Weathermap 0.97a Released

[dannyard]

Hello,

I have a similar issue to the original post. I cannot get the USEICONSCALE to work at all. I've tried using the 24 bit and 8 bit cisco icons you've provided, but no luck. I turned debug on and I see it's trying to colorise the icons but nothing actually happens on the map. I've gone through the checks and everything passes.
The BWLABEL scaling and various other things I've done with scaling work great. I've gotten the cactimonitor:id to change colors ,as discussed in the documentation, based on the threshold being breached by using different colored icons. I'd prefer to do this with a USEICONSCALE if possible.
I'm on CENTOS 6.1.
I would like to add that I'm relatively new to Cacti, but I'm learning it in depth and quickly realizing this is a phenomenal tool. Weathermap is one of the best features implemented in cacti. The flexibility it provides with displaying various pieces of information is fantastic. I'm really impressed and would like to thank you for sharing this excellent piece of software.

I hope to hear back from you soon.

[dannyard]

Found the resolution to my problem.
The fix was to change all the icons, including the ones listed in the Cisco icons topic (Right to use Cisco icons (e.g: for Weathermap) part1.zip, part2.zip, Cisco-Icons-PNG-with-transparency.zip)
by converting them to indexed using gimp versus RGB.
I'm really ignorant when it comes to image files, so I'll post my steps even if it may sound a bit elemtary to some.
Using gimp, I opened each icon I planned to use in weathermap --> selected Image from the top --> Mode --> Indexed . Saved with a new name and selected the new file in my weathermap. All my icons now change colors based on the scale.
BTW, I am on Centos 6.3, not 6.1.
I'm using gd 2.0.35.....
I'm not sure if I missed something that could have made my life easier, but figured I would post what I found just in case someone is a newbie like me and runs into a similar issue.
Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

[Howie]

I'd forgotten all about that problem - I remembered it the other way around though (needing to switch TO 24-bit). I know that the useiconscale stuff has caused more issues than anything else in weathermap I'll do some experimenting and add something to the FAQ.

Just curious (and seriously this isn't some kind of attack) - did you look at the FAQ? or the manual page for useiconscale? i.e. if I had added something there, would it have helped?

[dannyard]

Sadly, I have to admit that I never checked the FAQs. However, I did after your post, and all of the info posted in the FAQs related to this problem was found through forums and google searches.
I try not to be that guy that asks questions without having done thorough research first. I appreciate your work and am benefiting from it.. the last thing I want to do is ask a question that was already answered.
In my case, although my fault, posting to the FAQ wouldn't have helped, unless google had found it for me.
I have read, multiple times, the information on your main site. All the config refences, advanced topics special tokens etc..... Very good documentation and easy enough for me to understand. Implementation in a logical, organized way is the hardest part for me.
The way I discovered that the USEICONSCALE was indeed working and not a misconfiguration on my part... I debugged the logs and saw it was trying to colorise, and I also took your suite1.conf (i think that's what it's called) and saw how you were using the USEICONSCALE in your file there. I worked with that on my system, and changed the scale around to verify the icon would change color accordingly.
I then used that Grayball (again, may be mispelling the icon name) icon in my own conf file, and saw it was working.
I compared the Router.png and Grayball.png files using gimp and noticed one had indexed in the top title (Grayball) and the other said RGB (Router.png).
I made the change to the Router.png file and it worked. I'd also played around with the background settings of the icons that didn't work, but that didn't help
I have now gone through all the icons and changed them to indexed, and I've used about 15-20 of them in my weathermap and they work beautifully.
I noticed in one of your past posts you stated you hardly ever use the USEICONSCALE function. I need something to visually notify me when I'm on the page monitoring systems. I see the USEICONSCALE or the the special token with threshold where you create different colored .png files as the only 2 viable solutions, with the first one being the easiest and cleanest.
Based on the limited amount of posts regarding these methods, it seems others aren't using these features that much and my guess is they rely more on other alerting methods. Does that sound right?

Thanks again for your prompt help and reply.

[Howie]

Actually I have no idea how many are using what. One of the things I've been meaning to add in a future version is some sort of anonymous survey that automatically collects some basic statistics from an installation: how many maps, how many data sources per map, which features and data sources are used... do you reckon that would fly? Nothing identifying, just which and how many. It'd be handy to know if absolutely no-one uses the mrtg log datasource, for example.

I'll do a little experimenting with some different VMs and see if I can figure out the rules for useiconscale properly and document it - it varies depending on the GD version, I think.

[dannyard]

Howie,

Personally, I think it shouldn't be a problem to ask that information. You might want to wait a month or so for most people to learn weathermap before asking them what pieces they use and don't use. It makes sense to find out what people are using so you can concentrate your efforts.

I hate to pile on, but I may have found another small issue with the icon coloring and scaling usage.
I'm trying to get the icon to have a transparent background and the hostname be written in that label over the icon itself. Seems LABELBGCOLOR none should do the trick. Unfortunately... not so simple. I'll explain:

3 parameters were tested used together: LABELBGCOLOR (none, or left out of the definition); USEICONSCALE (myscale, or left out of the definition); USESCALE (none, or DEFAULT - default was set to yellow as a test)

I tried all 8 combinations.
-If USESCALE is set, (in this case DEFAULT was yellow),regardless of the other 2 parameter settings, the LABELBGCOLOR always takes the DEFAULT SCALE color
-If USESCALE is set to none, then the LABELBGCOLOR always comes out white when either LABELBGCOLOR and/or USEICONSCALE is used. (ICONSCALE during this test should always set green). I played with the global BGCOLOR and behavior is the same. I'm not sure where it's getting the white color from, as nothing in my map was set to white

USEICONSCALE works as expected. When set, the icon changes color. When not set/used, icon stays gray
LABELBGCOLOR none seems to only work as expeted when USESCALE is none and USEICONSCALE is not used

The LABEL background carves out a box if it is over the icon. My workaround, if there isn't an easy solution, will be to setup another node with just the label information. I did check all the FAQs this time to make sure.
I'd be happy to test anything else you can think of if it helps.