Documentation, Documentation, Documentation!

[emrecio]

The learning curve for plotting a simple random2.pl sample script, or just raw numbers generated by a shell script is incredible. After spending a couple of hours, I can't get any of the examples to plot something displayable. At one point, something that should have been incrementing, was just plotted as going up and down.

The canned stuff is great, but if you want to use your own script to keep track of an ever increasing number is impossible.

Honestly, MRTG is MUCH simpler for stuff like this.

[Howie]

The learning curve for plotting a simple random2.pl sample script, or just raw numbers generated by a shell script is incredible. After spending a couple of hours, I can't get any of the examples to plot something displayable. At one point, something that should have been incrementing, was just plotted as going up and down.

The canned stuff is great, but if you want to use your own script to keep track of an ever increasing number is impossible.

Honestly, MRTG is MUCH simpler for stuff like this.

Sounds like you set it as COUNTER when it should have been GAUGE. That's really an rrdtool issue rather than Cacti specifically, though.

On the other side of the coin, I found MRTG's web UI, user managment and access control, templating and so on to be rather weak compared to Cacti.

I actually agree with you - I have been using Cacti for 2-3 years now, and I still don't always understand what it is doing - but I would never want to manage the 2500+ graphs I handle with Cacti using MRTG.

[gandalf]

The learning curve for plotting a simple random2.pl sample script, or just raw numbers generated by a shell script is incredible. After spending a couple of hours, I can't get any of the examples to plot something displayable. At one point, something that should have been incrementing, was just plotted as going up and down.

The canned stuff is great, but if you want to use your own script to keep track of an ever increasing number is impossible.

Honestly, MRTG is MUCH simpler for stuff like this.

Did you already consider http://docs.cacti.net dedicated to documentation as a whole? It's linked in the tabs at top of all cacti sites
Reinhard