this option you can suppress the generation of selected graphs. The option value syntax is analogous to the above two options. In this example we suppress the yearly graph as it is quite empty in the beginning.

Example:

 Suppress[myrouter]: y

Extension

By default, mrtg creates .html files. Use this option to tell mrtg to use a different extension. For example you could set the extension to php3, then you will be able to enclose PHP tags into the output (useful for getting a router name out of a database).

Example:

 Extension[myrouter]: phtml

Directory

By default, mrtg puts all the files that it generates for each target (the GIFs, the HTML page, the log file, etc.) in WorkDir.

If the Directory option is specified, the files are instead put into a directory under WorkDir or Log-, Image- and HtmlDir). (For example the Directory option below would cause all the files for a target myrouter to be put into directory /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg/myrouter/ .)

The directory must already exist; mrtg will not create it.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter

NOTE: the Directory option must always be 'relative' or bad things will happen.

Clonedirectory

If the Directory option is specified, the Clonedirectory option will copy all the contents of Directory to the Clonedirectory.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter
 Clonedirectory[myrouter]: myclonedirectory

Optionally the target name can be changed in the cloning process.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter
 Clonedirectory[myrouter]: myclonedirectory mynewtarget

NOTE1: The clone directory must already exist; mrtg will not create it.

NOTE2: The Clonedirectory option must also always be 'relative' or bad things will happen.

NOTE3: This requires the File::Copy module

XSize and YSize

By default mrtgs graphs are 100 by 400 pixels wide (plus some more for the labels. In the example we get almost square graphs ...

Note: XSize must be between 20 and 600; YSize must be larger than 20

Example:

 XSize[myrouter]: 300
 YSize[myrouter]: 300

XZoom and YZoom

If you want your graphs to have larger pixels, you can "Zoom" them.

Example:

 XZoom[myrouter]: 2.0
 YZoom[myrouter]: 2.0

XScale and YScale

If you want your graphs to be actually scaled use XScale and YScale. (Beware: while this works, the results look ugly (to be frank) so if someone wants to fix this: patches are welcome.

Example:

 XScale[myrouter]: 1.5
 YScale[myrouter]: 1.5

YTics and YTicsFactor

If you want to show more than 4 lines per graph, use YTics. If you want to scale the value used for the YLegend of these tics, use YTicsFactor. The default value for YTics is 4 and the default value for YTicsFactor is 1.0 .

Example:

Suppose you get values ranging from 0 to 700. You want to plot 7 lines and want to show 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 instead of 0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700. You should write then:

  YTics[myrouter]: 7
  YTicsFactor[myrouter]: 0.01

Factor

If you want to multiply all numbers shown below the graph with a constant factor, use this directive to define it ..

Example:

  Factor[as400]: 4096

Step

Change the default step from 5 * 60 seconds to something else (I have not tested this much ...)

Example:

 Step[myrouter]: 60

PNGTitle

When using rateup for graph generation, this will print the given title in the graph it generates.

Example:

 PNGTitle[myrouter]: WAN Link UK-US

Options

The Options Keyword allows you to set some boolean switches:

growright

The graph grows to the left by default. This option flips the direction of growth causing the current time to be at the right edge of the graph and the history values to the left of it.

bits

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 8 (i.e. shown in bits instead of bytes) ... looks much more impressive :-) It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

perminute

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 60 (i.e. shown in units per minute instead of units per second) in case of small values more accurate graphs are displayed. It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

perhour

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 3600 (i.e. shown in units per hour instead of units per second) in case of small values more accurate graphs are displayed. It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

noinfo

Suppress the information about uptime and device name in the generated webpage.

nopercent

Don't print usage percentages.

transparent

Make the background of the generated gifs transparent.

integer

Print summary lines below graph as integers without commas.

dorelpercent

The relative percentage of IN-traffic to OUT-traffic is calculated and displayed in the graph as an additional line. Note: Only a fixed scale is available (from 0 to 100%). Therefore if IN-traffic is greater than OUT-traffic then 100% is displayed. If you suspect that your IN-traffic is not always less than or equal to your OUT-traffic you are urged to not use this options. Note: If you use this option in combination with the Colours options, a fifth colour-name colour-value pair is required there.

avgpeak

There are some ISPs who use the average Peak values to bill their customers. Using this option MRTG displays these values for each graph. The value is built by averaging the max 5 minute traffic average for each 'step' shown in the graph. For the Weekly graph this means that it builds the average of all 2 hour intervals 5 minute peak values. (Confused? Thought so!)

gauge

Treat the values gathered from target as 'current status' measurements and not as ever incrementing counters. This would be useful to monitor things like disk space, processor load, temperature, and the like ...

In the absence of 'gauge' or 'absolute' options, MRTG treats variables as a counters and calculates the difference between the current and the previous value and divides that by the elapsed time between the last two readings to get the value to be plotted.

absolute

This is for counter type data sources which reset their value when they are read. This means that rateup does not have to build the difference between the current and the last value read from the data source. The value obtained is still divided by the elapsed time between the current and the last reading, which makes it different from the 'gauge' option. Useful for external data gatherers.

derive

If you are using rrdtool as logger/grapher you can use a third type of data source. Derive is like counter, except that it is not required to go UP all the time. It is useful for situations where the change of some value should be graphed.

unknaszero

Log unknown data as zero instead of the default behaviour of repeating the last value seen. Be careful with this, often a flat line in the graph is much more obvious than a line at 0.

withzeroes

Normally we ignore all values which are zero when calculating the average transfer rate on a line. If this is not desirable use this option.

noborder

If you are using rateup to log data, MRTG will create the graph p_w_picpaths. Normally these p_w_picpaths have a shaded border around them. If you do not want the border to be drawn, enable this option. This option has no effect if you are not using rateup.

noarrow

As with the option above, this effects rateup graph generation only. Normally rateup will generate graphs with a small arrow showing the direction of the data. If you do not want this arrow to be drawn, enable this option. This option has no effect if you are not using rateup.

noi

When using rateup for graph generation, you can use this option to stop rateup drawing a graph for the 'I' or first variable. This also removes entries for this variable in the HTML page MRTG generates, and will remove the peaks for this variable if they are enabled. This allows you to hide this data, or can be very useful if you are only graphing one line of data rather than two. This option is not destructive - any data received for the the variable continued to be logged, it just isn't shown.

noo

Same as above, except relating to the 'O' or second variable.

nobanner

When using rateup for graph generation, this option disables MRTG adding the MRTG banner to the HTML pages it generates.

nolegend

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will stop MRTG from creating a legend at the bottom of the HTML pages it generates.

printrouter

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will print the router name in the graph it generates. This option is overridden by the value of PNGTitle if one is given

pngdate

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will print a timestamp in the graph it generates, including a timezone if one is specified by the 'Timezone' parameter.

logscale

The logscale option causes rateup to display the data with the Y axis scaled logarithmically. Doing so allows the normal traffic to occupy the majority of the vertical range, while still showing any spikes at their full height.

logscale displays all the available data and will always produce well-behaved graphs. People often consider a logarithmically scaled graph counterintuitive, however, and thus hard to interpret.

expscale

The expscale option causes rateup to display the data with the Y axis scaled exponentially. Doing so emphasizes small changes at the top of the scale; this can be useful when graphing values that fluctuate by a small amount near the top of the scale, such as line voltage.

expscale is essentially the inverse of logscale.

secondmean

The secondmean option sets the maximum value on the graph to the mean of the data greater than the mean of all data. This produces a graph that focuses more on the typical data, while clipping large peaks.

Using secondmean will give a more intutive linearly scaled graph, but can result in a uselessly high or low scale in some rare situations (specifically, when the data includes a large portion of values far from the actual mean)

If a target includes both logscale and secondmean in the options, the secondmean takes precedence.

Example:

 Options[myrouter]: growright, bits

kilo

Use this option to change the multiplier value for building prefixes. Defaultvalue is 1000. This tag is for the special case that 1kB = 1024B, 1MB = 1024kB and so far.

Example:

 kilo[myrouter]: 1024

kMG

Change the default multiplier prefixes (,k,M,G,T,P). In the tag ShortLegend define only the basic units. Format: Comma separated list of prefixed. Two consecutive commas or a comma at start or end of the line gives no prefix on this item. If you do not want prefixes, just put two consecutive commas. If you want to skip a magnitude select '-' as value.

Example: velocity in nm/s (nanometers per second) displayed in nm/h.

 ShortLegend[myrouter]: m/h
 kMG[myrouter]: n,u,m,,k,M,G,T,P
 options[myrouter]: perhour

Colours

The Colours tag allows you to override the default colour scheme. Note: All 4 of the required colours must be specified here. The colour name ('Colourx' below) is the legend name displayed, while the RGB value is the real colour used for the display, both on the graph and in the html doc.

Format is: Col1#RRGGBB,Col2#RRGGBB,Col3#RRGGBB,Col4#RRGGBB

Important: If you use the dorelpercent options tag a fifth colour name colour value pair is required: Col1#RRGGBB,Col2#RRGGBB,Col3#RRGGBB,Col4#RRGGBB,Col5#RRGGBB

Colour1

First variable (normally Input) on default graph.

Colour2

Second variable (normally Output) on default graph.

Colour3

Max first variable (input).

Colour4

Max second variable (output).

RRGGBB

2 digit hex values for Red, Green and Blue.

Example:

 Colours[myrouter]: GREEN#00eb0c,BLUE#1000ff,DARK GREEN#006600,VIOLET#ff00ff

Background

With the Background tag you can configure the background colour of the generated HTML page.

Example:

 Background[myrouter]: #a0a0a0a

YLegend, ShortLegend, Legend[1234]

The following keywords allow you to override the text displayed for the various legends of the graph and in the HTML document:

YLegend

The Y-axis label of the graph. Note that a text which is too long to fit in the graph will be silently ignored.

