[mrtg] Re: mrtg log file with bunches of 0's

[Wupsje]

here goes..
to answer your questions.. yes i've visited the page.. read the FAQ, did
google searches on newsgroups & went through the archives of the mailing
list.

What i'm really trying to do (and i thought i made that clear in my first
email) is generating stats of the "pages served" value of a webserver (IIS)
machine.
This obviously is an incrementing counter. And i'm using a 5 minutes
scheduled job to run a batch file to run MRTG to get the value.
Now to my knowlegde of the website, I shouldn't use neither gauge or
absolute option for this type of counter.

Anyways.. Since I figured there could also be something wrong with my
program and MRTG communication I fixed up a little test program that fed
random values to MRTG.
Which seemed to work fince since MRTG actually processes them and calculates
averages and stuff.

Whereas with my actual "pages served" counter it doet nothing.
I'm fairly certain that the "pages served" does get served to MRTG in the
right way and that it's never less than the previous value.
Nevertheless only the first line in the MRTG .log file changes to reflect
the last read value.

I've looked at the MaxBytes option i've tested with it, but it doesn't seem
to have any effect.
I've set mine to alot more (also at less) then the "pages served" counter,
but it does not change the way the log file looks.

Could it be anything else or have I (we) concidered all the options already?

Wouter


-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: mrtg-bounce at list.ee.ethz.ch
[mailto:mrtg-bounce at list.ee.ethz.ch]Namens Alex van den Bogaerdt
Verzonden: maandag 25 februari 2002 0:18
Aan: Wupsje
CC: MRTG users
Onderwerp: [mrtg] Re: mrtg log file with bunches of 0's



Wupsje wrote:

> To be clear.. i'm trying to log the pages served by a particular website
eg
> (incrementing (non resetting) counters)

Yet in another mail you write about random values.  So, what is it?

I bet you haven't read this list for a while, I'm wondering if you've
visited the faq site.

> Shouldn't need for gauge or absolute then should I?

This is something you really should know.  MRTG needs a rate.
rate = delta_counter / delta_time.
delta_counter = current_counter - previous_counter
delta_time    = current_time - previous_time
MRTG is doing these calculations.  However, sometimes it shouldn't.  If
the number you retrieve is already "delta_counter" obviously you shouldn't
do the calculation again and you should specify the option absolute.  If
the number you fetch is already a rate or if the number doesn't increment
over time (such as temperature, cpu-utilisation) then MRTG should not
calculate delta_time nor delta_counter.  In this case, use gauge.

> 1014484123 0 43493
> 1014484123 0 0 0 0

The data has been read into MRTG and yet the rate is zero.  This can
happen if the newly fetched value is lower than the previous value or
if the rate is too high.

If you feed truly random data to MRTG, there will be intervals that
actually look as if the counter has incremented with a proper amount
(proper being defined with MaxBytes).  There will therefore be lines
in the log file that look okay.  They aren't.  One random number has
nothing to do with the next random number so you shouldn't do calculations
on them.  No calculations means using gauge.

Don't ask if you should use gauge/absolute.  *Know* whether or not you
should use either of them.

--
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