[mrtg] Re: lockfile messages?

[Justin Shore]

At 3:14 PM -0500 3/21/00, Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
>I just installed the 2.8.8-1 RPM on mandrake 6.1 (similar to redhat 
>6.1) linux.  Apparently, every time the job runs out of the crontab, 
>I get the following:
>
>ERROR: I guess another mrtg is running. A lockfile (./mrtg.cfg_l) aged
>1 seconds is hanging around. If you are sure that no other mrtg
>is running you can remove the lockfile
>
>This is kind of mystifying, since I have proved (I think) that cron 
>is working okay.  I put a
>'echo xxx | mail dswartz' into the script that cron runs, and I only 
>see it once per invocation of mrtg, so...

How big is that .cfg file you're running from cron?  How long does it 
take to complete its run?  How often do you run it from your crontab? 
Odds are that two different runs of MRTG are overlapping.  Check the 
times that it mailed you against how long it takes to complete a run 
by hand.  You'll probably find out that its overlapping.  Each time 
MRTG runs with a certain .cfg it creates a lockfile for that .cfg so 
no two instances of MRTG will edit the log at the same time (race 
condition).  If one run takes so long to complete that it is still 
running when its called from cron again, MRTG will see that lockfile 
and bitch at you.  This could be caused by a slow device on in your 
.cfg or by having too many items in that .cfg.  If its the later, 
break it into smaller .cfgs and run it that way.

HTH
   Justin
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Justin Shore       K-State Linux Distro Mirror, Sysadmin
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