Cacti Client for Android

[FabianCV]

Hi,

I spent the last few weeks on writing an Cacti client for Android phones. The reason for that is that I found it really hard to browse the graphs on my Android's small screen.
At this time the App is not very feature rich, but you can browse the graph tree and look at the graphs. Last night I released the initial 1.0 version to the market.
The problem is that I have only access to 2 Cacti instances for testing, both version 0.8.7g. So if you think that this is a useful App, it would be nice if you could have a look at it and tell me what you think. Any feedback is highly appreciated!

You can find it here: https://market.android.com/details?id=d ... activiewer
Or search the market on your Phone for "CactiViewer".
Supported languages are English and German. It needs at lease Android 2.2.

Thanks in advance, I'm looking forward to your feedback.

(Sorry for the bad english)

[NetAdmin]

Nice job on this app. Works great!

[X-dark]

Nice app.

It seems the graphs never get cached? Wouldn't this be desirable to reduce traffic ?

A "home" or "go back to host selection" button is missing as well.

[FabianCV]

Thanks for your feedback!

It seems the graphs never get cached? Wouldn't this be desirable to reduce traffic ?

Yes, you're totally right. Later on, there must be something like caching.
For the moment, I'm trying to get it stable, without touching basicly working parts

A "home" or "go back to host selection" button is missing as well.

That's a good idea. Thanks for the hint. The next version will have that button.

[X-dark]

Yes, you're totally right. Later on, there must be something like caching.

Note that it might become complicated because you don't really know when the graph need to be updated and not loaded from cache.

[FabianCV]

Yep, that's the problem. I think I will only cache the preview images with a default cache time of 5 minutes. If the user wants to see the last (nearly) 5 minutes that might be lost due to the cache, he can hit a "force reload" button. At least this is the first idea that came to my mind.

Another improvement could be made by caching the tree structure and the image links in the leaves, once I have fetched them. It would save a lot traffic and time, but how to check if the graph arrangement has changed? Letting the user press a "clear tree cache" button when they know something has changed in their cacti instance seems not to be a good solution. Any ideas to this?

[X-dark]

Yep, that's the problem. I think I will only cache the preview images with a default cache time of 5 minutes. If the user wants to see the last (nearly) 5 minutes that might be lost due to the cache, he can hit a "force reload" button. At least this is the first idea that came to my mind.

Seems good to me.

Another improvement could be made by caching the tree structure and the image links in the leaves, once I have fetched them. It would save a lot traffic and time, but how to check if the graph arrangement has changed? Letting the user press a "clear tree cache" button when they know something has changed in their cacti instance seems not to be a good solution. Any ideas to this?

Not sure about this. Cacti tree management is a PITA anyway (improved in 0.8.8).

Maybe you could do this as a configurable settings. Either cache the tree and manually reload it or always reload.

[Lorein]

Cool app, much helpful! Thanks for creating it and sharing the link. Hope for more improvements in future.

[mjtobias]

Works well on Android 2.3.3 on an Evo 4G.

I am running Cacti 0.8.7h as well.

One thing I did notice is that on the preview graph screen my menu option for changing the settings is called "Settings" but if I click on a graph to see the details and press the menu button again my option is now named "Preferences". It has the same options as the "Settings" menu option. Just seems like an inconsistency between the two screens. Other than that it looks good so far.

[FabianCV]

Just seems like an inconsistency between the two screens.

Yes, that's not really nice. I will fix that.
Thanks for the feedback!

[raypinmau]

Just seems like an inconsistency between the two screens.

Apart from that the client works fine so far

[FabianCV]

Huh, I thought that was fixed in 1.0.9 (beginning of December).
Can you please check if you are using the latest version (1.0.10)?

[cigamit]

BTW, just thought I would drop a note that I am currently using your app, and I think its great! I have been wanting to write one myself for a good while, just never got around to it.

[mirage]

Why do not I get when I connect through the mobile Internet. And if you use WiFi then the program connects to my cacti server.

[samir7399]

Why do not I get when I connect through the mobile Internet. And if you use WiFi then the program connects to my cacti server.

I am just trying to imagine your situation..
When you connect to the WiFi you are connecting to your internal LAN which will resolve / connect to all local servers without any issues
I think you need to forward the traffic from the Internet to your Cacti server through your firewall using a public ip and port. This will enable the connectivity from outside your network as well.