<TABLE WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR=silver CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4><TR><TD>
<FONT COLOR=black SIZE="+2"><B>
<A NAME="WHAT">What is the Multi Router Traffic Grapher</A>
</B></FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<P><B>The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor
the traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages
containing GIF images which provide a LIVE visual representation of
this traffic. Check <A HREF="http://www.ee.ethz.ch/stats/mrtg/"
>http://www.ee.ethz.ch/stats/mrtg/</A> for an example. MRTG is based
on Perl and C and works under UNIX and Windows NT. MRTG is being successfully
used on many sites arrond the net.
Check the <A HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/users.html"
>MRTG-Site-Map</A>.</B></P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR=gold CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5><TR><TD ALIGN=CENTER>
<FONT COLOR=black>MRTG is available
under the GNU PUBLIC LICENSE.<BR>
The only thing I would like to ask happy users to do, is to<BR>
send a
<B>Picture Postcard</B> to:<BR> <TT>Tobias Oetiker,
D-ELEK, ETH Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland</TT>
</FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<MULTICOL COLS=2><P>MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to
read the traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program which
logs the traffic data and creates beautiful graphs representing the
traffic on the monitored network connection. These graphs are embedded
into webpages which can be viewed from any modern Web-browser</P>
<P>In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates visual
representations of the traffic seen during the last seven days, the
last four weeks and the last twelve months. This is possible because
MRTG keeps a log of all the data it has pulled from the router. This
log is automatically consolidated, so that it does not grow over time,
but still contains all the relevant data for all the traffic seen over
the last two years. This is all performed in an efficient manner.
Therefore you can monitor 50 or more network links from any halfway
decent UNIX box. </P>
<P>MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic though, it is possible to
monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can even use an
external program to gather the data which should be monitored via
MRTG. People are using MRTG, to monitor things such as System Load,
Login Sessions, Modem availability and more. MRTG even allows you to
accumulate two or more data sources into a single graph.</P>
</MULTICOL>
<OL>
<LI>Works on most UNIX platforms and Windows NT</LI>
<LI>Uses Perl for easy customization</LI>
<LI>Has a highly portable SNMP implementation written entirely in
Perl thanks to Simon Leinen. There is no need to install any
external SNMP package.</LI>
<LI>MRTG's logfiles do NOT grow. Thanks to the use of a unique data
consolidation algorithm.
<LI>MRTG comes with a semi-automatic configuration tool.</LI>
<LI>MRTG's query engine checks for port reconfigurations on the
router and warns the user when they occur.</LI>
<LI>Time critical routines are written in C thanks to the initiative
of Dave Rand my Co-Author</LI>
<LI>Graphics are generated directly in GIF format, using the
GD library by Thomas Boutell.</LI>
<LI>The look of the webpages produced by MRTG is highly
configurable.</LI>
<LI>MRTG is available under the GNU PUBLIC LICENSE.</LI>
<A NAME="HIST"></A>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR=silver CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4><TR><TD>
<FONT COLOR=black SIZE="+2"><B>
History of MRTG
</B></FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<MULTICOL COLS=2> <P>In 1994 I was working at a site where we had one
64kbit line to the outside world. Obviously everybody was interested
in knowing how the link was performing. So I wrote a quick hack which
created a constantly updated graph on the web, showing the traffic
load on our Internet link. This eventually evolved into a rather
configurable Perl script called MRTG-1.0 which I released in spring
1995. After a few updates I left my job at DMU, to start work at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Due to lack of time I had to
put MRTG aside. One day in January of 1996, I received email from
Dave Rand asking if I had any ideas why MRTG was so slow. Actually I
did. MRTG's programming was not very efficient and it was written
entirely in Perl. After a week or so, Dave wrote back to me and said
he had tried what I had suggested for improving MRTG's speed. Since
the changes did not help much, he had decided to rewrite the
time-critical sections of MRTG in C. The code was attached to his
email. His tool increased the speed of MRTG by a factor of 40! This
got me out of my 'MRTG ignorance' and I started to spend my spare time
developing of MRTG-2.</P>
<P>Soon after MRTG-2 development had begun I started to give beta
copies to interested parties. In return I got many feature patches, a
lot of user feedback and bug fixes. The product you are getting now is
the result of a wonderful collaboration of many people. I would like
to take this opportunity to thank them all. (See the files CHANGES and
CONTRIBUTORS in the MRTG distribution.)</P>
</MULTICOL>
<A NAME="RELE"></A>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR=silver CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4><TR><TD>
<FONT COLOR=black SIZE="+2"><B>
Release Notes
</B></FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<DL>
<DT>Version 2.5.4
<DD><B>Bugfixes:</B>diff routine in rateup.c corrected, better matching for
Cisco version number matching in cfgmaker, improved regexp matchin in indexmaker,
ignore whitespace in answers from external gatherers, do not complain
if child rateup process has already terminated before the wait in the mrtg,
better handling of stale lockfiles.
