Topic: cacti vs mrtg - which SME server monitoring tool should I us

[Billy]

Hi all

1:
Which monitoring app is the best for SME 6.0? - please tell me about your experience.
Cacti or MRTG or ... ?

2:
The MRTG seems focused on monitoring switches. Can it be used for monitoring the interfaces on the SME box itself?

3:
Cacti also CPU-load MEM-load web-hits and other usefull stuff. Any other package that does that?

4:
Is there a howto for cacti on SME 6.0?

5:
Is there a howto for mrtg on SME 6.0?

6:
If I install mrtg, will I need to install an snmp agent as well?

URLs:
http://www.speedfactor.ath.cx/howto/
http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/mrtg-howto.htm

I will much appreciate any/all feedback

  B

[grand-pa]

Hi Billy

1) Cacti is the simpliest : scripts already exist and can be used "as is", an interface allows you to modify many parameters very simply. MRTG is too old and doesn't have all the capabilities RRDTool has (Cacti is in fact an interface to RRDTool).
You could also think of installing RRDTool alone and create your own scripts and commands to create db and graphics. You can also use an other "interface" to RRDTool. I personnaly use MRTNK, a package of scripts that allows to use RRDTool as (or almost as) MRTG.

2) MRTG and RRDTool can use SNMP OIDs or scripts to obtain the values they have to draw.

3) When i was using MRTG, i had the same graphs as those i have today with RRDTool (in fact, i have now more graphs as RRDTool can use negative values and MRTG can not).

4) There are two howtos : one in english and a more recent one in french

5) Have a look at this howto

6) It is not an obligation. I don't like SNMP and i use only scripts. If you are interrested, you can have a look at my MRTNK (RRDTool based) page.

Sorry for my bad english, i hope you have understood.

[Billy]

Thx GP!

I used to have cacti on my 5.5 server. And in fact it worked great. There was only one little annoyance - it filled my message log with snmp status messages.

4 & 5:
It looks like the english cacti howto is for 5.5 and the french is for 5.6 - have anybody successfully applied either to 6.0?

6:
Your status pages looks bloody amazing - my french is not that hot, but I'll see if I can get through the instructions (there's nothing wrong with your english btw).
 

[stancol]

I've installed Cacti on several machines and never got the eth0 or eth1 thing to work right. However I did install a contrib (by who I forgot...sorry) that puts the same outputs as cacti into the Server Manager Panel and it works great! Only thing I don't like about having it in the Server Manager is I'd like a seperate web page to view Cacti stats. That way I don't have to log into the server to look at stats.

[MasterSleepy]

Hi,

For all stat graph I have installed SYSMON who use RRDTools.
Mrtg are for me pretty old and graph are not as nice as RRDTool can do.

Regards,
MasterSleepy

[webster]

Hi,

For all stat graph I have installed SYSMON who use RRDTools.
Mrtg are for me pretty old and graph are not as nice as RRDTool can do.

Regards,
MasterSleepy

YES YES YES
i second that... if you are wanting to just monitor your server use SYSMON...
http://www.ibiblio.org/contribs/contribs/dmay/mitel/contrib/e-smith-sysmon/

that for 5.6 but works fine with 6 and goes into your server-manager
it shows you more than you are asking for(doesnt do www and mysql hits but thats not really important... get awstats if u want to see webhits)
install it and i am sure you will love it...you can always uninstall it if you don't.

Catch Ya
T

[mvdlinden]

Sysmon rocks on my 6.0b3!

[ace]

For all stat graph I have installed SYSMON who use RRDTools.

Here is a couple of references for SYSMON;

SYSMON HOWTO Install
SYSMON Contrib

Ace
[/url]

[Doso]

sorry for bumping this old thread but does anyone know where i can get the sys monitor rpms? the website seems dead

[stancol]

Web site isn't deed just being rebuilt. Shad Lord took his site down (http://www.lordsfam.net)to rebuild it. I guess that means all the links will now change. If you email me off line I can send you the rpm's for sysmon.

If you use sysmon you can have you're own web page outside of the server-manager. To make your own web page copy the file sysmon from /etc/e-smith/web/functions to /home/e-smith/files/ibays/<your ibay name>/cgi-bin. Make sure that you have Execution of dynamic content (CGI, PHP, SSI) set to Enabled for that ibay in your server-manager. You could place it into /home/e-smith/files/ibays/Primary/cgi-bin as well all though I don't recomend it. Would be to easy for people to guess where it is and with no password others would be able to view it. Then to view it you would type http://mydomain.com/myibay/cgi-bin/sysmon. If you palced it into the Primary cgi-bin you would type http://mydomain.com/cgi-bin/sysmon.