[mrtg] MRTG Not updating after upgrade

[Noob Centos Admin]

Hi,

>> http://ruleoftech.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/quick-howto-setting-up-snmp-and-mrtg/
Unfortunately the examples here didn't work either. MRTG keeps
complaining that the variable are unknown in SNMP debugging.

I eventually discovered other people with similar problems and could
only be resolved by using the numeric OID instead of the easier to
remember names. Now the problem is figuring out how do get MRTG to
display the values as expected.

Along the way I found this pretty nice guide for MRTG
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch23_:_Advanced_MRTG_for_Linux

However, following the examples there and adjusting them to fit my
peculiar setup, I find that MRTG is still not showing the values as
expected.

If I use laLoadInt, MRTG apparently treats it as some decimal value,
so all I ever see is a load of 1%.
If I use laLoad, I get 0% throughout
If I use ssCpuRawUser or something, I get a something 10x what I expect

Still experimenting with different formulas to see if I can finally
get something sensible to show up.

[whine]
This has taken so much time, I'm almost about to just write a PHP
script to grab values from an exec("snmpwalk") and dump them into a
mysql database. There might be a chance I get that done faster than
figuring all the nuances in the MRTG and SNMP interactions. :(
[/whine]

It just doesn't make sense that I have to jump through so many hoops
just to get MRTG to work by default. Surely there must be just one
single error in the very early stage that I could correct and viola
MRTG works without anything else in the cfg file?