<DD><B>Features:</B>Configurable <a href="mrtg-conf.html#Target-SNMP-Parameters">SNMP parameters</a>.
<DT>Version 2.5
<DD><B>Bugfixes</B>: Skewing at log interval bounderies fixed.
White space at line-endings in cfgfiles handled gracefully.
MaxBytes line is only drawn if it is stricly inside the graph.
Timezone handling improved. Further fighting against the overflow bug.
<DD><B>Features</B>: More compatible cfgmaker (--vendor switch).
Added a README about the logfile-format. Made a package in zip
format available for our NT friends. Same goes for rateup.
<DD><B>Contribs:</B>: PingProbe updated. Atmmaker to create cfg
files for FORE ASX. Rewrite of mailstats script.
<DT>Version 2.4
<DD>Bugfixes: IconDir works now, mrtg.cfg-dist debugged and rewritten,
replace int by sprintf "%.0f" to better handle large numbers,
better 'external command' Target parsing, debugged BER.pm ...
<DD> Application tips for Apache-1.2 added to mrtg.cfg-dist
<DD> added nopercent option to supress display of percentage in
html page.
<DD> added contrib by Philippe.Simonet@SWISSTELECOM.com:
a c-program to create gifs showing the traffic distribution over time
<DT>Version 2.3
<DD>New Configuration Options: IconDir, XScale, YScale, Weekformat
check 'mrtg.cfg-dist' for details.
<DD>New Pingprobe version
<DD>Improved behaviour of rateup with Unscaled Option, MaxBytes and
AbsMax set. Now, the graphs will be scaled all the same as soon
as the traffic goes over MaxBytes.
<DD>Several bugfixes in rateup.c
<DT>Version 2.2
<DD>Lots of new and exciting things in the contrib area.
<DD>Made graphs in indexmaker generated pages clickable
<DD>made mrtg observe order of routers in cfg file .... as suggested by
Mick Ghazey
<DD>Added timezone configurable to set a timezone per router. Details in
<TT>mrtg.cfg-dist</TT> as suggested by Jun (John) Wu
<DD>Added MaxBytes sanity check ....
<DD>Fixed portability problem of Makefile under IRIX
<OL>
<LI><P>Get the latest Version of MRTG from:<BR>
<A HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/"
>http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/</A></P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Get and compile the GD library by Thomas Boutell:<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.boutell.com/gd/">http://www.boutell.com/gd/</A></P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Make sure you have Perl Version 5.003 or later on your
system:<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.perl.com/perl/info/software.html"
>http://www.perl.com/perl/info/software.html</A></P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Edit the MRTG <B><TT>Makefile</TT></B> to fit your system. At
least change the <TT>PERL</TT> and <TT>GD_LIB</TT> variables.<BR>
Then use <B><TT>make rateup</TT></B> to create the rateup binary.<BR>
And <B><TT>make substitute</TT></B> to insert the path of your Perl binary
into the perlscripts which come with MRTG.
</P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Decide where MRTG should store the webpages it creates.
Copy
the <B><TT>mrtg*.gif</TT></B> files
into this directory. They will be referenced in
the generated webpages. You may also want to move
the readme.html file to this directory so that you
have the docs handy whenever you need
them.</P>
</LI>
<LI><P>All the other files from the MRTG distribution
should go into your MRTG binary directory.
This directory can be anywhere because
MRTG will find its location upon startup. The
following files are required to be in MRTG-bin: <TT>BER.pm,
SNMP_Session.pm, mrtg, rateup</TT>.</P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Create your personal <B><TT>mrtg.cfg</TT></B> file. You
can find the documentation about this in the file
<B><TT><A HREF="mrtg-conf.html">mrtg-conf.html</a></TT></B>
See the Configuration Hints section for some
further help. The difficult part in creating the
configuration file is getting your
router-port assignment correct. To help you with this, the
<B><TT>cfgmaker</TT></B> tool will generate all the
router specific parts of your configuration file.
