Boost 2.1 Released

[TheWitness]

All,

I have made a few bug fixes in Boost and am immediately releasing 2.1. The changes were made in response to a few very large site performance issues and will reduce your system load dramatically during Boost updates.

Here is the ChangeLog for the 2.1 release:

--- 2.1 ---
bug: Correcting overrun issues
bug: Rename maximum rows to maximum data sources
bug: RRDupdate batch process was not working as designed causing excessive memory to be consumed in some cases
feature: Log memory performance and make available via UI

To upgrade this version of boost, you must follow the procedure below carefully:

1) Find a time when your poller has completed and the boost process is not running
2) Disable the poller from your crontab
3) Replace the old files with the new files
4) Verify permissions on all files meet your standards
5) Goto Plugin Management and Uninstall the 2.0 Plugin
6) Immediately Install and Enable the 2.1 Plugin
7) Goto Settings->Boost and take note of the new Setting. Set to the
default and Save. Read below for more information.
8) Re-enable the poller via crontab

Please note, there has been a setting change in this version. What was once a "Maximum Records Per Pass" is not "Maximum Data Sources Per Pass". The default is 2000, you MUST verify and set this value in the Settings page for upgrades from previous versions. Larger sites may want to increase this setting, but not to the point that it interferes with polling.

TheWitness

[TheHack]

There is a small typo at line 296 in the poller_boost.php:
// in the ZIP file:
if ($rrd_updates != "-1") {
log_boost_statistics($rrds_updates);
$next_run_time = $current_time + $seconds_offset;
}


// where is should be
if ($rrds_updates != "-1") {
log_boost_statistics($rrds_updates);
$next_run_time = $current_time + $seconds_offset;
}

On this subject, I wanted to verify:
I have it running with Cacti 8.6i and it seems to be working at least now. The readme is telling me that 8.7 is minimum requirements.
Any comments are appreciated.

[guigzmorez]

Hello The Witness,

Is the new Boost compatible with rrdtool revision 1.3.3 ?

Regards,

Guillaume

[TheWitness]

Hello The Witness,

Is the new Boost compatible with rrdtool revision 1.3.3 ?

Regards,

Guillaume

Cacti 087c is. Once that version is released you should be all set.

Its currently in beta2. There is a workaround in 087ba allow it to wok though.

[frdrk]

the poller peak memory is in bytes, right?

[TheWitness]

I believe you need php 5,2 for it to work well.

[gsaray101]

I installed plugin architecture 2.1 and tried to install boost2.1. I replaced the old files with the new ones. I dont see the boost tab anymore under setting. what do I need to get this new version of boost working.

[gsaray101]

How did you guys installed boost 2.1? did you install it via "plugin management" link or did you have to download it manually and install it?

I tried to download it manually and installed it but not working. Not seeing boost tab under setting.

Is plugin management supposed to download plugins now? If yes, what if we are behind proxy server? How would that be configured?

thank you so much for the help.

-h

[dononeil]

The documentation doesn't mention this... do we still need to have a cron entry for the poller_boost.php process such as this;?

*/10 * * * * php /www/cacti/poller_boost.php -f -d > /dev/null 2>&1

[dononeil]

I ran into a MAJOR issue last night... I installed boost 2.1, and used init to respawn the process if it dies...

However, if I follow the documentation on how to use init, init respawns the process dozens of times, and tells me it's respawning too fast.

This of course brings the server to it's knees, taking the cpu >50.

When I run it once, and don't use init, it works fine.

There is also still the bug present in the poller_boost file for the rrds_updates vs. rrd_updates as per one of the earlier posts too.

[TheWitness]

dononeil,

1) The Init process does not work as documented. This is a minor issue as the Cacti poller works just fine for updates. However, if you absolutely need the boost_server to do your updates, then when you figure out what is broken with the init process, make a post.

2) You do not need to cron the poller_boost.php any more. It is best that you set your updates >= 1 hour unless you have several hundred thousand RRDfiles in which case, it's debatable how often you need to update. Some would say no less than 6 hours, some would say all the time.

TheWitness

[finn]

1) The Init process does not work as documented. This is a minor issue as the Cacti poller works just fine for updates. However, if you absolutely need the boost_server to do your updates, then when you figure out what is broken with the init process, make a post.

If you are referring to the respawning too fast problem - if you look at the inittab example in the docs it has a "&" at the end of the inittab line. I'm thinking that should not be there!

That will fix your respawning too fast problem dononeil.

[dononeil]

Is Boost 2.1 compatible with .87c that was just released?

[TheWitness]

Yes.

[TheWitness]

1) The Init process does not work as documented. This is a minor issue as the Cacti poller works just fine for updates. However, if you absolutely need the boost_server to do your updates, then when you figure out what is broken with the init process, make a post.

If you are referring to the respawning too fast problem - if you look at the inittab example in the docs it has a "&" at the end of the inittab line. I'm thinking that should not be there!

That will fix your respawning too fast problem dononeil.

You were correct. This has been resolved in SVN for some time now. Need to push out a 2.3 release.

TheWitness