[rrd-users] values being averaged.

[Alex van den Bogaerdt]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 10:51:58AM -0600, Marc Powell wrote:
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: rrd-users-bounces at lists.oetiker.ch [mailto:rrd-users-
> > bounces at lists.oetiker.ch] On Behalf Of Richard.W.Brown at nokia.com
> > Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 10:19 AM
> > To: alex at ergens.op.het.net; rrd-users at lists.oetiker.ch
> > Subject: Re: [rrd-users] values being averaged.

[
 checking.... yes:
 Mail-Followup-To: rrd-users at lists.oetiker.ch
]

I haven't seen that message yet, probably because of greylisting as
a result of posting to me instead of to the list.

I therefore will reply here:

> > I had already read through the documentation, man pages and tutorials
> > before posting. I had also spent some time with just trial and error
> > where I wanted to clarify some of the examples as see what happened
> if.
> > So your assumption was wrong :-)

Not at all. Your question was a FAQ, and normalization is explained.
If you've missed that, you may have skimmed the docs but you did not
read them.

In RRDtool, GAUGE is a rate. It means: "This is already a rate, do not
compute one by looking at differences between the previous value and
the current one. Just use the number as "something per second" and
continue processing".

> > My biggest assumption was that the documentation was correct, this
> seems
> > to be incorrect, as the tutorial rrd_beginners
> > http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/tut/rrd-beginners.en.html states quiet
> > clearly:
> > "GAUGE does not save the rate of change. It saves the actual value
> > itself. There are no divisions or calculations."

You are most welcome to update the documentation, or suggest a
different wording to the author of that page.

> I personally don't blame him. This is covered almost weekly in the
> archives, at least several times a month. There's a _lot_ of information
> related to this available if you look.

Thanks, and I second that.

-- 
Alex van den Bogaerdt
http://www.vandenbogaerdt.nl/rrdtool/