[smokeping-users] PNG images not showing on Ubuntu 10.04

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi there,

On Sun, 12 Sep 2010, Barry von Tobel wrote:

> I'm trying to run smokeping on my 10.04 LTS computer but the images
> don't show up. Nothing is shown on Firefox, and Chrome only shows the
> image outline and time axis information. Below is a 'copy url' from Chrome.
>
> http://localhost/cache/smokeping/ima...1283768820.png

You're new to this, aren't you? :)  We've all been there, and it's very
confusing until you start to get everything in all the right pigeonholes.
The URI you sent is no good to anyone except you.  It's a path on your
local machine, and that path/image won't exist on anyone else's machine.
You need to put the image file where we can get at it.  Photobucket?

There are two ways to install most packages.  The way provided by the
author of the package, and the way provided by your particular Linux
distribution's package manager.  Your Linux distribution is Ubuntu,
but you haven't said if you used the Ubuntu package manager or not.
I guess you did.

Unfortunately people take religious views about where things should go
in the filesystem.  That means that the author of a package might use
use one "filesystem hierarchy standard" (FHS) and the distributions's
package manager might use another.  If, for example, the author says
in his documentation after installing the package according to *his*
instructions you must edit the file

/usr/bin/smokeping

but the package manager for your distribution puts smokeping in

/usr/sbin/

then things can get a bit confusing.

I don't use Ubuntu, so I don't know what the package management system and
the installer will have done.  I'd have thought that they ought to have set
up everything correctly for you but it seems like they haven't.  Probably
there are some things you still need to do that the installer can't know
how to do, and probably those things are documented in some sensible place
such as at a wild guess

/usr/share/doc/smokeping/

You need to find out where the documentation is normally expected to
be found after you install a package using Ubuntu's package manager,
so you can always read it when you need to answer questions like this.

"Playing around with pathnames" will not work, and will usually just
get you deeper in the mire.

Have you done what it says you need to do in the docs?  If you don't
know what I'm talking about, take some time off and read them:

http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/doc/smokeping_install.en.html

In a vanilla installation (i.e. if you downloaded the package from the
Smokeping Website and installed it yourself, not using the Ubuntu
package manager to download and install an Ubuntu-packaged version)
you would have to set up a couple of paths in the file

.../smokeping

unfortunately I don't know the full path to .../smokeping on Ubuntu,
someone on the list almost certainly will.  Try logging in as root and type

which smokeping

At another wild guess this will give you something like

/usr/sbin/smokeping

so then type

perldoc /usr/sbin/smokeping

and read the instructions about editing that file which are given in the file.
Save a copy of anything you edit, I would usually copy and edit it like so:

cd /path/to/smokeping
cp -p smokeping smokeping.original
chmod a-w smokeping.original
chattr +i smokeping.original
emacs smokeping

Obviously you will want to use your favourite editor, not mine. :)

If all else fails you might try Google to search the Ubuntu users'
mailing list archives for information about Smokeping, I'm sure that
this will have come up before.

--

73,
Ged.