<BLOCKQUOTE><B><TT>
cfgmaker <community>@<router-host-name or IP></TT></B>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
If you don't know the community of your router, try
<B><TT>public</TT></B> as community name.</P>
</LI>
<LI><P><FONT COLOR=red>If you are upgrading from any pre 2.0
version of MRTG, you need
to run the <TT><B>convert</B></TT> script with your old logfiles,
in order to bring them over to the mrtg-2.0 log-file-format.</FONT></P></LI>
<LI><P>Try to start MRTG. Type <B><TT>./mrtg mrtg.cfg</TT></B>
on the command line, while you are in your MRTG binary
directory. MRTG will
now parse your configuration file, and complain if you have introduced
any unknown keywords or structures. If MRTG is happy with the cfg
file, it starts gathering traffic data from the routers you have
specified. With this information it will then start the rateup
tool which will
create a logfile and a traffic graph GIF for each <B>Target</B>.
When you start MRTG for the very first time, rateup will
complain that it can not find any logfiles and the graphs generated
will look rather empty.
Just ignore the complaints. If you remove the empty graphs, and
run MRTG again, rateup will create new graphs which look better.</P>
</LI>
<LI><P>Integrate MRTG into your crontab. Just add the
following line to your crontab file to have MRTG run every 5
minutes (The line is broken for readability only. Replace the
backslash in the first line with the second line):
<P>
<B><TT>0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * \<BR>
<mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg</TT></B>
</P>
</LI>
</OL>
<A NAME="TIPS"></A>
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<FONT COLOR=black SIZE="+2"><B>
Configuration Tips
</B></FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<UL>
<LI><P>If you are monitoring a number of links, you might want to
create an overview page. For our own site I have created the
<B><TT>indexmaker</TT></B> script, which you can use to create a
html page containing hrefs that point to your individual traffic
statistics pages. Note, that you need to edit this script for
your purposes. The script you got, includes our Universities Logo
(http://www.ee.ethz.ch/eth.199x32.gif) into the page.
<P>
<TT><B>indexmaker <mrtg.cfg>
<regexp for router-names></B></TT>
</P>
</LI>
<LI><P>If you are monitoring many targets, use the special target names
'^' and '$' to prepend or append text to any of the Keywords in the
sections below. Note that the definition of the '^' and '$' targets
are position dependant. They always influence the lines below in the cfg
file. The special target '_' for specifying defaults may come
handy as well.</P>
</LI>
<LI>
<P>
Since MRTG updates it's graphs every 5 minutes, you may
experience problems with proxy caches and local Netscape browser
caches. Sometimes these caches will return the old cached graphics
instead of the real and updated versions from the webserver.
</P>
<P>If you are running the apache webserver, you can use the
<B>WriteExpire</B> Keyword in the mrtg.cfg file. With this, mrtg will
create *.meta files for each gif and html page. These files will
contain 'Expire' headers which the Apache webserver can ship out
together with the gif and html pages (Use to <B>MetaDir</B>
keyword in the
apache config file to enable this). With the information from
the expire headers, Netscape and
all the proxy caches will know when they have to fetch a new
version
of the file from your website and when they can use their cached
version.</P>
</LI>
<LI>
<P>Although MRTG's primary use is traffic monitoring, you can
observe any SNMP variable you want. People are using it to
monitor ModemBanks, ServerLoad, ErrorRates on Interfaces and
many other things. If you are using MRTG for something other
than traffic monitoring, please send me a short blurb to include
here. Best would be with a sample URL and some hints about how
you have configured MRTG ...
</P>
</LI>
<P><I><B>Q:</B> I need more documentation ... </I><BR>
<B>A:</B> Make sure you have checked the files 'mrtg-conf.html' and
'mibhelp.txt' as well as the contributed scripts in the 'contrib'
directory of you mrtg distribution. If you need even more infos, make
sure to check the mailing list archive as well. There has also been an article about SNMP
and mrtg in a recent Linux Journal.
<!-- It's author David Guerrero has made it
available on the net.
Check <A HREF="http://www.mec.es/~david/papers/snmp"
>http://www.mec.es/~david/papers/snmp</A> -->
</P>
<P><I><B>Q:</B> My perl complains about the SNMP_Session.pm library
... </I><BR>
<B>A:</B> If you are running a version of perl before 5.002 you should
use SNMP_Session.pm-for-perl5.001 .</P>
<P><I><B>Q:</B> The GIFs created by MRTG look very strange. Not all the
grid lines are drawn and ... </I><BR>
<B>A:</B> Remove the *-{week,day,month,year}.gif files and start MRTG
again. Using MRTG for the first time, you might have to do this
twice. This will also help, when you introduce new routers into the cfg
file.</P>
<P><I><B>Q:</B> What is my Community Name?</I><BR>
<B>A:</B> Try 'public', as this is the default Community Name.</P>
<P><I><B>Q:</B> I compiled your program and I get the following errors:
at the command line I typed <TT>./mrtg kirit.cfg</TT> and I get :</I>
<PRE>
Can't locate Socket.pm in @INC at /SNMP_Session.pm line 27.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /SNMP_Session.pm line 27.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./mrtg line 356.
