From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 7 08:20:39 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9946A16A416 for ; Tue, 7 Nov 2006 08:20:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from howie@thingy.com) Received: from mail.thingy.com (wotsit.thingy.com [212.21.100.67]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC72143D45 for ; Tue, 7 Nov 2006 08:20:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from howie@thingy.com) Received: (qmail 33804 invoked by uid 0); 7 Nov 2006 08:20:37 +0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.1.10?) (howie@thingy.com@212.21.124.49) by wotsit3.thingy.com with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 7 Nov 2006 08:20:37 +0000 Message-ID: <455041D4.5030702@thingy.com> Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 08:20:36 +0000 From: Howard Jones User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (Macintosh/20060909) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeff Mohler , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: Re: Cacti -vs- mrtg X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 08:20:39 -0000 Jeff Mohler wrote: > I can use MRTG, and have MRTG do what I want it to do. > > Id like to try cacti, but..am I alone in finding that it's a PITA? > > Im not trying to be negative, just looking for a reality check. > > > I like the simplicity of mrtg, but I like the "go back in time" of > cacti to view performance data. > > > If its just a matter of a package that's not ready for Joe Public > (thats me)..Id accept that. :) I think it's more that there's more than one kind of Joe Public. If you want to present your graphs to your customers/users, or a subset to different users, or apply the same set of graphs to a number of different hosts, or make custom rrdtool graphs (stacks, additional graph elements), then Cacti will let you do that. If you just want a quick & dirty tool that's easy to configure for your handful of hosts, then MRTG is just the job. We use both where I work, with Cacti for the bulk-graphing and customer facing stuff, and some MRTG where I just knocked up a quick perl script to measure something. Cacti has quite a nice plugin system, and importable templates from other users that you might be able to use to save yourself some time. I find getting my own templates working in Cacti to be a PITA too, though. It also has some useful plugins, including a couple of my own. The main one of those being PHP Network Weathermap (http://wotsit.thingy.com/haj/cacti/) which will work with both MRTG and Cacti, to produce graphical overviews of your network. Bear in mind there are also other tools out there in the MRTG/Cacti space: DVG, NRG, Hermes, Cricket... rrdtool.org has a list of many. Most are geared towards folks running 100s-1000s of graphs, that I have seen, and may not be your kind of thing, as a result. Best Regards, Howie