[smokeping-users] Do graphs have to start at 0?

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi there,

On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, Shane Ronan wrote:

> Do graphs have to start at zero?

http://www.jubileegroup.co.uk/JOS/misc/logarithmic_graphs.png

> I have graphs with no data from 0 - 18ms, yet we scale the graph
> from 0, is there a way to change this?

I rewrote a bit of Smokeping.pm to scale the graphs logarithmically.
So they can't start at 0, even if I wanted them to. :)  Unfortunately
that means that the lower end of the scale now has to be calculated,
or at least chosen based on the data.  There's a findmax() function
in Smokeping.pm already, I added a function findmin() so that scale
ranges give reasonable positioning of the average lines on the plots.
Alternatively I just choose some arbitrary value like 100 microseconds
or 1 millisecond, but that sometimes leaves the graphs looking cramped.
It does well enough for my purposes but it could certainly be improved.

http://www.jubileegroup.co.uk/JOS/misc/Smokeping.pm

Here's the version that I used to find out what was going on:

http://www.jubileegroup.co.uk/JOS/misc/Smokeping.with.logging.pm

I think these are based on version 2.003006 (I can't remember if I
grabbed the Debian version or if I used the original) so you might
need to make some allowances for that.

> Asking a lot of questions lately, but we are putting a big push on
> getting Smokeping up and running as a production tool.

If you're sufficiently familiar with the underlying tools and
protocols you should have it up and running in a couple of hours,
although you might not cover your entire network at the first try.
Then it's just a matter of editing the configuration files to add
more machines.

If there are special requirements in your situation, perhaps you
should share them on the list?  I'm sure you'd get useful feedback.

--

73,
Ged.