ShortLegend

The units string (default 'b/s') used for Max, Average and Current

Legend[1234IO]

The strings for the colour legend.

Example:

  YLegend[myrouter]: Bits per Second
  ShortLegend[myrouter]: b/s
  Legend1[myrouter]: Incoming Traffic in Bits per Second
  Legend2[myrouter]: Outgoing Traffic in Bits per Second
  Legend3[myrouter]: Maximal 5 Minute Incoming Traffic
  Legend4[myrouter]: Maximal 5 Minute Outgoing Traffic
  LegendI[myrouter]: &nbsp;In:
  LegendO[myrouter]: &nbsp;Out:

Note, if LegendI or LegendO are set to an empty string with

 LegendO[myrouter]:

The corresponding line below the graph will not be printed at all.

Timezone

If you live in an international world, you might want to generate the graphs in different timezones. This is set in the TZ variable. Under certain operating systems like Solaris, this will provoke the localtime call to give the time in the selected timezone.

Example:

 Timezone[myrouter]: Japan

The Timezone is the standard timezone of your system, ie Japan, Hongkong, GMT, GMT+1 etc etc.

Weekformat

By default, mrtg (actually rateup) uses the strftime(3) '%V' option to format week numbers in the monthly graphs. The exact semantics of this format option vary between systems. If you find that the week numbers are wrong, and your system's strftime(3) routine supports it, you can try another format option. The POSIX '%V' option correspond to the widely used ISO 8601 week numbering standard. The week format character should be specified as a single letter; either W, V, or U.

The UNIX version of rateup uses the libc implementation of strftime. On Windows, the native strftime implementation does not know about %V. So there we use a different implementation of strftime that does support %V.

Example:

 Weekformat[myrouter]: W

RRDRowCount

This affects the creation of new rrd files. By default rrds are created to hold about 1 day's worth of high resolution data. (plus 1 week of 30 minute data, 2 months of 2 hour data and 2 years of 1 day data). With this Keyword you can change the number of base interval entries configured for new rrds as they get created. Note that you must take the interval time into account.

Example:

 RRDRowCount[myrouter]: 1600

RRDRowCount30m

As per RRDRowCount, but for the RRA's -typically- used for 30 minute data. Even so, you must still take the base interval into account. Leaving out this keyword will force the old default of 800 rows.

Example:

 RRDRowCount30m[myrouter]: 800

RRDRowCount2h

As per RRDRowCount, but for the RRA's -typically- used for 2 hour data. Even so, you must still take the base interval into account. Leaving out this keyword will force the old default of 800 rows.

Example:

 RRDRowCount2h[myrouter]: 400

RRDRowCount1d

As per RRDRowCount, but for the RRA's -typically- used for 1 day data. Even so, you must still take the base interval into account. Leaving out this keyword will force the old default of 800 rows.

Example:

 RRDRowCount1d[myrouter]: 200

RRDHWRRAs

Normally the RRDs created by MRTG will just contain the information gathered directly from the respective target. With this option you can tap into rrdtools advanced aberrant behaviour detection module based on Holt-Winters forecasting. The RRDHWRRAs property specifies the Holt-Winters RRAs as described in the rrdcreate manual page.

Note, this setting will only affect newly created RRDs (targets).

Example:

 RRDHWRRAs[myrouter]: RRA:HWPREDICT:1440:0.1:0.0035:288

TimeStrPos

This defines placement of the timestamp string on the p_w_picpath. Possible values are RU, LU, RL, LL (which stand, respectively, for RightUpper, LeftUpper, RightLower and LeftLower corner) and NO (for no timestamp). By default, no timestamp is placed on the p_w_picpath.

Example:

 TimeStrPos[myrouter]: RU

TimeStrFmt

Using this keyword you may specify format of the timestamp to be placed on the p_w_picpath (if enabled by the TimeStrPos keyword). Specified string will be used by the strftime() function - see strftime(3) documentation for conversion specifiers available on your system. Default format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M

Example:

 TimeStrFmt[myrouter]: %H:%M:%S

THRESHOLD CHECKING

Through its threshold checking functionality mrtg is able to detect threshold problems for the various targets and can call external scripts to handle those problems (e.g. send email or a page to an administrator).

Threshold checking is configured through the following parameters:

ThreshDir (GLOBAL)

By defining ThreshDir to point to a writable directory, MRTG will only alert you when a threshold boundery has been crossed.

Example:

 ThreshDir: /var/mrtg/thresh

ThreshHyst (GLOBAL)

If a threshold is broken, and you have a threshdir defined, then mrtg will send mail once the threshold becomes 'unborken' to avoid situations where broken and un-broken messages get sent in close succession, we only send an unbroken message once the curent value is 0.1 (10%) away from the threshold. using the ThreshHyst config variable you can customize this value.

Example for 5%:

 ThreshHyst: 0.05

ThreshMailServer (GLOBAL)

Adderss of an SMTP server which is going to accept mail about Thresholds being broken and unbroken.

ThreshMailSender (GLOBAL)

What is the sender address of the threshold mail.

Example:

 ThreshMailSender: mrtg@example.com

ThreshMailAddress (PER TARGET)

Email address for Threshold related Mails. This will only work if a mailserver has been configured.

Example:

 ThreshMailAddress[_]: admin@example.com
 ThreshMailAddress[router]:

This would bring threshold releaed mail to all but the target called 'router'.

ThreshMinI (PER TARGET)

This is the minimum acceptable value for the Input (first) parameter. If the parameter falls below this value, the program specified in ThreshProgI will be run and a mail will be sent to the ThreshMailAddress if specified. If the value ends in '%' then the threshold is defined relative to MaxBytes.

ThreshMaxI (PER TARGET)

Works the same as TheshMinI but it acts when the value is higher than ThreshMaxI.

ThreshDesc (PER TARGET)

Its value will be assigned to the environment variable THRESH_DESC before any of the programs mentioned below are called. The programs can use the value of this variable to produce more user-friendly output.

ThreshProgI (PER TARGET)

This defines a program to be run if ThreshMinI or ThreshMaxI is broken. MRTG passes 3 arguments: the $router variable, the threshold value broken, and the current parameter value.

ThreshProgOKI (PER TARGET)

This defines a program to be run if the parameter is currently OK (based on ThreshMinI and ThreshMaxI), but wasn't OK on the previous running -- based on the files found in ThreshDir. MRTG passes 3 arguments: the $router variable the unbroken threshold value, and the current parameter value.

ThreshMinO, ThreshMaxO, ThreshProgO, and ThreshProgOKO

These work the same as their *I counterparts, except on the Output (second) parameter.

SetEnv

When calling threshold scripts from within your cfg file you might want to pass some data on to the script. This can be done with the SetEnv configuration option which takes a series of environment variable assignments. Note that the quotes are mandatory. This does not work for external scripts. It is not possible to set environment variables per target.

Example:

 SetEnv[myrouter]:  EMAIL="contact_email@someplace.net"
                    HOST="www.some_server.net"

HW Failure Bassed Threshold Checking

When using rrd based logging with HW RRAs defined. You can use the confidence bounds violations stored in the FAILURES RRA for threshold based alerts.

There the all target specific threshold variables have a Hold-Winters counterpart:

 ThreshMailAddress -> HWThreshMailAddress
 ThreshMinI        -> HWThreshMinI
 ...

The global variables for threshold checking are shared except for the

 ThreshHyst        -> HWThreshHyst

And HWThreshDesc sets the HWTHRESH_DESC variable.

PER TARGET DEFAULT VALUES

 

Pre- and Postfix

To save yourself some typing you can define a target called '^'. The text of every Keyword you define for this target will be PREPENDED to the corresponding Keyword of all the targets defined below this line. The same goes for a Target called '$' but its text will be APPENDED.

Note that a space is inserted between the prepended text and the Keyword value, as well as between the Keyword value and the appended text. This works well for text-valued Keywords, but is not very useful for other Keywords. See the "default" target description below.

The example will make mrtg use a common header and a common contact person in all the pages generated from targets defined later in this file.

Example:

 PageTop[^]: <H1>NoWhere Unis Traffic Stats</H1><HR>
 PageTop[$]: Contact Peter Norton if you have any questions<HR>

To remove the prepend/append value, specify an empty value, e.g.:

 PageTop[^]:
 PageTop[$]:

NoSpaceChar

With PREPEND and APPEND (see below) there is normally a space inserted between the local value and the PRE- or APPEND value. Sometimes this is not desirable. You can use the global option NoSpaceChar to define a character which can be mentioned at the end of a $ or ^ definition in order to supress the space.

Example:

  NoSpaceChar: ~
  Target[^]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.482.50.2.4.20.0&1.3.6.1.4.1.482.50.2.4.21.0:get@~
  Target[a]: a.tolna.net
  Target[b]: b.tolna.net
  Target[c]: c.tolna.net
  Target[d]: d.tolna.net

Default Values

The target name '_' specifies a default value for that Keyword. In the absence of explicit Keyword value, the prepended and the appended keyword value, the default value will be used.

Example:

 YSize[_]: 150
 Options[_]: growright,bits,nopercent
 WithPeak[_]: ymw
 Suppress[_]: y
 MaxBytes[_]: 1250000

To remove the default value and return to the 'factory default', specify an empty value, e.g.:

 YLegend[_]:

There can be several instances of setting the default/prepend/append values in the configuration file. The later setting replaces the previous one for the rest of the configuration file. The default/prepend/append values used for a given keyword/target pair are the ones that were in effect at the point in the configuration file where the target was mentioned for the first time.

Example:

 MaxBytes[_]: 1250000
 Target[myrouter.somplace.edu.2]: 2:public@myrouter.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[_]: 8000
 Title[myrouter.somplace.edu.2]: Traffic Analysis for myrouter.somplace.edu IF 2

The default MaxBytes for the target myrouter.someplace.edu.2 in the above example will be 1250000, which was in effect where the target name myrouter.someplace.edu.2 first appeared in the config file.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

--user username and --group groupname

Run as the given user and/or group. (Unix Only)

--lock-file filename

Use an alternate lock-file (the default is to use the configuration-file appended with _l).

--confcache-file filename

Use an alternate confcache-file (the default is to use the configuration-file appended with .ok)

--logging filename| eventlog

If this is set to writable filename, all output from mrtg (warnings, debug messages, errors) will go to filename. If you are running on Win32 you can specify eventlog instead of a filename which will send all error to the windows event log.

NOTE: Note, there is no Message DLL for mrtg included with mrtg. This has the side effect that the windows event logger will display a nice message with every entry in the event log, complaing about the fact that mrtg has no message dll. If you go to the mrtg contrib download area (on the website) you will find the mrtg-message-dll.zip which does contain such a thing.

--daemon

Put MRTG into the background, running as a daemon. This works the same way as the config file option, but the switch is required for proper FHS operation (because /var/run is writable only by root)

--fhs

Configure all mrtg paths to conform to the FHS specification; http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

--check

Only check the cfg file for errors. Do not do anything.

--pid-file=s

Define the name and path of the pid file for mrtg running as a daemon

--debug=s

Enable debug options. The argument of the debug option is a comma separated list of debug values:

 cfg  - watch the config file reading
 dir  - directory mangeling
 base - basic program flow 
 tarp - target parser
 snpo - snmp polling 
 coca - confcache operations
 fork - forking view 
 time - some timing info
 log  - logging of data via rateup or rrdtool
 eval - print eval strings before evaluting them
 prof - add hires timing info the rrd calls

Example:

 --debug="cfg,snpo"

EXIT CODES

An exit code of 0 indicates that all targets were successful. Generally speaking, most codes greater than 0 indicate that there was an unrecoverable problem. One exception to this is code 91, which indicates that at least one of the targets was successful. A partial listing of the codes follows:

  0: All targets sucessful

  2: Config error (can't read, fatal error in config, etc)
 17: Another MRTG process is processing config

 91: At least one target sucessful
 92: No targets were sucessful

EXAMPLES

 

Minimal mrtg.cfg

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Target[r1]: 2:public@myrouter.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[r1]: 8000
 Title[r1]: Traffic Analysis ISDN
 PageTop[r1]: <H1>Stats for our ISDN Line</H1>

Cfg for several Routers.

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Title[^]: Traffic Analysis for
 PageTop[^]: <H1>Stats for
 PageTop[$]: Contact The Chief if you notice anybody<HR>
 MaxBytes[_]: 8000
 Options[_]: growright

 Title[isdn]: our ISDN Line
 PageTop[isdn]: our ISDN Line</H1>
 Target[isdn]: 2:public@router.somplace.edu

 Title[backb]: our Campus Backbone
 PageTop[backb]: our Campus Backbone</H1>
 Target[backb]: 1:public@router.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[backb]: 1250000

 # the following line removes the default prepend value
 # defined above

 Title[^]:

 Title[isdn2]: Traffic for the Backup ISDN Line
 PageTop[isdn2]: our ISDN Line</H1>
 Target[isdn2]: 3:public@router.somplace.edu


 

 

Creates mrtg.cfg files (for mrtg-2.16.4)

 

SYNOPSIS

cfgmaker [options] [community@]router [[options] [community@]router ...]

OPTIONS

 --ifref=nr    interface references by Interface Number (default)
 --ifref=ip                     ... by Ip Address
 --ifref=eth                        ... by Ethernet Number
 --ifref=descr                      ... by Interface Description
 --ifref=name                       ... by Interface Name
 --ifref=type                       ... by Interface Type
                You may also use multiple options separated by commas,
               in which case the first available one is used:
               e.g.  --ifref=ip,name,nr

 --ifdesc=nr       interface description uses Interface Number (default)
 --ifdesc=ip                        ... uses Ip Address
 --ifdesc=eth                       ... uses Ethernet Number
 --ifdesc=descr                     ... uses Interface Description
 --ifdesc=name                      ... uses Interface Name
 --ifdesc=catname                   ... uses CatOS Interface Name
 --ifdesc=ppname                    ... uses Passport Port Name
 --ifdesc=alias                     ... uses Interface Alias
 --ifdesc=type                      ... uses Interface Type
                You may also use multiple options separated by commas,
               in which case the first available one is used:
               e.g.  --ifdesc=catname,ppname,descr,alias,ip,name,nr

 --if-filter=f     Test every interface against filter f to decide wether
                   or not to include that interface into the collection.
                   Currently f is being evaluated as a Perl expression
                   and it's truth value is used to reject or accept the
                   interface.
                   (Experimental, under development, might change)

 --if-template=templatefile
                   Replace the normal target entries for the interfaces
                   with an entry as specified by the contents in the file
                   templatefile.  The file is supposed to contain Perl
                   code to be executed to generate the lines for the
                   target in the configuration file.
                   (Experimental, under development, might change)

 --host-template=templatefile
                   In addition to creating targets for a host's interfaces
                   do also create targets for the host itself as specified
                   by the contents in the file templatefile.  The file is
                   supposed to contain Perl code to be executed to generate
                   the lines for the host related targets (such as CPU,
                   ping response time measurements etc.) in the config-
                   uration file.
                   (Experimental, under development, might change)

 --global "x: a"   add global config entries

 --no-down         do not look at admin or opr status of interfaces

 --show-op-down    show interfaces which are operatively down

 --zero-speed=spd  use this speed in bits-per-second as the interface
                   speed for all interfaces that return a speed of 0
                   via ifSpeed/ifHighSpeed.  100Mbps = 100000000

 --subdirs=format  give each router its own subdirectory, naming each per
                   "format", in which HOSTNAME and SNMPNAME will be
                   replaced by the values of those items -- for instance,
                   --subdirs=HOSTNAME or --subdirs="HOSTNAME (SNMPNAME)"

 --noreversedns    do not reverse lookup ip numbers

 --community=cmty  Set the default community string to "cmty" instead of
                   "public".

 --enable-ipv6     Enable IPv6 support, if the required libraries are
                   present. Numeric IPv6 addresses must be enclosed
                   in square brackets, e.g. public@[2001:760:4::1]:161

 --use-16bit       Use 16bit SNMP request IDs to query all routers.

 --snmp-options=:[<port>][:[<tmout>][:[<retr>][:[<backoff>][:<ver>]]]]

                   Specify default SNMP options to be appended to all
                   routers following.  Individual fields can be empty.
                   Routers following might override some or all of the
           options given to --snmp-options.

 --dns-domain=domain
           Specifies a domain to append to the name of all
           routers following.

 --nointerfaces    Don't do generate any configuration lines for interfaces,
                   skip the step of gathering interface information and
                   don't run any interface template code.

 --interfaces      Generate configuration lines for interfaces (this is the
                   default).  The main purpose of this option is to negate
                   an --nointerfaces appearing earlier on the command line.

 --help            brief help message
 --man             full documentation
 --version         print the version of cfgmaker

 --output=file     output filename default is STDOUT

DESCRIPTION

Cfgmaker creates MRTG configuration files based on information pulled from a router or another SNMP manageable device.

[community@]router

Community is the community name of the device you want to create a configuration for. If not specified, it defaults to 'public'; you might want to try this first if you do not know the community name of a device. If you are using the wrong community name you will get no response from the device.

Router is the DNS name or the IP number of an SNMP-managable device. Following the name you can specify 6 further options separated by colons. The full syntax looks like this:

router[:[prt][:[tmout][:[retr][:[backoff][:vers]]]]]

Of special interest may be the last parameter, vers. If you set this to '2' then your device will be queried with SNMP version 2 requests. This allows to poll the 64 bit traffic counters in the device and will thus work much better with fast interfaces (no more counter overrun). Note that the order in which the routers are specified on the command line do matter as the same order is used when the configuration file is generated. The first specified router has it's configuration lines genrated first, followed by the lines belonging to the next router and so on.

Note that the first line of the generated cfg file will contain all the commandline options you used for generating it. This is to allow for the easy 'regeneration' in case you want to add newhosts or make some other global change.

Configuration

Except for the --output and --global options, all options affect only the routers following them on the command line. If an option specified earlier on the command line reappears later on the command line with another value, the new value overrides the old value as far as remaining routers are concerned. This way options might be tailored for groups of routers or for individual routers.

See --output and --global for how their behaviour is affected by where or how many times they appear on the command line.

See the Examples below on how to set an option differently for multiple routers.

--help

Print a brief help message and exit.

--man

Prints the manual page and exits.

--version

Print the version of cfgmaker. This should match the version of MRTG for which config files are being created.

--ifref nr| ip| eth| descr| name

Select the interface identification method. Default is nr which identifies the router interfaces by their number. Unfortunately the interface numbering scheme in an SNMP tree can change. Some routers change their numbering when new interfaces are added, others change thier numbering every full moon just for fun.

To work around this sad problem MRTG can identify interfaces by 4 other properties. None of these works for all interfaces, but you should be able to find one which does fine for you. Note that especially ethernet addrsses can be problematic as some routers have the same ethernet address on most of their interface cards.

Select ip to identify the interface by its IP number. Use eth to use the ethernet address for identification. Use descr to use the Interface description. Or use name to use the Interface name.

You can specify multiple properties if you wish, separated by commas. In this case, cfgmaker will use the first item in the list which can provide unique identification. This allows you to specify, for example, to use IP address and to use ifName if this is not defined: --ifref ip,name

If your chosen method does not allow unique interface identification on the device you are querying, cfgmaker will tell you about it.

--ifdesc nr| ip| eth| descr| name| type| alias

Select what to use as the description of the interface. The description appears in the Title[] property for the target as well as the text header in the HTML code defined in the target's PageTop[]. Default is to use nr which is just the interface number which isn't always useful to the viewer of the graphs.

