[rrd-users] event2vrule, "Re: Graphing abritary events"

[Dave Plonka]

Hi Gerhardus,

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 05:50:31PM +0000, Gerhardus.Geldenhuis at gta-travel.com wrote:
> We use rrdgraph to monitor our application response time and other and
> can see corresponding increase/decrease in values relevant to quarterly
> code releases. What I would like to do is represent distinct events on a
> graph to enable me/others to easily associate rise and fall on the graph
> with specific events. I could just plot it as a "background" fill with
> the max value of the graph but I don't think it is a very flexible
> solution. I am curious if anyone else has done something similar and how
> you have achieved it, any screenshots would be great. 

There are samples in this slideshow here, i.e. slides 4 and 8:

   http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/lisa/lisa2003/lisa-netgear-sntp.pdf

> What I would like would be to have a big red dot with some legend
> attached that show up on the graph that can represent specific events in
> time.
> 
> Any thoughts and discussion would be appreciated.

I do it with VRULE (vertical rule/line).  There is a tool called
"event2vrule" in the FlowScan distribution:

  http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/FlowScan/

event2vrule takes a text log file, one event per line and adds the
VRULE statements to your graph command automatically.  It is described
in the docs here:

  http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/FlowScan/INSTALL.html#Adding_Events_to_Graphs
 
Dave

-- 
plonka at doit.wisc.edu  http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/  Madison, WI