Time Zones & Localtime

[cerbum]

I'm still stunned at how cool Weathermap is.

I've got a map of nodes around the world broken down by timezone bands.

Is there a method via Weathermap that would allow me to assign a timestamp or timezone to a node and have it adjust for localtime?

For instance, It's now 1332 GMT. I would like to get GMT-8, GMT-5, GMT, GMT+7 printed out on 4 different nodes,

Node 1
0532

Node2
0832

Node3
1332

Node4
2032

and have the times update at each redraw of the PNG.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Howie]

There's isn't even a method to get the current time, so no, not really.

You could write a datasource plugin to do it.

OR

You could write a shell script that produces a tab-separated file and then use that as a datasource:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

cat /dev/null > times.txt
TZ="Europe/London" date +"london:%H%M:%H%M" >> times.txt
TZ="Europe/Paris" date +"paris:%H%M:%H%M" >> times.txt
TZ="Japan" date +"tokyo:%H%M:%H%M" >> times.txt
TZ="US/Eastern" date +"newyork:%H%M:%H%M" >> times.txt

# couldn't figure out how to get date to produce tabs, so this is a bodge
tr ":" "\\t" < times.txt > times.tsv

And then make sure the nodes are named for the first part of each line of the tsv file:

Code: Select all

NODE newyork
  TARGET times.tsv
  LABEL {node:this:bandwidth_in:%04d}
  POSITION 100 100

You need the %04d because weathermap expects numbers and it will chop the leading zeros normally. This ALSO means you can't format the time at all - it must be 4 digits like that.

[cerbum]

Howie,

Thanks for the pointers. I think I'm getting closer.

This is what I have in the .conf file:

Code: Select all

NODE EST
        TARGET configs/times.tsv
        LABEL {node:this:bandwidth_in:%04d}
        POSITION 490 50
        ICON configs/clock-10-10_33484_th.gif

NODE GMT
        TARGET configs/times.tsv
        LABEL {node:this:bandwidth_in:%04d}
        POSITION 650 50
        ICON configs/clock-10-10_33484_th.gif

And the configs/times.tsv file looks like this:

Code: Select all

GMT	2201	2201
CET	2301	2301
HKT	2201	2201
EST	1701	1701
CST	1601	1601
PST	1401	1401

And when I run the weathermap manually, I get a rather strange error.

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$ /usr/bin/php ./weathermap --config /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/plugins/weathermap/configs/World_map.conf --output /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/weathermaps/World_map.conf.png --htmloutput /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/weathermaps/World_map.conf.html
WARNING: /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/plugins/weathermap/configs/World_map.conf: NewColourFromPercent: Clipped 1701% to 100% for item EST
WARNING: /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/plugins/weathermap/configs/World_map.conf: NewColourFromPercent: Clipped 1701% to 100% for item EST
WARNING: /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/plugins/weathermap/configs/World_map.conf: NewColourFromPercent: Clipped 2201% to 100% for item GMT
WARNING: /data/apache/secure/htdocs/cacti/plugins/weathermap/configs/World_map.conf: NewColourFromPercent: Clipped 2201% to 100% for item GMT
Content-type: text/html
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9

and the result is a solid black rectangle where the 4 digit time zone should be.

Weathermap is trying to use the 4 digit integer as an RGB color indicator it would appear.

I've never seen an error like this before, have you?

I'm running the current cacti and current weathermap code (0.96a).

Thanks!

[Howie]

no, it's not using it as RGB, it's using it as a value, then calculating a percentage, and using that to colour.

So the default maxvalue for a node is 100. 2333/100 is much more than 100%. (so you get the 'clipped' message).

You probably don't want the nodes to change colour, so you should add:

MAXVALUE 2500
USESCALE none in

to each node. The MAXVALUE means that the resulting percentage is below 100%, and the USESCALE says to not colour the node.

[cerbum]

Excellent! That did it.

Thank you Howie!

[Howie]

And this morning while I was fixing a couple of bugs, I found that I had already written a time DS plugin, and that it was in 0.96a too! I must have forgotten about it and failed to document it

Try this:

Code: Select all

NODE node2
        POSITION 500 200
        TARGET time:Europe/London
        LABEL {node:this:time_time12ap}
        USESCALE none

The DS plugin always returns 0 for in and out values, but it sets 3 extra variables:
time_time12 (12 hour format)
time_time12ap (12 hour format with AM/PM)
time_time24 (24 hour format)

No need for tab-separated files, OR a shell script.

How embarrassing!

(It REQUIRES php 5 or newer, to get the timezone info)

[cerbum]

(It REQUIRES php 5 or newer, to get the timezone info)

Actually, I think it requires 5.2.x or newer to get it by default, according to this page http://us2.php.net/manual/en/datetime.installation.php

Note: Experimental DateTime support in PHP 5.1.x
Although the DateTime class (and related functions) are enabled by default since PHP 5.2.0, it is possible to add experimental support into PHP 5.1.x by using the following flag before configure/compile: CFLAGS=-DEXPERIMENTAL_DATE_SUPPORT=1

Since I'm trying to use the OS provided PHP in RHEL5.3, I've got 5.1.6 to work with and it complains that there is "Class 'DateTimeZone' not found"

I'm not a PHP guru, I don't even play one on TV. Correct as necessary. Now to upgrade PHP.

Thanks Howie!

[Howie]

Sounds about right to me (and in fact my CentOS 5.2 box complains too with PHP 5.1.6). I'll update the docs.