There are 6 other properties which could be used. Use ip if you want to use the interface's IP-address. Use eth if you want to use the interface's ethernet address. If you want a better description, you can use either descr, name or alias. Exactly what each of these do varies between different equipment so you might need to experiment. For instance, for a serial interface on a Cisco router running IOS using name might result in "S0" being the interface description , descr might result in "Serial0" and alias might result in "Link to HQ" (provided that is what is used as the interface's description in the router's configuration).

Finally, if you want to describe the interface by it's Btype (i.e "ethernetCSMA", "propPointtoPoint" etc) you can use type.

You can specify multiple properties if you wish, separated by commas. In this case, cfgmaker will use the first item in the list which is available for this interface. This allows you to specify, for example, to use any of the different aliases in order of preference.

--if-filter ' filter-expression'

First of all, this is under some developement and is experimental.

Use this if you want to have better control over what interfaces gets included into the configuration. The filter-expression is evaluated as a piece of Perl code and is expected to return a truth value. If true, include the interface and if false, exclude the interface.

For a further discussion on how these filters work, see the section Details on Filters below.

--if-template template-file

First of all, this is under some development and is experimental.

Use this if you want to control what the line for each target should look like in the configuration file. The contents of the file template-file will be evaluated as a Perl program which generates the lines using certain variables for input and output.

For a further discussion on how these templates work, see the section Details on Temaplates below.

--host-template template-file

First of all, this is under some development and is experimental.

Use this if you want to have some extra targets related to the host itself such as CPU utilization, ping response time to the host, number of busy modems etc. The contents of the file template-file will be evaluated once per host as a Perl program which generates the lines using certain variables for input and output.

For a further discussion on how these templates work, see the section Details on Templates below.

--community community-string

Use this to set the community for the routers following on the command line to community-string. Individual routers might overrride this community string by using the syntax community@router.

--enable-ipv6

This option enables IPv6 support. It requires the appropriate perl modules; if they are not found then IPv6 is disabled (see the ipv6 documentation).

cfgmaker will use IPv6 or IPv4 depending on the target. If the target is a numeric address, the protocol depends on the type of address. If the target is a hostname, cfgmaker will try to resolve the name first to an IPv6 address then to an IPv4 address.

IPv6 numeric addresses must be specified between square braces.

For example:

 cfgmaker --enable-ipv6 [2001:760:4::1]:165:::2

If the target has both an IPv6 address and an IPv4 address with the same hostname, cfgmaker first queries the target using IPv6 and falls back to IPv4 if it fails. This is useful for targets which don't support SNMP over IPv6.

--use-16bit

This option forces the use of 16bit SNMP request IDs. Some broken SNMP agents do not accept 32bit request IDs. Try to avoid this option as much as possible, complain to your agent vendor instead.

--snmp-options :[ port][:[ timeout][:[ retries][:[ backoff][: version]]]]

Use this to set the default SNMP options for all routers following on the command line. Individual values might be omitted as well as trailing colons. Note that routers might override individual (or all) values specified by --snmp-options by using the syntax

router[:[port][:[timeout][:[retries][:[backoff][:version]]]]]

--global " bla: abc "

Use this to add global options to the generated config file. You can call --global several times to add multiple options. The line will appear in the configuration just before the config for the next router appearing on the command line.

 --global "workdir: /home/mrtg"

If you want some default Options you might want to put

 --global "options[_]: growright,bits"

Specifying --global after the last router on the command line will create a line in the configuration file which will appear after all the routers.

--noreversedns

Do not try to reverse lookup IP numbers ... a must for DNS free environments.

--no-down

Normally cfgmaker will not include interfaces which are marked anything but administratively and operationally UP. With this switch you get them all.

--show-op-down

Include interfaces which are operatively down.

--zero-speed speed

Assign this speed in bits-per-second to all interfaces which return 0 for ifSpeed and ifHighSpeed. Some switches, notably Foundry equipment, return a speed of zero for some interfaces. For example, to have all interfaces reporting zero set to 100Mbps, use --zero-speed=100000000.

--subdirs format

Give each router its own subdirectory for the HTML and graphics (or .rrd) files. The directory name is the given format string with a couple of pattern replacements. The string "HOSTNAME" will be replaced by the hostname of the router (however you specified it on the cfgmaker commandline -- it may be an actual hostname or just an IP address), and "SNMPNAME" will be replaced with the device's idea of its own name (the same name that appears on the right side of the "Title" lines). For instance, a call like:

 cfgmaker --subdirs=HOSTNAME__SNMPNAME public@10.10.0.18

would result in the generation of lines looking something like:

 Directory[10.10.0.18_1]: 10.10.0.18__fp2200-bothrip-1.3
--output file

Write the output from cfgmaker into the file file. The default is to use STDOUT. --output is expected to appear only once on the command line. If used multiple times, the file specified by the last --output will be used.

--nointerfaces

Don't generate configuration lines for interfaces.

This makes cfgmaker skip all steps related to interfaces which means it will not do any polling of the router to retrieve interface information which speeds up the execution of cfgmaker and it will neither run any interface templates.

--interfaces

This makes cfgmaker generate configuration lines for interfaces (the default behaviour).

The main usage of this option is to negate an --nointerfaces appearing earlier on the command line.

SNMP V3 Options

Cfgmaker supports SNMP V3 using the Net:SNMP perl module. There are optional parameters affecting SNMP operation.

--enablesnmpv3 {yes|no}

The --enablesnmpv3 option is an optional flag to check for the presence of the Net::SNMP libraries. Cfgmaker will try to determine whether this flag is required and will set the values automatically.

SNMPv3 Arguments

A SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by a SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and a SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. The combination of a contextEngineID and a contextName unambiguously identifies a context within an administrative domain. In a SNMPv3 message, the contextEngineID and contextName are included as part of the scopedPDU. All methods that generate a SNMP message optionally take a --contextengineid and --contextname argument to configure these fields.

Context Engine ID

The --contextengineid argument expects a hexadecimal string representing the desired contextEngineID. The string must be 10 to 64 characters (5 to 32 octets) long and can be prefixed with an optional "0x". Once the --contextengineid is specified it stays with the object until it is changed again or reset to default by passing in the undefined value. By default, the contextEngineID is set to match the authoritativeEngineID of the authoritative SNMP engine.

Context Name

The contextName is passed as a string which must be 0 to 32 octets in length using the --contextname argument. The contextName stays with the object until it is changed. The contextName defaults to an empty string which represents the "default" context.

User-based Security Model Arguments

The User-based Security Model (USM) used by SNMPv3 requires that a securityName be specified using the --username argument. The creation of a Net::SNMP object with the version set to SNMPv3 will fail if the --username argument is not present. The --username argument expects a string 1 to 32 octets in length.

Different levels of security are allowed by the User-based Security Model which address authentication and privacy concerns. A SNMPv3 target will derive the security level (securityLevel) based on which of the following arguments are specified.

By default a securityLevel of 'noAuthNoPriv' is assumed. If the --authkey or --authpassword arguments are specified, the securityLevel becomes 'authNoPriv'. The --authpassword argument expects a string which is at least 1 octet in length. Optionally, the --authkey argument can be used so that a plain text password does not have to be specified in a script. The --authkey argument expects a hexadecimal string produced by localizing the password with the authoritativeEngineID for the specific destination device. The snmpkey utility included with the Net::SNMP distribution can be used to create the hexadecimal string (see snmpkey).

Two different hash algorithms are defined by SNMPv3 which can be used by the Security Model for authentication. These algorithms are HMAC-MD5-96 "MD5" (RFC 1321) and HMAC-SHA-96 "SHA-1" (NIST FIPS PUB 180-1). The default algorithm used by the module is HMAC-MD5-96. This behavior can be changed by using the --authprotocol argument. This argument expects either the string 'md5' or 'sha' to be passed to modify the hash algorithm.

By specifying the arguments --privkey or --privpassword the securityLevel associated with the object becomes 'authPriv'. According to SNMPv3, privacy requires the use of authentication. Therefore, if either of these two arguments are present and the --authkey or --authpassword arguments are missing, the creation of the object fails. The --privkey and --privpassword arguments expect the same input as the --authkey and --authpassword arguments respectively.

The User-based Security Model described in RFC 3414 defines a single encryption protocol to be used for privacy. This protocol, CBC-DES "DES" (NIST FIPS PUB 46-1), is used by default or if the string 'des' is passed to the --privprotocol argument. By working with the Extended Security Options Consortium http://www.snmp.com/eso/, the module also supports additional protocols which have been defined in draft specifications. The draft http://www.snmp.com/eso/draft-reeder-snmpv3-usm-3desede-00.txt defines the support of CBC-3DES-EDE "Triple-DES" (NIST FIPS 46-3) in the User-based Security Model. This protocol can be selected using the --privprotocol argument with the string '3desede'. The draft http://www.snmp.com/eso/draft-blumenthal-aes-usm-04.txt describes the use of CFB128-AES-128/192/256 "AES" (NIST FIPS PUB 197) in the USM. The three AES encryption protocols, differentiated by their key sizes, can be selected by passing 'aescfb128', 'aescfb192', or 'aescfb256' to the -privprotocol argument.

Details on Filters

The purpose of the filters is to decide which interfaces to accept and which interfaces to reject. This decision is done for each interface by evaluating the filter expression as a piece of Perl code and investigating the result of the evaluation. If true, accept the interface otherwise reject it.

When working with filters, remember that Perl has it's own idea of what truth and false is. The empty string "" and the string "0" are false, all other strings are true. This further imples that any integer value of 0 is false as well as any undef value. It also implies that all references are considered true.

