mrtg MRTG-REFERENCE(1)
NAME
mrtg-reference - MRTG 2.16.2 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:
o Keywords must start at the beginning of a line.
o Lines which follow a keyword line which start with a
blank are appended to the keyword line
o Empty Lines are ignored
o Lines starting with a # sign are comments.
o 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.
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
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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, imagedir
and logdir.
Example:
Htmldir: /www/mrtg/
ImageDir
ImageDir specifies the directory where the images live. They
should be under the html directory.
Example:
Imagedir: /www/mrtg/images
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
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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:
o The generated HTML page contains the right information
about the calling interval ...
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o 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
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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.
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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 imagedir) 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
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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/
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.
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.
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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.
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
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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 images 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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
persistant 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.
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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
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(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
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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
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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
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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:
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PageTop[myrouter]:
Traffic Analysis for ETZ C95.1
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.
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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
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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.
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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 tag for the
generated webpages.
Example:
BodyTag[myrouter]:
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:
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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).
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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.
As well as the Directory option requires, the clone
directory must already exist; mrtg will not create it.
Example:
WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
Directory[myrouter]: myrouter
Clonedirectory[myrouter]: myclonedirectory
NOTE: the Clonedirectory option must always be 'relative' or
bad things will happen.
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
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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:
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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
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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
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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 images. Normally these images 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
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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
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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
seperated 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
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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:
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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]: In:
LegendO[myrouter]: 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
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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
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 image.
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 image.
Example:
TimeStrPos[myrouter]: RU
TimeStrFmt
Using this keyword you may specify format of the timestamp
to be placed on the image (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
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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
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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 programms 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 $router
variable the unbroken threshold value, and the current
parameter value.
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ThreshMinO, ThreshMaxO, ThreshProgO, and ThreshProgOKO
These work the same as their *I counterparts, except on the
Output (second) parameter.
SetEnv
When calling threshold scripts from within your cfg file you
might want to pass some data on to the script. This can be
done with the SetEnv configuration option which takes a
series of environment variable assignments. Note that the
quotes are mandatory. This does not work for external
scripts. It is not possible to set environment variables per
target.
Example:
SetEnv[myrouter]: EMAIL="contact_email@someplace.net"
HOST="www.some_server.net"
HW Failure Bassed Threshold Checking
When using rrd based logging with HW RRAs defined. You can
use the confidence bounds violations stored in the FAILURES
RRA for threshold based alerts.
There the all target specific threshold variables have a
Hold-Winters counterpart:
ThreshMailAddress -> HWThreshMailAddress
ThreshMinI -> HWThreshMinI
...
The global variables for threshold checking are shared
except for the
ThreshHyst -> HWThreshHyst
And HWThreshDesc sets the HWTHRESH_DESC variable.
PER TARGET DEFAULT VALUES
Pre- and Postfix
To save yourself some typing you can define a target called
'^'. The text of every Keyword you define for this target
will be PREPENDED to the corresponding Keyword of all the
targets defined below this line. The same goes for a Target
called '$' 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,
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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[^]: NoWhere Unis Traffic Stats
PageTop[$]: Contact Peter Norton if you have any questions
To remove the prepend/append value, specify an empty value,
e.g.:
PageTop[^]:
PageTop[$]:
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
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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.
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--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 succesful. 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
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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]: Stats for our ISDN Line
Cfg for several Routers.
WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
Title[^]: Traffic Analysis for
PageTop[^]: Stats for
PageTop[$]: Contact The Chief if you notice anybody
MaxBytes[_]: 8000
Options[_]: growright
Title[isdn]: our ISDN Line
PageTop[isdn]: our ISDN Line
Target[isdn]: 2:public@router.somplace.edu
Title[backb]: our Campus Backbone
PageTop[backb]: our Campus Backbone
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
Target[isdn2]: 3:public@router.somplace.edu
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker and many contributors
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
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_______________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE|
|_______________________________________
| Availability | SUNWmrtg |
|_______________________________________
| Interface Stability| Uncommitted |
|____________________|_________________|
NOTES
Source for mrtg is available from
http://www.opensolaris.org/.
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