[rrd-users] RRDTool is behaving differently on within a 5 minute sampling boundary?

[Petteri Matilainen]

On 2.7.2013 11:10, James Bensley wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I use the infamous Cacti [1] graphing suite for graphing systems,
> which uses RRD for data storage and graphing. I am generating some
> graphs on the CLI and have some odd graphs coming out of rrdtool. I
> have been using the following command [2] in a script to generate
> graphs happily for a while. I have a problem though in that today I
> have generated a graph for a data source which I previously haven't
> before. The graph is missing the horizontal red line (for the 95th
> percentile value of this data source). The start and end epoch times I
> tried are from 2013-04-01 00:00 to 2013-04-30 23:55 to graph the whole
> month of April. It turns out that when graphing up until 2013-04-30
> 12:28 works fine, see this graph [3]. When I graph up until 12:29 (one
> minute later!) the graph comes out like this [4]. Graphing up until
> any time after 12:29 doesn't include that red horizontal rule either.
>
> How can the graph output be different when the data in the RRD file is
> stored in 5 minute timestamped increments, which fall on round
> multiples of 5 (12:20, 12:25, 12:30, 12:35...). There is no missing
> data sample here, please see [5].
>
> If anyone can explain to me what is going on here I would be very grateful.
> Many thanks for your time,
> James.
>
> [1] http://www.cacti.net/
>
> [2] sudo /usr/bin/rrdtool graph /path/to/graphs/1111.png
> --imgformat=PNG --start=1364770800 --end=1367321280 --title='My-Graph'
> --rigid --base=1000 --height=120 --width=500 --alt-autoscale-max
> --lower-limit=0 --vertical-label='bits per second' --slope-mode --font
> TITLE:10: --font AXIS:8: --font LEGEND:7: --font UNIT:8:
> DEF:in="/path/to/rrds/lala.rrd":traffic_in:AVERAGE
> DEF:out="/path/to/rrds/lala.rrd":traffic_out:AVERAGE
> VDEF:inbytesavg=in,AVERAGE VDEF:outbytesavg=out,AVERAGE
> CDEF:inbytesmod=in,UN,inbytesavg,in,IF
> CDEF:outbytesmod=out,UN,outbytesavg,out,IF CDEF:speedin=in,8,*
> CDEF:speedout=out,8,* VDEF:intotal=inbytesmod,TOTAL
> VDEF:outtotal=outbytesmod,TOTAL AREA:speedin#00CF00FF:"Inbound"
> GPRINT:speedin:LAST:"Current\:%8.2lf %s"
> GPRINT:speedin:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s"
> GPRINT:speedin:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s"  GPRINT:intotal:"Total
> In\:%8.2lf %s" COMMENT:" \c" LINE1:speedout#002A97FF:"Outbound"
> GPRINT:speedout:LAST:"Current\:%8.2lf %s"
> GPRINT:speedout:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s"
> GPRINT:speedout:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s"  GPRINT:outtotal:"Total
> Out\:%8.2lf %s \c" COMMENT:" \c" HRULE:9580147#FF0000FF:"95th
> Percentile" COMMENT:"(9.58 mbit in+out)\c" PRINT:intotal:"%8.2lf%SBs
> In" PRINT:outtotal:"%8.2lf%SBs Out" PRINT:speedin:AVERAGE:"%8.2lf%sbps
> In" PRINT:speedout:AVERAGE:"%8.2lf%sbps Out"
> PRINT:speedin:MAX:"%8.2lf%sbps In" PRINT:speedout:MAX:"%8.2lf%sbps
> Out"
>
> [3] http://oi44.tinypic.com/2ep5vl2.jpg
>
> [4] http://oi41.tinypic.com/dx0fsz.jpg
>
> [5] $ sudo rrdtool fetch /path/to/rrds/lala.rrd -s 1367320800 -e
> 1367321400  AVERAGE
>                       traffic_in         traffic_out
>
> 1367321100: 7.8530783986e+04 2.1480852477e+05
> 1367321400: 7.4297887604e+04 2.4740713005e+05
> 1367321700: 9.0767816984e+04 2.7918390929e+05
>
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Hi James,

It seems that the autoscale has kicked in on the latter graph (as you 
have alt-autoscale-max). In the first graph your maximum data is 10.01 M 
so the autoscale scales the graph to a bit higher that 10 M. On the 
latter graph maximum is 8.00 due to consolidation and so the autoscale 
scales the graph at 8 M so the red line is not visible. I haven't used 
the 95th percentile so I don't know how it works but does it supposed to 
have the line at 95 % of the 8 M on the latter graph?

Also there is weird switch from integers to floats on the y-axis labels. 
I have seen that before with the alt-autoscale function and it's not 
nice. I've asked about it on the list but no answer, apparently you 
can't currently specify the number format of the y-axis and when using 
the alt-autoscale it switches from integer to float when the max and min 
of the graph is small enough (maybe <10).

regards,

Pete