Ian Berry

1
A brief introduction to
The complete RRDtool-based graphing solution
Ian Berry iberry_at_raxnet.net June 13, 2006
2
In the beginning there was
easy to setup but limited configurability
3
Then came RRDtool which spawned an entire race
of graphs
limitless configurability but difficult to
setup
4
Along comes Cacti finally ending the war
aims to expose the power of RRDtool while being
easy to install and maintain
Written in PHP Uses a MySQL database Runs on any
Unix or Windows-based OS
5
Installing Cacti
Download and untar
iberry_at_pepper tar xzvf cacti-version.tar.gz
Create the database
iberry_at_pepper mysqladmin --userroot create
cacti
Import the default database
iberry_at_pepper mysql cacti lt cacti.sql
Specify the database in include/config.php
iberry_at_pepper vi include/config.php
6
Installing Cacti (cont.)
Set permissions for the poller
iberry_at_pepper chown -R cactiuser rra/ log/
Specify the poller to run from cron
/5 cactiuser php poller.php gt /dev/null
2gt1
Launch Cacti in a web browser and follow the
prompts to complete the installation
Sweet now we can make some graphs
7
Getting started
Click Devices on the menu to bring up the
devices list
8
Getting started (cont.)
Click Add to create a new device
9
Getting started (cont.)
Enter the description, hostname, and type of
device you want to add and click Create
10
Getting started (cont.)
Click Create Graphs for this Host
11
Getting started (cont.)
Pick the graphs you want and click Create
12
Looking at your graphs
Create any number of trees to view your graphs in
a hierarchical manner
13
Looking at your graphs (cont.)
View your graphs in a list which can be used to
pick a specific set of graphs for display
14
Looking at your graphs (cont.)
View thumbnails of your graphs filtered based on
device or graph title
15
Looking at your graphs (cont.)
Click on any graph to view its daily, weekly,
monthly, and yearly history
16
Looking at your graphs (cont.)
There are lots of ways to customize how graphs
are displayed
17
My first graph
Lets say your boss wants to graph productivity
based on the number of keys pressed on your
keyboard
First you need to create a script that gathers
this information
1 !/bin/bash 2 /bin/cat /proc/interrupts grep
" 1" egrep -o "\ 0-91,3\\
(0-9) awk 'print 2'
Luckily, grabbing the number of interrupts
generated by the keyboard is just what we want
18
My first graph (cont.)
Data input methods allow Cacti to collect data
from external sources
Select Data Input Methods from the menu and click
Add
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
19
My first graph (cont.)
Enter a name for the data input method, specify
that the data is coming from a script, and enter
the full path to the script.
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
20
My first graph (cont.)
Click Add inside of Output Fields box to
represent the number of keystrokes coming back
from the script
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
21
My first graph (cont.)
Enter a name for the output field
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
22
My first graph (cont.)
Data sources specify data that Cacti needs to
collect for graphing
Select Data Sources from the menu and click Add
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
23
My first graph (cont.)
Leave the selected data template and host fields
set to None here since we are just creating a
standalone graph
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
24
My first graph (cont.)
Enter a name for the data source and select the
Data Input Method we created
Be sure to select COUNTER here because the IRQ
counter always increments
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
25
My first graph (cont.)
Select Graph Management from the menu and click
Add to create a new graph
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
26
My first graph (cont.)
Leave the selected graph template and host fields
set to None here since we are just creating a
standalone graph
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
27
My first graph (cont.)
Enter a graph title and a vertical label Notice
how the graph itself is very customizable
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
28
My first graph (cont.)
All graphs must have at least one item
Click Add in the Graph Items box to create a new
graph item
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
29
My first graph (cont.)
Be sure to specify the data source that we
created which tells the graph where to get its
data from
Also notice the color, graph item type and text
format fields
Select Data Input Methods from the menu
30
My first graph (cont.)
After the poller runs next, you should see
something like this Over time, data will start
to populate the graph
31
Advanced topics
(for another day)

• Data queries
• User management
• Templates
• The poller

32
Cool Cacti graphs
Lots of bandwidth with the bandwidth summation
and 95th percentile features
33
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
Fancy ping latency and packet loss graph
34
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
Windows Server 2003 memory usage
35
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
MySQL queries broken down by type
36
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
Fancy CMTS SNR graph
37
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
Postfix mail volume broken down by queue
38
Cool Cacti graphs (cont.)
New phpBB posts and topics over 1 and 3 hour
timespans
39
Resources
Main Cacti website
http//www.cacti.net
Forums
http//forums.cacti.net
Documentation
http//www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/
40
(No Transcript)