As the filter is evaluated as a Perl expression, several useful constructs in Perl are worth mentioning:

Expressions might be grouped by using parentheses "()". Expressions might be combined using boolean operators such as the following:

" and" (equivalent with " &&")

Boolean "and" of the two expressions, is only true if both expressions are true. Example: expression1 and expression2

" or" (equivalent with " ||")

Boolean "or" of the two expressions, is true if either or both expressions are true. Example: expression1 or expression2

" not" (equivalent with " !")

Boolean negation of a single expression. Example: not expression . Yet another example: !expression

(For more details on this I recommend a book on Perl)

Predefined Filter Variables

To facilitate, there are a number of predefined values available to use in the filter. Note that these variables are also available when templates interfaces are evaluated (but not host templates).

Caveat: All these variables' names begin with a dollar sign ($), which is a syntactic requirement for scalar variables in Perl. The danger here is that the dollar sign in many shells is an active character (often used for shell variables exactly as in Perl variables) so it is important to ensure that the Perl expression isn't evaluated by the command line shell as shell code before being passed to cfgmaker as command line arguments. In shells like Bourne shell, ksh shell or bash shell, placing the entire expression within single qoutes will avoid such accidental evaluation:

 '--if-filter=($default_iftype && $if_admin)'
$if_type

This is an integer specifying the interface type as per the SNMP standards and as reported by the polled device. A complete list of interface types would be impractical for this document , but there are a number predefined varables below. Normally, cfgmaker puts in the target's PageTop this iftype value within paranthesis after the name of the interface type. (e.g "propPointToPointSerial (22)").

Here's a list of some of the most common interface types by number:

   6 ethernetCsmacd
   7 iso88023Csmacd
   9 iso88025TokenRing
  15 fddi
  19 E1
  20 basicISDN
  21 primaryISDN
  22 propPointToPointSerial
  23 ppp
  24 softwareLoopback
  30 ds3
  32 frame-relay
  33 rs232
  37 atm
  39 sonet
  44 frameRelayService
  46 hssi
  49 aal5
  53 propVirtual
  62 Fast Ethernet (100BaseT)
  63 ISDN & X.25
  69 Full Duplex Fast Ethernet (100BaseFX)
  94 Asymetric Digital Subscriber Loop (ADSL)
 117 Gigabit Ethernet
 134 ATM Sub Interface
$default

True if and only if cfgmaker normally should accepted the interface based on the interfaces administrative and operational state (taking the flags --no-down and --show-op-down into account) and it's type (and a few other things).

$default_ifstate

True if and only if cfgmaker would have accepted the interface based on it's operational and administrative states (also taking into account the presence of the flags --no-down and --show-op-down).

$default_iftype

True if and only if cfgmaker would have accepted the interface based on it's type (and a few type specific details in addition).

$if_admin

True if and only if the interface is in an adminstrative up state.

$if_oper

True if and only if the interface is in an operational up state.

A number of variables are also predefined to easily decide if an interface belong to a certain cathegory or not. Below is all those variables listed together with which if_type numbers each variable will be true for. Note that some variables refer to other variables as well.

$if_is_ethernet

True for ethernet interfaces (nr 6, 7, 26, 62, 69 and 117).

$if_is_isdn

True for various ISDN interface types (nr 20, 21, 63, 75, 76 and 77)

$if_is_dialup

True for dial-up interfaces such as PPP as well as ISDN. (nr 23, 81, 82 and 108 in addition to the numbers of $if_is_isdn).

$if_is_atm

True for miscellaneous ATM related interface types (nr 37, 49, 107, 105, 106, 114 and 134).

$if_is_wan

True for WAN interfaces point to point, Frame Relay and High Speed Serial ( 22,32,44,46)

$if_is_lan

True for LAN interfaces (8, 9, 11, 15, 26, 55, 59, 60 and 115 in addition to the numbers of $if_is_ethernet).

$if_is_dsl

True for ADSL, RDSL, HDSL and SDSL (nr 94, 95, 96, 97)

$if_is_loopback

True for software loopback interfaces (nr 24)

$if_is_ciscovlan

True for Cisco VLAN interfaces (interfaces with the word Vlan or VLAN in their ifdescs)

$if_vlan_id

Returns the vlan id associated with a specific port on Cisco Catalyst switches under both Catalyst OS and IOS, and 3Com switches. If it is not a vlan interface, will return undef.

$if_cisco_trunk

Returns the trunking state of a specific port on Cisco Catalyst switches under both Catalyst OS and IOS. Returns "1" if the interface is a trunk, undef otherwise.

$if_MTU

Returns the Maximum Transfer Unit associated with a specific port.

Besides that, you can also use the variables defined for templates below. Further, all the variables available in cfgmaker is at the scripts disposal even if the use of such features is discouraged. More "shortcuts" in the form of variables and functions will be made available in the future instead.

Examples on Filters

The following filter will not affect which interfaces get's included or excluded, it will make cfgmaker behave as normally.

 '--if-filter=$default'

The following filter will make cfgmaker exclude PPP (23) interfaces:

 '--if-filter=$default && $if_type!=23'

The following filter will make cfgmaker behave as usual except that it will consider the operational state of an interface irrelevant but still reject all interfaces which are administratively down.

 '--if-filter=$if_admin && $default_iftype'

Details on Templates

The contents of the template files are evaluated as a Perl program. A number or Perl variables are available for the program to read and others are used to be written to.

As quite a few of the predefined variables has values which are are supposed to be used in HTML code some of them have an "HTML-escaped" variant, e.g $html_syslocation is the HTML escaped variant of $syslocation. The HTML escaping means that the chars "<", ">" and "&" are replaced by "&lt;", "&gt;" and "&amp;" and that newlines embedded in the string are prepended with "<BR>" and appended with a space character (if a newline is last in the string it is not touched).

Writable Template Variables

These are the variables available to store the configuration lines in. Some of them are initialized prior to the evaluation of the template but such content normally is comments for inclusion in the final configuration file so those variables might be reset to the empty string in the template code to eliminate the comments. The other way around is also possible, the contents of these variables might be extended with further information for various reasons such as debugging etc.

Once the template has been evaluated, the following happens: if the template is a interface template and the actual interface for some reason is rejected and thus needs to be commented out, all the lines in the variable $target_lines are turned into comments by adding a hash mark ("#") at their beginning. Then all the variables $head_lines, $problem_lines , $target_lines and $separator_lines are concatenated together to form the lines to add to the configuration file.

$target_lines

This variable is the placeholder for the configuration lines created by the template. $target_lines is predefined to be empty when the template code is evaluated.

$head_lines

This variable is intended to be the placeholder for the comment line appearing just before the target in the configuration file. It is initialized with that comment line before the evaluation of the template code and if the template doesn't modify $head_lines during evaluation, the comment will look like usual in the config file.

$problem_lines

This variable is intended to be the placholder for the comment lines describing any problems which might have been encountered when trying to add the target into the configuration. For host templates it's normally not used and for those it's predefined as the empty string. For interface templates $problem_lines is predefined with the error description comments which cfgmaker normally would use for rejected interfaces or as the empty string for accepted interfaces.

It is possible to test against $problem_lines to find out if an interface will be included or rejected but this is not recommended. Test against $if_ok instead.

$separator_lines

This variable is the placeholder for the string to use as the separator between the code for individual targets. The contents of this variable is put after each target (so the lines will appear after the end of the last target in the config as well).

Predefined Template Variables

All the variables below are available for interface templates to use. For host templates, only those listed under Host and System Variables are available.

For interface templates the variables listed under Predefined Filter Variables are also available.

Host and System Variables
$router_name

This is the fully qualified name for the router. It is affected by the following items on the command line: the router name itself and --dns-domain.

$router_connect

This is the reference string for the router being polled. It is on the form community@router possibly followed by some snmp options. It is affected by the following items on the command line: the router name itself, --community, --snmp-options and --dns-domain. (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$directory_name

This variable should contain the directory name as cfgmaker normally would use as the value for the "Directory[]" directive. The value is determined by the --subdirs command line option. If --subdirs isn't specified $directory_name will be the empty string. (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$syscontact

This variable is the router's SNMP sysContact value. (HTML escaped variant: $html_syscontact)

$sysname

This variable is the router's SNMP sysName value. (No HTML escaped variant available)

$syslocation

This variable is the router's SNMP sysLocation value. (HTML escaped variant: $html_syslocation)

$sysdescr

This variable is the router's SNMP sysDescr value. It is normally not used by cfgmaker but might be useful in a template. (HTML escaped variant: $html_sysdescr)

Interface Network Configuration Variables
$if_ip

This variable should contain the IP-address of the interface, if any has been assigned to it. (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$ifindex

This variable is the SNMP ifIndex for the interface which per definition always is an integer. (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$if_index

Equivalent with $ifindex.

$if_eth

Contains the ethernet address of the interface, if any. (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$if_speed

This variable is the speed in bytes/second (with prefixes). (There's no HTML escaped variant available)

$if_speed_str

This variable is a cooked speed description which is either in bits or bytes depending on wether or not the bits option is active and also with the proper prefix for the speed (k, M, G etc). (No HTML escaped variant available)

$if_type_desc

This variable is a textual description of the interface type. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_type_desc)

$if_type_num

This variable the integer value corresponding to the interface type (for a listing for the value for the more common interface types, see the section DETAILS ON FILTERS above). (No HTML escaped variant available)

$if_dns_name

This is the DNS name for the interface. (No HTML escaped variant available)

Interface Name, Description and Alias Variables

It might seem confusing with both Name, Description and Alias in this context and to some extent it is. Name and Description are usually supported on most equipment but how they are used varies, both between manufacturers as well as between different cathegories of equipment from the same manufacturer. The Alias is at least supported by Cisco IOS, and that variable contains whatever is used in the IOS statement called "description" for the interface (not to be confused with the SNMP variables for Description).

For better control from the command line consider $if_title_desc which contents are controlled by the --if-descr command line option.

