>> Status of 0.8 Development <<

[TheWitness]

Hey raX,

What's the status of the project? Do you have any timetables on the release of 0.8?

Larry

[raX]

Hey why not... I just sent this e-mail to the cacti developers the other day about the status of development. Should be exactly what you want to know:


Graph Templating:

For all intents and purposes, this is complete. There are still minor
tweaks to be completed such as propagating certain changes out to child
graphs and dealing with features such as "Graph Item/GPRINT Presets". It
probably wouldn't be worth it to do too much work here.

Graph Trees (Console):

The other day I actually went ahead and updated this form so it looked
correct in 0.8. At its current state it still behaves much like the
0.6.8 tree edit form did. The whole "tree idea" has a lot of potential
and to tell you the truth I am having some trouble of thinking how I can
make this scale better. This section could use some more planning and
coding.

Support for private trees also needs to be added. The support in the
database is already there, but a nice friendly form needs to be created
to allow users to manage their trees (see: Graph Viewing).

Data Sources:

A lot of work still needs done here. Rob has been more or less in charge
of this section while I have been dealing with graph templating. Rob
told me he will probably have more time for cacti in the near future, so
I suggest that you coordinate with him before working on this section.
Of course, I think he would appreciate any help you could give him here
since there is surely a lot to cover.

One point I would like to add is that I really did not like how
"multiple data source per-rrd file" support worked out in the 0.6.x
releases. The whole idea of creating and maintaining "sub-data sources"
is way to fragile and has shown to break. Instead of this hack, I would
like cacti NOT to handle multiple data sources per rrd file as a special
case. This applies to both the database and the front-end.

I received this e-mail the other data concerning data sources in cacti,
and I think it brings up a valid point (even though some of this is
already covered in 0.. Just some food for thought:

----- start e-mail ------

"I just had my first look at Cacti (ver 0.6. and found it most
impressive. We are looking for a replacement for MRTG to get away from
the unmanageability of MRTG's config files. Cacti comes very close but
I think there will be a problem of scale. We have > 500 routers we want
to have usage graphs for. As a minimum allowing monitoring of in and
out traffic for two interfaces per router we would have >2000 data
sources. Probably unreasonable to display all these in one page. How
does Cacti handle this at the moment?

A couple of features to consider would be to have a 'Data Source Class'.
Each Data Source would inherit configurations from the class and the
Data Sources would then be displayed per 'Class'. Also graphs would
inherit information from a Graph Class. Similarly users could belong to
groups and inherit the group configuration."

----- end e-mail ------

Equipment Profiles:

Rob and I think this would be best for the release following 0.8 since
we have so much other stuff to cover in 0.8.

RRA's:

Done.

Data Input Methods:

This form needs updated to 0.8, which shouldn't take too long. After
that, I would like some planning to be done to make this more scalable
(if possible). I really like how flexible external scripts are at the
moment in cacti, and I don't want to lose that. I'm sure we can make it
better/easier to use though.

User Management:

This form has been updated to 0.8 and is pretty much as functional as
the 0.6.x version. If you have any further "user management" features,
I'm sure we'd all like to hear them.

Graph Viewing:

This section really hasn't been touched much since work started on the
0.8 release. Rob and I both agree that *something* needs done here to
make this more scalable. Just think of situations when you have
thousands of graphs and you still have to carefully place each graph on
a tree. I am basically looking for some fresh ideas for this section.

[gilson]

Come on Ian,

You could have reasons to name next version as 0.8.x. I disagree from all reasons.

This spectacular software DESERVES at least "VERSION 2.0" (to be economic).

Congratulations to all mantainers.

-Gilson

[AranC23]

Along with graph templates, are we going to get control of the size of the previews? Also, will we be able to determine the timeframes of the graphs on the full view?

My problem is I want to be able to make graphs that just cover the last few hours... the preview graph does this but is too small to be readable with multiple data sources and I'd like to narrow the timeframe even further.


cacti is aweseome, btw... even with these little issues I've been happily graphing everything I can get data sources for...