[mrtg] Re: MRTG with rrdtool vs cricket?

[lists at ripper.informatik.uni-ulm.de]

> Curious if anybody has experince with both mrtg (using rrdtool) and
> cricket (http://www.munitions.com/~jra/cricket/)

I have some experience with "mrtg using rrdtool" (i.e. the 14all extension
to mrtg) as I'm the author of it.

> We're running MRTG V2.8 (I think) without rrdtool but using the mrtg-ip
> contributed modifications.

I don't know about this extension.

> Rrdtool:
> both use rrdtool, so it would seem both would scale without beating the
> I/O subsystem to death.  How smooth is the integration of rrdtool into
> mrtg (last time I looked it appeared to be an option under development
> rather than the default back end, is this accurate?)  Do either have an
> import tool for old mrtg log files?

The integration of rrdtool in mrtg is simple: mrtg calls rrdtool instead of
rateup to log the data (and mrtg doesn't create any html files or gifs
anymore, they are created by a CGI on demand).

> Graph generation:
> I like the fact that cricket defers the graph generation until the page is
> loaded (I have lots of stats that are rarely viewed). Given that rrdtool
> makes mrtg more efficient, does this matter in practice?  Can mrtg still
> dissasociate data gathering and graph generation?

If you use mrtg with rrdtool the graphs are created on demand. This should
drop the load of the gathering machine significantly.

> Ongoing development:
> Looks like cricket's last release was this past August, MRTG  seems to
> change every day.  It seems that mrtg probably has more active
> developers.

mrtg is still maintained. The rrdtool extension of mrtg is activly worked
on, I have some ideas for the future. I don't know about the development of
cricket.

> Which is easier/more fun to hack?

That depends. mrtg/rrdtool (14all) should be easier to understand (at least
the cgi ;-) and to enhance. But that's just my opinion.

Rainer
-- 
Rainer.Bawidamann at informatik.uni-ulm.de

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