$if_snmp_descr

This variable should contain the "raw" description of the interface as determined by the SNMP polling of the router. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_snmp_descr)

$if_snmp_name

The "raw" name for the interface as provided by SNMP polling. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_snmp_name)

$if_snmp_alias

The "raw" ifAlias for the interface as provided by SNMP polling. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_snmp_alias)

$if_cisco_descr

The "raw" CiscolocIfDescr for the interface as provided by SNMP polling. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_cisco_descr)

$if_description

This is the "cooked" description string for the interface, taking into account the SNMP values found for the interface's RDescr, ifAlias and CiscolocIfDescr. (HTML escaped variant: $html_if_description)

$if_title

The full string cfgmaker by default would have used for the Title[] directive in the configuration as well as the content of the topmost H1 tag in the PageTop[]. Is composed by the contents of $desc_prefix, $if_title_desc and $sysname.

As $if_title depends on $if_title_desc, it is possible to indirectly control $if_title by using the command line option --if-descr.

(HTML escaped variant: $html_if_title)

$if_port_name

If the host is a Cisco Catalyst LAN switch, this variable is the name of that port. (No HTML escaped variant available)

$if_pp_port_name

If the host is a Nortel Passport LAN switch, this variable is the name of that port. (No HTML escaped variant available)

$desc_prefix

This variable is a prefix of the description of what the target is to use in the "Title[]" directive and in the H1 section of the "PageTop[]". Default is "Traffic analysis for ". (HTML escaped variant: $html_desc_prefix)

$if_title_desc

This is the description of the interface normally used by cfgmaker as part of the variable $if_title. The latter is used as the full string in the "Title[]" directove and the H1 section in the PageTop[].

$if_title_desc is controlled by the command line option --if-descr which indirectly controls the contents of $if_title

(HTML escaped variant: $html_if_title_desc)

Help Functions for Templates

The following functions exists to facilitate the writing of host and interface templates.

html_escape(string)

html_escape() takes a string as an argument and returns a new string where the following substitutions has been done: the chars "<", ">" and "&" are replaced by "&lt;", "&gt;" and "&amp;" and that newlines embedded in the string are prepended with "<BR>" and appended with a space character (newlines at the end of the string are not touched).

oid_pick($router_connect,$v3opt,"oid1","oid2"...)

This function will try to poll each of the oids specified until it is successful or has run out of oids. It will return the name of the first oid that worked or undef if it is not successful

Example Template Files
 
Template Example 1: Eliminating Rejected Targets From Appearing

This template file generates exactly the same configuration code per interface as cfgmaker does by default, with the exception that it eliminates all lines (comments as well as config code) for an interface if the interface happens to be rejected.

 if(not $problem_lines)
 {
   $target_lines .= <<ECHO;

 Target[$target_name]: $if_ref:$router_connect
 SetEnv[$target_name]: MRTG_INT_IP="$if_ip" MRTG_INT_DESCR="$if_snmp_descr"
 ECHO

   if ($directory_name) {
       $target_lines .= "Directory[$target_name]: $directory_name\n";
   }

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO;
 MaxBytes[$target_name]: $if_speed
 Title[$target_name]: $html_desc_prefix$html_if_title_desc -- $sysname
 PageTop[$target_name]: <h1>$html_desc_prefix$html_if_title_desc -- $sysname</h1>
		<div id="sysdetails">
			<table>
				<tr>
					<td>System:</td>
					<td>$sysname in $html_syslocation</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>Maintainer:</td>
					<td>$html_syscontact</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>Description:</td>
					<td>$html_if_description</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>ifType:</td>
					<td>$html_if_type_desc ($if_type_num)</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>ifName:</td>
					<td>$html_if_snmp_name</td>
				</tr>
 ECHO

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO if defined $if_port_name;
				<tr>
					<td>Port Name:</td>
					<td>$if_port_name</td>
				</tr>
 ECHO

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO if defined $if_pp_port_name;
				<tr>
					<td>Port Name:</td>
					<td>$if_pp_port_name</td>
				</tr>
 ECHO

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO;
				<tr>
					<td>Max Speed:</td>
					<td>$if_speed_str</td>
				</tr>
 ECHO

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO if $if_ip;
				<tr>
					<td>Ip:</td>
					<td>$if_ip ($if_dns_name)</td>
				</tr>
 ECHO

   $target_lines .= <<ECHO;
			</table>
		</div>
 ECHO
 } else {
   $head_lines="";
   $problem_lines="";
   $target_lines="";
   $separator_lines="";
 }
Template Example 2: Simplier Version of Example 1

Example 1 was partly intended to demonstrate how to customize the generation of interface targets but also to provide a hint of how the variables are used in the "default" template which one could consider that cfgmaker normally uses.

If you're only intrested in the easiest way of entirely eliminating those reject interfaces, the template below would do the job as well by using $default_target_lines.

 if($if_ok) {
  $target_lines = $default_target_lines;
 } else {
   $head_lines="";
   $problem_lines="";
   $target_lines="";
   $separator_lines="";
 }
Template Example 3: Creating CPU Targets for Hosts

Below is an example of a host template.

 $head_lines .= <<ECHO;
 #---------------------------------------------------------------------
 ECHO

 my $target_name = $router_name . ".cpu";

 $target_lines .= <<ECHO;

 YLegend[$target_name]: Percentage CPU load
 ShortLegend[$target_name]: %
 Legend1[$target_name]: CPU load in %
 Legend2[$target_name]:
 Legend3[$target_name]: Max Observed CPU load
 Legend4[$target_name]:
 LegendI[$target_name]: &nbsp;CPU Load:
 LegendO[$target_name]:
 WithPeak[$target_name]: ywm
 MaxBytes[$target_name]: 100
 Options[$target_name]: growright, gauge, nopercent
 Title[$target_name]: $router_name CPU load
 Target[$target_name]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.58.0&1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.58.0:$router_connect
 PageTop[$target_name]: <h1>$router_name CPU load</h1>
		<div>
			<table>
				<tr>
					<td>System:</td>
					<td>$router_name in $html_syslocation</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>Maintainer:</td>
					<td>$html_syscontact</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>Description:</td>
					<td>$html_sysdescr</td>
				</tr>
				<tr>
					<td>Resource:</td>
					<td>CPU.</td>
				</tr>
			</table>
		</div>
 ECHO

EXAMPLES

The first example creates a config file for router.place.xyz: the router has the community name public. Interfaces get identified by their IP number. Two global options get added to the config file. The config file gets redirected to mrtg.conf. The '\' signs at the end of the line mean that this command should be written on a single line.

 cfgmaker --global "WorkDir: /home/tobi"           \
          --global "Options[_]: growright,bits"    \
          --ifref=ip                               \
          public@router.place.xyz > mrtg.cfg

Note: if cfgmaker is not in your path, but you are in the directory where cfgmaker is stored, you can start it with ./cfgmaker

The next example creates a config file for four devices: router1.place.xyz, router2.place.xyz, switch1.place.xyz and switch2.place.xyz all with the community public.

The two routers will have --ifref set to descr whilst the two switches will use --ifref set to name. Further the routers will use --ifdesc set to alias and switch1.place.xyz will use --ifdesc set to descr whilst switch2.place.xyz use name instead.

Finally, there will be two Options lines inserted in the configuration: One will be in the beginning, whilst the other will be inserted after the lines related to the two routers but before those lines related to the switches.

 cfgmaker --global "WorkDir: /home/tobi"           \
          --global "Options[_]: growright,bits"    \
          --ifref=descr                            \
          --ifdesc=alias                           \
          public@router1.place.xyz                 \
          public@router2.place.xyz                 \
          --global "Options[_]: growright"         \
          --ifref=name                             \
          --ifdesc=descr                           \
          public@switch1.place.xyz                 \
          --ifdesc=name                            \
          public@switch2.place.xyz > mrtg.cfg

The next example demonstrates how to use the --community, --snmp-options and --dns-domain to make the command line simpler. All the equipment will use the community hidden, except for the ppp-server which use community access. All equipment uses these SNMP options: 1s timeout, 1 retry and SNMP version 2 (backoff and port is unspecified which means they use the default values). The exception again is the ppp-server which uses SNMP version 1. Finally, all the equipment is part of the domain place.xyz, except for the ppp-server which is part of the domain remote.place.xyz. Note that the latter is achieved simply by specifying the name of the ppp-server to be ppp-server.remote .

 cfgmaker --global "WorkDir: /home/tobi"           \
          --global "Options[_]: growright,bits"    \
          --dns-domain=place.xyz                   \
          --community=hidden                       \
          --snmp-options=::1:1::2                  \
          router1                                  \
          router2                                  \
          router3                                  \
          router4                                  \
          router5                                  \
          switch1                                  \
          switch2                                  \
          switch3                                  \
          switch4                                  \
          switch5                                  \
          switch6                                  \
          switch7                                  \
          access@ppp-server.remote:::::1 > mrtg.cfg

SEE ALSO

mrtg-reference

 

 

Creates index files for mrtg web sites (mrtg-2.16.4)

 

SYNOPSIS

indexmaker [options] mrtg.cfg [other.cfg ...]

OPTIONS

 --output=filename   set output filename (default: stdout)

 --filter title=~regexp  select targets by matching regexp against titles
 --filter pagetop=~regexp  select targets by matching regexp against pagetop
 --filter name=~regexp  select targets by matchin regexp against name

 --addhead=text      insert this text between </TITLE> and </HEAD>
 --title=text        set title of generated index file
 --subtitle=text     add a subtitle to the generated index file
 --bodyopt=text      set body tag options
 --headlevel=number  use <Hnumber> at top of page (default: 1)
 --pagetop=text      insert this text between <BODY> and <H1>...</H1>
 --pageend=text      insert this text after the main body
 --pagetopend=text   use this text for pagetop or pageend if undefined
 --nolegend          do not add the Mrtg legend at the end of the page

 --columns=number    show graphs in a table with x columns (default: 2)
 --perhost           show graphs of the same host on a row
 --compact           try to make a vertically more compact page
 --optlog            log the used command line in the page (default: log)

 --sort=title        sort graphs by title
 --sort=name         sort graphs by their name
 --sort=descr        sort graphs by their description
 --sort=original     leave as is (default)

 --enumerate         add a sequence number to the title of each graph

 --picfirst          place pictures before text (default: text first)
 --width=number      set width of graphs (default: not set)
 --height=number
 --sidebyside        place text / pictures side by side (default: above/below)
 --bold              use bold text (default: bold)
 --clicktext         make the text link to the inner page (like the p_w_picpath)

 --show=day          pick which graph to show in the index (default)
 --show=week
 --show=month
 --show=year
 --show=none

 --section=h1        h1 tag from pagetop as section heading (default)
 --section=title     title as section headings for graphs
 --section=name      graph name as section heading
 --section=descr     graph description as section heading
 --section=portname  port name entry in pagetop as section heading
 --sectionhost       Try to prepend the host to the section heading if missing

 --rrdviewer=path    path to rrdviewer (default: /cgi-bin/14all.cgi)
 --icondir=path      path to icondir
 --prefix=path       path from the location of the index.html to the graphs
 --headeradd=string  add string to the html page header
 --autoprefix        try to set prefix automatically

 --<opt>-file=file   read string argument for option <opt> from file

DESCRIPTION

Indexmaker can create web pages which display the status of an array of mrtg interface status pages.

--output filename

set output filename (default: stdout)

--filter ( title| pagetop| name)( =~| !~) regexp

Several filters may get set. Each filter can match agains the contents of a specific section of the mrtg config file. Name refers to the bit in square brackets (option[name]: bla).

Depending on the match operator chosen (=~ or !~) the match will be positive or negative.

Note that some shells consider ! a special character. It may be necessary to type \!~ instead.

--title text

Set title of generated index file (default: regexp)

--bodyopt text

The value of this argument gets appended to the <BODY> tag. This allows to set document colors. By default this option is set to

 bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#000000" alink="#000000"
--columns number

Display graphs in a table with number columns (default: 2)

--sort title| name| descr| original

Sort the graphs in the page either by title, by name, by interface description, or leave them as is.

--enumerate

Add a sequence number to the title of each graph

--width number

Set width of graphs

--height number

Set the height of the graphs

--show day| week| month| year| none

Select which graph to show in the index page. You can supress p_w_picpaths completely with --show=none.

--section h1| title| name| description| portname

Select what to use as the title for each graph in the page. h1 is the H1 section from pagetop, title is the graph title, name is the bit in square brackets (option[name]: bla), and descr or description is the text from the Description field of the PageTop (the Cisco description text if it's available, otherwise just the interface description). portname is the Port Name: from pagetop.

--sectionhost

Extract the hostname from the target line (this does not work if the target is a mathematial expression). Prepend the hostname (and a colon) to the section if not already present.

--rrdviewer path

If you have set the LogFormat: rrdtool property in the mrtg.cfg file, the index will take this into account. The only thing you must tell it is the path to your grapher cgi. (default: /cgi-bin/14all.cgi)

--prefix path

By default we assume that the file generated by indexmaker is stored in WorkDir. If you want to store it somewhere else, specify how to reach WorkDir from the place where the Index is stored. Note that you have to use '/' as path separator as this will be used in urls. Speaking of which, you can even enter a whole url.

--autoprefix path

Requires --output. Try to generate the prefix automatically by comparision of the path to the output file set with --output and the Htmldir set in the configuration files. Particulary useful when multiple configuration files are specified, with different Htmldir settings.

--optlog

Default is logging in the generated page the command line, suppress with --nooptlog . Useful if the commandline contains a complex --pagetop=string which could confuse simple browsers.

--someoption-file filename

For any someoption which takes a string as parameter you can read the string from a file by adding <-file> to the option keyword. The whole content of the file will be read and used as the string. The file must exist.

 

 

 

Contribution Guidelines for MRTG

 

DESCRIPTION

If you have written an extension to mrtg or created a bug fix, please consider contributing it to the project. As I get quite a number of contributions every week, here are a few guidelines which explain how to contribute so that I can use the contribution without too much additional work.

Translations

MRTG messages have been translated to a number of languages but there are still many which have not been covered yet. If you want to add yours, go into the mrtg-2.16.4/translate directory and follow the instructions given in the README file.

 

Patches

When you have created your modification or extension to mrtg and want to submit it to me, please crate a patch for the files which you have modified. Do not send entire files unless they are new.

To create a patch, get hold of a copy of GNU diff (Many Unix systems will have this installed already. In the NT world you might want to get http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ to get all the nice GNU tools available.) and type

 diff --unified --ignore-space-change old-file new-file > simple.patch

or if you have modified several files do

 diff --recursive --unified --ignore-space-change old-dir/ new-dir/ >long.patch

Documentation

All documentation of mrtg is done with the perl POD system. If you want to learn about it, type

 perldoc perlpod

and read the instructions. If you have bugfixes or additions to the existing documents, make sure you modify the POD files and not the html or txt versions.

I take documentation very seriously. Whenever you create a new feature for mrtg which you want to get included in the official release, your patch must also contain modifications for the relevant pod file in the doc tree or for the documentation sections of cfgmaker and indexmaker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to get help if you have problems with MRTG

 

SYNOPSIS

MRTG seems to raise a lot of questions. There are a number of resources apart from the documentation where you can find help for mrtg.

FAQ

In the following sections you'll find some additonal Frequently Asked Questions, with Answers.

 

Why is there no "@#$%" (my native language) version of MRTG?

Nobody has contributed a @#$%.pmd file yet. Go into the mrtg-2.16.4/translate directory and create your own translation file. When you are happy with it send it to me for inclusion with the next mrtg release.

I need a script to make mrtg work with my xyz device.

Probably this has already been done. Check the stuff in the mrtg-2.16.4/contrib directory. There is a file called 00INDEX in that directory which tells what you can find in there.

How does this SNMP thing work

There are many resources on the net that explain SNMP. Take a look at this article from the Linux Journal by David Guerrero

 http://www.david-guerrero.com/papers/snmp/

And at this rather long document from CISCO.

 http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/snmp.htm

The p_w_picpaths created by MRTG look very strange.

Remove the *-{week,day,month,year}.png files and start MRTG again. Using MRTG for the first time, you might have to do this twice. This will also help when you introduce new routers into the cfg file.

What is my Community Name?

Ask the person in charge of your Router or try 'public', as this is the default Community Name.

My graphs show a flat line during an outage. Why ?

Well, the short answer is that when an SNMP query goes out and a response doesn't come back, MRTG has to assume something to put in the graph, and by default it assumes that the last answer we got back is probably closer to the truth than zero. This assumption is not perfect (as you have noticed). It's a trade-off that happens to fail during a total outage.

If this is an unacceptable trade-off, use the unknaszero option.

You may want to know what you're trading off, so in the spirit of trade-offs, here's the long answer:

The problem is that MRTG doesn't know *why* the data didn't come back, all it knows is that it didn't come back. It has to do something, and it assumes it's a stray lost packet rather than an outage.

Why don't we always assume the circuit is down and use zero, which will (we think) be more nearly right? Well, it turns out that you may be taking advantage of MRTG's "assume last" behaviour without being aware of it.

MRTG uses SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to collect data, and SNMP uses UDP (User Datagram Protocol) to ship packets around. UDP is connectionless (not guaranteed) unlike TCP where packets are tracked and acknowledged and, if needed, retransmitted. UDP just throws packets at the network and hopes they arrive. Sometimes they don't.

One likely cause of lost SNMP data is congestion; another is busy routers. Other possibilities include transient telecommunications problems, router buffer overflows (which may or may not be congestion-related), "dirty lines" (links with high error rates), and acts of God. These things happen all the time; we just don't notice because many interactive services are TCP-based and the lost packets get retransmitted automatically.

In the above cases where some SNMP packets are lost but traffic is flowing, assuming zero is the wrong thing to do - you end up with a graph that looks like it's missing teeth whenever the link fills up. MRTG interpolates the lost data to produce a smoother graph which is more accurate in cases of intermittent packet loss. But with V2.8.4 and above, you can use the "unknaszero" option to produce whichever graph is best under the conditions typical for your network.

 

 

 

IPv6 support in MRTG

 

OVERVIEW

MRTG and cfgmaker support SNMP over IPv6. IPv6 targets can be specified by hostname or IPv6 address, and if the required libraries are present (see below), queries will use IPv6.

USAGE

 
 

Enabling IPv6

IPv6 is currently disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled. In MRTG this is done by turning on the EnableIPv6 global option in the configuration file. In cfgmaker, it is enabled with the --enable-ipv6 command-line option.

If IPv6 is disabled, MRTG and cfgmaker should behave in exactly the same way as previous versions. So the addition of IPv6 support should have no effect on existing MRTG setups unless IPv6 is enabled.

IPv6 support requires the Socket6 and INET6 libraries (see below). If MRTG can't find them, IPv6 is disabled.

Specifying IPv6 targets

IPv6 targets may be specified by name or IPv6 address. Numeric IPv6 addresses may be used with both cfgmaker and MRTG, but they must be enclosed in square brackets.

For example, a target could be specified as:

 public@[2001:760:4::]:161

Hostnames work as expected: first an IPv6 name lookup is tried, then an IPv4 lookup.

Targets that do not support SNMP over IPv6

Many targets (this currently includes all Cisco routers) do not yet support SNMP over IPv6 and must be monitored over IPv4. This can cause problems if you specify a target through its DNS name and the name maps to both the IPv6 address and the IPv4 address of the target: MRTG will only try IPv6, and will fail.