</PRE>
<B>A:</B> You need to get Perl5 installed properly. Socket.pm comes with
Perl5 and is an integral part of Perl5. Perl5 comes
with compiled in defaults about where it should look for its libraries (eg
Socket.pm). Type <TT>'perl -V'</TT> to see what your perl assumes ... And
get it fixed ... Eg by installing it properly.<P>
<B>If your questions are still not answered, make sure to check out the
<A HREF="http://www.ltinet.net/info/mrtg/noflashmrtg.htm"
>Official MRTG FAQ Site</A> and browse the
<A HREF="http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/mrtg">MRTG Mailing list
Archives</A>.</B>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
<TABLE CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=476><TR><TD>
<P>There are two mailing lists for MRTG available. One is called
'mrtg' and is a discussion list for users and developers. The other is
called 'mrtg-announce' and is a low volume list for MRTG
related announcements.</P>
<P> To subscribe to these mailing lists, send a message with the subject
line <B>subscribe</B> to either <B>mrtg-request@list.ee.ethz.ch</B> or
<B>mrtg-announce-request@list.ee.ethz.ch</B>. For posting to the mrtg list
use the address <B>mrtg@list.ee.ethz.ch</B>.</P>
<P>Further information about the usage of the mailing lists is
available by sending a message with the subject line '<I>help</I>' to
either one of the request addresses.</P>
<P>For past activity there is also a mailing list archive available:
<A HREF="http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/mrtg"
>http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/mrtg</A>
</P>
<A NAME="NT"></A>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" BGCOLOR=silver CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4><TR><TD>
<FONT COLOR=black SIZE="+2"><B>
MRTG on Windows NT
</B></FONT></TD></TR></TABLE>
<P><I>By Stuart Schneider <SchneiS@testlab.orst.edu></I></P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4><TR>
<TD BGCOLOR="#ff0000"> </TD><TD>
<P><B>NEW:</B> For more verbose instructions, check out the
<A HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/windows_nt_idiot.htm"
>The Windows NT Idiot's Guide to MRTG</A>
by <A HREF="mailto:ddivins@moon.jic.com">David S. Divins</A></P></TD>
<TD BGCOLOR="#ff0000"> </TD></TR></TABLE>
<P>To setup mrtg on a WindowsNT system, you can follow the instructions
already provided for UNIX systems with the following addition:</P>
<P>6.5. Change the $main::OS setting at the top of the mrtg script to
equal 'NT'.</P>
<P>Or, for those who need a little extra help, follow these steps:</P>
<UL>
<LI>
Download and unpack the latest version of mrtg from:
<A HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/"
>http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/</A>.
</LI>
<LI>
Download and install the latest version of Perl 5 for Win32 from
<A HREF="http://www.ActiveState.com/overview.htm">Activware</A>.
</LI>
<LI>Download the pre-compiled version of rateup from:
<A HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/"
>http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/</A>
</LI>
<LI> Edit the main mrtg script downloaded in step #1 and remove the
"#" from the beginning of the line that reads "$main::OS = 'NT';".
</LI>
<LI>Create a batch file with the following command:
perl {path to mrtg}\mrtg {path to mrtg.cfg}\mrtg.cfg
<P>For example: <TT>perl c:\mrtg\mrtg c:\mrtg\mrtg.cfg</TT></P>
</LI>
<LI> Use cfgmaker or manually configure your mrtg.cfg file
(documentation on the structure of the file is in the file
mrtg.cfg-dist).</LI>
<LI>
Execute your batch file from step #6 from a command prompt to
verify that there are no errors in your mrtg.cfg file and that
everything is working correctly. (On the first pass it is normal to see
four warnings from Rateup about your log files for each target).
</LI>
<LI>If everything looks good, configure the scheduler (AT) service to run the
batch file from step #6 every 5 minutes. Alternatively you might want to use
this perlscript to start mrtg every 300 seconds:
<PRE>
$interval=300;
while (1) {
sleep( $interval - time() % $interval );
system 'c:\bin\perl mrtg mrtg.cfg';
}
</PRE>
You may also want to check the <A
HREF="http://www.queso.com/mrtgstatupdater.htm">MRTG Statistic
Updater</A> by Jason Levine. This is a VB tool which runs as a service
on your NT and does take care of starting mrtg every 5 minutes.
</LI>
</UL>
<HR NOSHADE SIZE=2>
<P>If you have any questions about this program,
or have it up and running,<BR>
we would like to hear from you: </P>
