Help configuring MRTG

David Lee t.d.lee at DURHAM.AC.UK
Thu Aug 29 14:57:07 IST 2002


On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Brian Chivers wrote:

> I've tried to configure MRTG to monitor traffic but I'm running into some
> problems.
>
> First , am I correct in think that the script sendmail.logs.pl needs the
> log file (maillog) copied from /var/log to another location.
>
> Secondly when I run sendmail.logs.pl mail I get the following result
>
> 1367
> 0
> Not Applicable
> TPC Mail Servers
>
> but when I run MRTG I dont get anything just this under the weekly graph
> Max  messages: 0.0 Messages (0.0%)   Average  messages: 0.0 Messages
> (0.0%)   Current  messages: 0.0 Messages (0.0%)
>
> What am I doing wrong, what should I check

As a more general point:  The data-handling and data-display aspects of
MRTG have been separated out into a general purpose "rrdtool".  And within
that, the data-handling and data-display are themselves cleanly separated.
See:
   http://www.rrdtool.org/
which also gives several examples of the sorts of data folk are collecting
and logging with rrdtool:
   http://www.rrdtool.org/rrdworld/

I, too, had trouble trying to hook "sendmail.logs.pl" onto MRTG.  And
coercing sendmail.logs.pl also "felt" intuitively flawed.  The "rrdtool"
interface feels better and cleaner.

Could I suggest that the MailScanner project (Julian Field and/or Nick
Phillips) consider replacing (perhaps in a phased manner) references to
MRTG by references to rrdtool?

Using "rrdtool" still requires a reasonable amount of "getting to grips"
work if starting from scratch.  But, as part of the above, general
guidelines for our MailScanner activities could be prepared for folk to
use.

Hope that helps.

--

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
:                                           University of Durham  :
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