To query these targets, use the IPv4Only per-target option, which tells MRTG not to use SNMP over IPv6 for the target.

MRTG does not fall back to IPv4 for performance and correctness reasons. If there are many routers to query, a timeout for every router would make MRTG take too long to query them all. And if, for some reason, IPv6 connectivity to the target is lost, MRTG's error messages can help figure out what is wrong.

cfgmaker does fall back from IPv6 to IPv4. If IPv6 is enabled and cfgmaker is given a hostname that resolves to both an IPv6 and an IPv4 address, it first tries to query the target over IPv6. If it receives no answer, it tries again using IPv4. If the target answers, cfgmaker sets the IPv4Only option in the generated config file.

IPv6 LIBRARIES

 

Libraries required

IPv6 support requires the Socket6 and INET6 Perl modules. Both can be downloaded from CPAN:

http://search.cpan.org/author/UMEMOTO/Socket6/

http://search.cpan.org/author/MONDEJAR/INET6/

If you use Debian, you will need the packages libsocket6-perl and libio-socket-inet6-perl, which are (or should soon be) in unstable.

So far, IPv6 support has been tested on Linux only, and only with Socket6 version 0.12. Also note that IPv6 won't work at all if you don't have INET6.pm version 2.00 or newer.

Installing the libraries

Building and installing Socket6 and INET6 is very simple. For each module, just unpack the archive and then do:

 perl Makefile.PL
 make

and then:

 su
 make install

If you have installed the libraries successfully, cfgmaker and mrtg should automatically detect them and allow IPv6 support to be enabled.

 

 

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.

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 contains 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 progress 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 OpenOffice Calc or MS Excel by using the following formula

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

(instead of ";" it may be that you have to use "," this depends on the context and your locale settings)

you can also ask perl to help by typing

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

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 transfer rate seen during the hour.

E (5th column)

The maximum outgoing transfer rate in bytes per second for the current interval.

 

 

 

A Table of some interesting OIDs

 

OVERVIEW

This File Contains a collection of interesting MIB Entries ... mrtg knows about their names ... depending on the ASN.1 Syntax you may have to put gauge into the Options[]: parameter.

For information about how to create a Target[]: parameter which references these MIB entries, please consult mrtg-reference.

MIB LIST

 
 

ifOperStatus

 Descriptor:		ifOperStatus
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.8
 ASN.1 Syntax:		INTEGER
 Enumeration:		up 1, down 2, testing 3

The current operational state of the interface. The testing(3) state indicates that no operational packets can be passed.

ifAdminStatus

 Descriptor:		ifAdminStatus
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.7
 ASN.1 Syntax:		INTEGER
 Enumeration:		up 1, down 2, testing 3

The current administrative state of the interface. The testing(3) state indicates that no operational packets can be passed.

ifInOctets

 Descriptor:            ifInOctets
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The total number of octets received on the interface, including framing characters.

ifInUcastPkts

 Descriptor:            ifInUcastPkts
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.11
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of subnetwork-unicast packets delivered to a higher-layer protocol.

ifInNUcastPkts

 Descriptor:            ifInNUcastPkts
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.12
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of non-unicast (i.e., subnetwork- broadcast or subnetwork-multicast) packets delivered to a higher-layer protocol.

ifInDiscards

 Descriptor:            ifInDiscards
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.13
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of inbound packets which were chosen to be discarded even though no errors had been detected to prevent their being deliverable to a higher-layer protocol. One possible reason for discarding such a packet could be to free up buffer space.

ifInErrors

 Descriptor:            ifInErrors
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of inbound packets that contained errors preventing them from being deliverable to a higher-layer protocol.

ifInUnknownProtos

 Descriptor:            ifInUnknownProtos
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.15
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of packets received via the interface which were discarded because of an unknown or unsupported protocol.

ifOutOctets

 Descriptor:            ifOutOctets
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The total number of octets transmitted out of the interface, including framing characters.

ifOutUcastPkts

 Descriptor:            ifOutUcastPkts
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.17
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The total number of packets that higher-level protocols requested be transmitted to a subnetwork-unicast address, including those that were discarded or not sent.

ifOutNUcastPkts

 Descriptor:             ifOutNUcastPkts
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.18
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The total number of packets that higher-level protocols requested be transmitted to a non- unicast (i.e., a subnetwork-broadcast or subnetwork-multicast) address, including those that were discarded or not sent.

ifOutDiscards

 Descriptor:             ifOutDiscards
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.19
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of outbound packets which were chosen to be discarded even though no errors had been detected to prevent their being transmitted. One possible reason for discarding such a packet could be to free up buffer space.

ifOutErrors

 Descriptor:             ifOutErrors
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.20
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Counter32

The number of outbound packets that could not be transmitted because of errors.

ifOutQLen

 Descriptor:             ifOutQLen
 Identifier:		1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.21
 ASN.1 Syntax:		Unsigned32

The length of the output packet queue (in packets).

frInOctets

From: Simon Ferrett <simonf@world.net>

 'frInOctets' => '1.3.6.1.2.1.10.32.2.1.9'
 'frOutOctets' => '1.3.6.1.2.1.10.32.2.1.7'

which when used in the form:

 frInOctets.pp.dd&frOutOctets.pp.dd:community@cisco.router

where pp is the physical port that the frame relay pvc is defined on and dd is the DLCI of the pvc gets you the in and out octets for just that pvc.

ifAdminHack and ifOperHack

The return values of ifAdminStatus and ifOperStatus are not very useful for graphing. Use ifOperHack and ifAdminHack instead. They return 1 for UP and 0 otherwise.

Note these are not real MIB entities but mrtg hacks

PseudoZero and PseudoOne

will return 0 and 1 respectively

Note these are not real MIB entities but mrtg hacks

 

 

 

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://oss.oetiker.ch/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

to your mrtg config file.

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:\rrdtool\bin

For the location of the perl module it would be:

 LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/

or

 LibAdd: c:\rrdtool\bin\lib\perl

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 databases.

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 demand by using a cgi script.

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

One4All aka 14all.cgi

This was the first program to take over the webpage creation and graphing task. It has been developed by Rainer Bawidamann rainer.bawidamann@web.de. You can find a copy on Rainers website: http://my14all.sourceforge.net/ The program comes with its own documentation

routers2.cgi

This is another CGI frontend for mrtg running with rrdtool. The main difference between this and 14all is that the web pages it creates are much more stylish than the ones from mrtg, plus they support User Defined summary graphs and different levels of Authentication and Authorisation. This has been written by Steve Shipway (steve@steveshipway.org). You obtain a copy, and find a forum and demonstration system at http://www.steveshipway.org/software/ The program comes with its own installation instructions and install script.

mrtg-rrd

The mrtg-rrd script is a CGI/FastCGI application by Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak for displaying MRTG graphs from data in the RRDtool format. It is an intended replacement for the 14all.cgi script. It can make your monitoring system faster because MRTG does not have to generate all the PNG files with graphs every 5 minutes or so. Instead of this the graphs are generated on-demand when the user wants to see them. http://www.fi.muni.cz/~kas/mrtg-rrd/

Paul C. Williamson has written a more in-depth page on how the whole process works, including some performance figures. You can find his page on http://www.geocities.com/paulcwilliamson/mrtg/rateup2rrd.html

FUTURE

Just as a side note: MRTG-3 will be based entirely on rrdtool technology. But don't wait for it ... get going now!

 

 

 

 

hints for web server configuration

SYNOPSIS

If you want people to actually see the results of your network monitoring efforts you will need a webserver.

This document lists some configuration hints for webservers. Contributions welcome.

APACHE

 

Configuring mod_expire

A big issue with mrtg monitoring data is the expiry time. All these nice graphs you can create are only valid for a short time. If you do not take special action some webbrowsers will not notice this and you may end up with people seeing old data because of caching issues.

The apache module mod_expire allows you to setup special expiry properties for individual file.

Here is an example for how this may look for an mrtg web directory. The configuration directives can be stored into a .htaccess file.

 ############################################################
 # Example .htaccess for use with apache-1.2 and mod_expire.
 # (mod_expire come with apache-1.2 but you have to explicitly
 # activate it when compiling the httpd ...)
 #############################################################
 #
 <Files "*-day.png">
 ExpiresActive On                  # enable expirations
 # five minutes
 ExpiresDefault M300
 </Files>

 <Files "*-week.png">
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresDefault M1800
 </Files>

 <Files "*-month.png">
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresDefault M7200
 </Files>

 <Files "*-year.png">
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresDefault M86400
 </Files>

 <Files "*.html">
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresDefault M300
 </Files>

 # index.html is not automatically generated
 <Files "index.html">
 ExpiresActive Off
 </Files>

 

 

 

Builds monthly traffic summary from mrtg log files

SYNOPSIS

mrtg-traffic-sum [options...] config-file

     --man           show man-page and exit
 -h, --help          display this help and exit
     --version       output version information and exit
     --catch=regexp  filter out things that match this in PageTop
     --email=address email the result
     --min=gigabytes minimal number of gigabites required for report
     --range=<when>  Specify "current" for month-to-date, "previous" for last complete month	
     --units=[GB|MB] Display results in gigabytes (default is MB)

DESCRIPTION

The mrtg-traffic-sum goes through the mrtg logs for the targets in the the config file specified and builds the traffic total for the last month in Giga Bytes. (Note in communications Giga is 10^9).

The result of this analysis can be sent via email to an address of your choice using the --email option.

With the --catch option you can specify a regular expression which will be matched against the contents of the PageTop settings. The regular expression should return a value into $1 and possibly into $2. This will then be used as description for the appropriate traffic sum. By default the catch is set to:

 (?:description|port name):</td>\s*<td>\s*([^< ]*?[^<]*?)\s*</td

By default, all traffic which is over one megabyte gets reported. Use the --min switch to change this number.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2002 by Tobias Oetiker. All rights reserved.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.