[plug] [OT] Data/Trend 'plotting'

[Matthew Lambie]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 15:57 +0800, Carl Gherardi wrote:
> On Apr 7, 2005 10:58 AM, Timothy White <weirdo at tigris.org> wrote:
> > I am looking at doing to trend observations for some emails I have.
> > Basically I want to have multiple plots based on date and time of the
> > emails.
> > So:
> > 
> >     * Received time (averaged over days, weeks, months...)
> >     * Total number received (day, week, month)
> >     * ... And different trend graphs to give me some stats to work on
> >       and stuff
> > 
> <snip>
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Tim
> > p.s. I know that someone knows how to do this cause I've seen usage
> > graphs and stuff before like it.
> 
> rrdtool is what you want. Cacti, mrtg and nagios are also good tools
> for continuous monitoring, cacti use rrdtool as a backend, and mrtg
> can be configured to do so. Never used nagios, so i'll let others
> comment.

rrdtool uses a round-robin database, which I believe expects data at a
consistent interval. This is great for things like monitoring network
load every 5 minutes and displaying a pretty graph, but if the data
isn't being pumped in at a standard rate, it's not the best backend. 

I use Cacti (it comes packaged in Debian now too) and it can hook into
custom scripts (not just SNMP enabled devices) though to be fair, I've
never tried. If this is what you're after, I can recommend Cacti though.
It's a great little tool. http://www.cacti.net/ has details, and
screenshots.

-- 

Thanks,

Matthew Lambie
Technical Director

THE FRONTIER GROUP, PTY. LTD.
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