[mrtg-developers] rateup logarithmic scale

[Mij]

hello

I found some posts regarding this topic
in the archives. No replies anyway. So
i'm gonna focus the point one more time.

(for those reading the archive)
Logarithmic scale means precision on little
values and approximation on bigger values.
The smaller the data to graph, the higher
the precision it's expressed with.
A logarithmic graph is just a graph scaling
with logarithmic instead of linear values.
To give an example, a scale can be (base-10 logarithm)
0, 10, 100, 1000 [, ..] instead of 0, 10, 20, 30 [, ..]
The concept beneath them is definitely easy.

Anyhow, logarithmic graphs are perfect for representing
variables like the ones commonly monitored by mrtg.

If for example you have bandwidth for 10Mbps and normally
swap only 15KB/s (about 0.1 Mbps), your graphs will get
completely *flat* if mrtg checks for 1 second you're making
traffic for 7 Mbps. You will keep without monitoring
information for the next 36 hours.
It's not a MRTG fault. The problem is at the ground.
The same can happen to memory usage and other targets.


This can be only resolved graphing those variables with
logarithmic y scale.

[end for-archive]


I saw rrdtool does that. RRDTool is nice and works the right
way (generating graph just on request), and the fact rateup's
graphs are easier to read and cleaner to view is a completely
personal opinion I think other people could share.
So, what about implementing this feature in rateup too?
I don't know gd but it shouldn't be too difficult I guess.

It worths the game, and maybe tobi would be also interested.
If some mrtg/gd hacker has some time to add this feature, even
at compile time, please notice the mailing list.

Otherwise I will try to do it myself.

bye

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