Xaprb » Cacti

Version 1.1.7 of Better Cacti Templates released

Xaprb — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:49:46 +0000

I’ve released version 1.1.7 of the Better Cacti Templates project. This release includes a bunch of bug fixes, some new graphs for MySQL, and two new sets of graphs, for Redis graphing and for JMX graphing.

There are upgrade instructions on the project wiki for this and all releases. There is also a comprehensive tutorial on how to create your own graphs and templates with this project. Use the project issue tracker to view and report issues, and use the project mailing list to discuss the templates and scripts.

The full changelog follows.

  * Added graphs for Innodb_row_lock_waits and Innodb_row_lock_time (issue 118).
  * Added graphs for the MyISAM key buffer memory consumption (issue 127).
  * The loadavg/users graphs failed when only 1 user was logged in (issue 131).
  * The Apache and Nginx graphs couldn't use the --port2 option (issue 129).
  * The InnoDB Log graph's unflushed_log should be GAUGE not COUNTER (issue 10).
  * Added graphs for InnoDB semaphore waits (issue 124).
  * Added Redis graphs (issue 90).
  * Added --openvz_cmd configuration and command-line option (issue 130).
  * Added --mysql_ssl configuration and command-line option (issue 103).
  * Added JMX graphs (--type jmx) (issue 139).
  * Big-integer math printf spec was missing a % character (issue 137).
  * Partially accepted patches from Artur Kaszuba (more remaining in issue 120).

Further Reading:

I’ll be speaking at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference 2010

Xaprb — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:47:40 +0000

I’m speaking at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference 2010. I hope I don’t lose my voice, because I have four sessions!

You can click through on the links above to learn more about each session. I’m also looking forward to the other sessions. Here’s a sample of a few that I have my eye on:

Linux performance tuning and stabilization tips by Yoshinori Matsunobu
MySQL Proxy meets: Memcache by Jan Kneschke
PHP Object-Relational Mapping Libraries In Action by Fernando Ipar

The schedule is far from complete, because the conference committee is still working on it, but the proposals to choose from are impressive. Stay tuned as more talks are approved and the schedule fills out, and don’t wait too long to register and book your flight! This is going to be a banner year.

Further Reading:

Version 1.1.6 of Better Cacti Templates released

Xaprb — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:01:26 +0000

I’ve released version 1.1.6 of the Better Cacti Templates project. This release includes a bunch of bug fixes (but not all of them!) and two new sets of graphs. One set is for disk I/O on GNU/Linux, and the other is a new set of templates for OpenVZ. I’m looking for feedback on both of those. This release also has a bunch of code-level features: much better test coverage (hooray!), and a refactored ss_get_by_ssh.php that makes it much easier to create new graphs and templates. The SSH-based templates also take advantage of the same caching as the MySQL templates, which makes them a lot more efficient.

The full changelog follows.

2010-01-10: version 1.1.6

  * Added OpenVZ graphs (--type openvz) (issue 95).
  * Added IO usage graphs (--type diskstats) (issue 97).
  * Added extra error-reporting (issue 110).
  * The $debug $debug_log options couldn't be set in the .cnf file (issue 110).
  * Added a --use-ssh option to ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 66).
  * Added a debugging log to ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 54).
  * Enabled caching of results in ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 46).
  * Added a test suite for ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 110).
  * The 'free' stats suffered from PHP's issues with big numbers (issue 102).
  * There was ambiguity (but no error) in SHOW STATUS overrides (issue 106).
  * It was hard to debug failures caused by missing ext/mysql (issue 105).
  * Code to make ss_get_mysql_stats.php testable was broken (issue 108).

Further Reading:

A review of Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring by Dinangkur Kundu and S. M. Ibrahim Lavlu

Xaprb — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:25:45 +0000

Cacti Network Monitoring

Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring, Dinangkur Kundu and S. M. Ibrahim Lavlu, Packt, 2009. Page count: 110 pages. (Here’s a link to the publisher’s site.)

This is a quite short book that covers some of the breadth but very little of the depth of Cacti. For example, it focuses on Cacti as an SNMP tool for graphing network data, but SNMP is only one of the many ways Cacti can collect data, and of course it graphs anything, not just networks. Each chapter takes the reader through the most important topics, with some code listings and screenshots. On the plus side, this makes it very easy to read quickly, because it doesn’t go off on many tangents about special cases and errors.

I don’t want to criticize too much, but I think I should give a summary of the major shortcomings. First, the book is just too small, especially for the price. It is also not very well edited; it seems to have been edited by non-English speakers. Finally, it constantly refers to Cacti as a monitoring tool, even talking about the need to find out about crashed equipment and so on — but it doesn’t clearly say that Cacti is only for performance graphing, not for monitoring and alerting. I wish they had not flung the word “monitoring” around so casually.

In terms of topics, it has an overview, installation, creating graphs, creating templates, managing users, SNMP, data queries, and basic administration. The strongest point is the explanation of SNMP. The other chapters have a lot of needless information and screenshots. The installation chapter, for example, goes through installing prerequisites from APT — which APT can do itself.

In the end it’s light reading that shouldn’t take you long to finish — an overview in case you don’t know much about Cacti.

Further Reading:

Vote for Cacti template enhancements

Xaprb — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:36:54 +0000

If you’d like some improvements to the Cacti templates (MySQL, Apache, Memcached, and more) I’ve been maintaining, please make your voice heard — either write to the mailing list, or post a new issue (or comment on an existing one) on the issue list. I’ve got a bunch of work underway, including a test suite for ss_get_by_ssh.php.

Further Reading: