[collectd] Using Cacti as a frontend for collectd

[Sebastian Harl]

Hi Florent,

On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 04:03:30PM +0100, Florent Monbillard wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 10:32, Sebastian Harl <sh at tokkee.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 04:28:06PM +0100, Florent Monbillard wrote:
> >> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 7:49 PM, Pavel Georgiev <pavel at netclime.com> wrote:
> >> > Has anyone managed to use cacti just as a frontend for collectd (or
> >> > use both tools in any other way)? I read in the FAQ there are
> >> > reports of people doing this but I could not find any info about
> >> > that.
> >>
> >> You have to do this manually. Create your datasources and point them to
> >> collectd datasource files. More you have datasources, longer is this step...
> >> When you finish "importing" datasources, you can use them in cacti like usual,
> >> referencing them into graphs.
> >
> > How does such a data-source definition look like? Is it specific for a
> > certain installation or is it some generic definition of the data found
> > in the RRD files. In the latter case, would it make sense to ship your
> > definitions somewhere in contrib/ in the collectd sources so others
> > won't have to recreate them over and over again?
> 
> Sadly, it's the first case : it's specific of your collectd installation
> (RRD directory = BaseDir setting).

Hrm ... too bad. However, judging from the information you've provided,
generating the cacti data-sources could be done by a small script:

> - datasource path: the full path to the RRD file

We'd just have to provide the base path and let the script find all RRD
files automatically.

> - data Input Method: the script/source used to gather data for this data source
> (select it to none as collectd does this job for you)
> - step is 10 in default collectd installation

These would be parameters the user would have to set manually. Well, you
could get them from collectd.conf but parsing the file for that purpose
does not make sense imho.

> - you can safely let others datasource paramaters their default values

> - name of the piece of data inside of the rrd file: to get it, you can
> - Datasource type is also important: in the example above, both are GAUGE type.

When using RRD files generated by collectd, you can get those
information from the RRD filename and types.db.

> - Heartbeat is 20 in default collectd installation

Unless people have a very strange setup, you can assume this to be twice
the step size provided by the user.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Sebastian

-- 
Sebastian "tokkee" Harl +++ GnuPG-ID: 0x8501C7FC +++ http://tokkee.org/

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.         -- Benjamin Franklin

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