RRD Files not Creating...

[tandrews]

OK... I know this one has been bantered back and forth, but I'm not seeing an answer specific to my problem.

I finally got snmpwalk working... cacti is seeing my devices and offering up interfaces to graph... great. So I select a couple of interfaces on the Cisco router I'm monitoring and tell Cacti to graph. Seems to go OK except I'm not seeing any images... polling is working fine... I see good data in the Poller cache.

I look in the RRA directory and see nothing. So I add the CPU option to the mix of graphs and see now that there is an rrd file for 5 minute CPU and it is getting updated every 5 minutes as it should. The problem is, when I go to view the graph the image simply states "District Router CPU Usage" ... there is no graph. I clicked on the tool icon and got the following:


c:\rrdtool\rrdtool.exe graph - \
--imgformat=PNG \
--start=-86400 \
--end=-300 \
--title="District Router - CPU Usage" \
--rigid \
--base=1000 \
--height=120 \
--width=500 \
--alt-autoscale-max \
--lower-limit=0 \
--vertical-label="percent" \
DEF:a="c\:\inetpub\wwwroot\cacti/rra/district_router_5min_cpu_23.rrd":5min_cpu:AVERAGE \
AREA:a#FF0000:"CPU Usage" \
GPRINTLAST:"Current\:%8.0lf" \
GPRINTAVERAGE:"Average\:%8.0lf" \
GPRINTMAX:"Maximum\:%8.0lf"

Is there a problem in the DEF:a= line with the slashes going the wrong way?

Aside from that question... why, when Cacti indicates that I am graphing my two ethernet interfaces, are no RRD files being created in the rra directory? I believe I have permissions set correctly, and besides, the CPU file is being updated in that directory every 5 minutes!

I just went to Graph Management, selected one of my ethernet interface graphs, clicked on Turn On Debug Mode... the browser hesitated a moment, then at the bottom of that page I saw a little text message that said "RRDTool access denied" and now the server is whacked. I can't get in at all without restarting.

More later.

[TheWitness]

It should not care.

TheWitness

[tandrews]

OK... so what does:

"RRDTool Says:

Access Denied"

mean when I turn on graph debugging?

[TheWitness]

Means that your user does or the poller user does not have rights to the <webroot>/Cacti/RRA directory.

TheWitness

[tandrews]

Well... just to reiterate... I am looking at the RRA directory now, and see a file called "district_router_5min_cpu_23.rrd" that is getting updated every 5 minutes. So I'm a bit confused as to how this could be happening yet I get an access denied message when turning on debug.

The actual permissions on all directories leading to and including RRA have Administrators, Guests, IIS_WPG, IUSR, SYSTEM, and Domain Users set with read, write and execute permission. Am I missing someone in there?

Added---

The poller user (in the Scheduled Tasks) is set to Administrator, who has privileges from wwwroot on down.

[TheWitness]

What user is performing the create? Can you change to "Administrator"? Is there a chance that you have change all permissions to use inheritance from a more restictive parent? Does the user have "Full Control"?

TheWitness

[tandrews]

Sorry... I added that answer above.

The poller user is Administrator... and Administrator has full privileges from wwwroot on down.

Why would the rrd file described above be getting updated if permissions were whacked?

[TheWitness]

If it already exists then you are just updating. If you are attempting to create, then if you don't have full control, you might have problems.

TheWitness

[tandrews]

In this case... the CPU file was definitely created today when I checked that option for this device and clicked "Create". It's still not graphing, but that is another issue.

Is there something I can run from the command prompt using RRDTool that might shed more light?

[TheWitness]

Go into Data Sources, Edit one of the Data Sources in question, turn on Data Source Debug, cut and paste it into a command line and run. See what happens.

TheWitness

[tandrews]

I turned on debug for one of the traffic_in sources and got the following:

c:\rrdtool\rrdtool.exe create \
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\cacti/rra/district_router_traffic_in_21.rrd \
--step 300 \
DS:traffic_in:COUNTER:600:0:100000000 \
DS:traffic_out:COUNTER:600:0:100000000 \
DS:traffic_out:COUNTER:600:0:100000000 \
DS:traffic_in:COUNTER:600:0:100000000 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:600 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:700 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:24:775 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:288:797 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:1:600 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:6:700 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:24:775 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:288:797 \

As you can see there are duplicate entries for traffic_in and traffic_out and RRDTool complains about this. When I deleted the duplicate entries and ran the command by hand an RRD file was created.

I still get no graphs.

The following is for CPU which has been updating all along:

c:\rrdtool\rrdtool.exe create \
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\cacti/rra/district_router_5min_cpu_23.rrd \
--step 300 \
DS:5min_cpu:GAUGE:600:0:100 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:600 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:700 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:24:775 \
RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:288:797 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:1:600 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:6:700 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:24:775 \
RRA:MAX:0.5:288:797 \

And for this I get no graphs.

[tandrews]

I tried the same idea with graphing... For one of the ethernet interfaces I clicked the tool icon and got the following output:




c:\rrdtool\rrdtool.exe graph - \
--imgformat=PNG \
--start=-86400 \
--end=-300 \
--title="District Router - Traffic - Fa0/0" \
--rigid \
--base=1000 \
--height=120 \
--width=500 \
--alt-autoscale-max \
--lower-limit=0 \
--vertical-label="bits per second" \
DEF:a="c\:\inetpub\wwwroot\cacti/rra/district_router_traffic_in_21.rrd":traffic_in:AVERAGE \
DEF:b="c\:\inetpub\wwwroot\cacti/rra/district_router_traffic_in_21.rrd":traffic_out:AVERAGE \
CDEF:cdefa=a,8,* \
CDEF:cdefe=b,8,* \
AREA:cdefa#00CF00:"Inbound" \
GPRINT:cdefa:LAST:" Current\:%8.2lf %s" \
GPRINT:cdefa:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s" \
GPRINT:cdefa:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s\n" \
LINE1:cdefe#002A97:"Outbound" \
GPRINT:cdefe:LAST:"Current\:%8.2lf %s" \
GPRINT:cdefe:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s" \
GPRINT:cdefe:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s"

First... is there supposed to be an extra "-" right after "rrdtool.exe"? If so, I ran it this way and the system beeped several times and displayed several lines of gibberish. Without the extra "-" I received an "ERROR: invalid rpn expression 'a.8.*' ".

[TheWitness]

Yes, the "-" is supposed to be there. When you issue a "graph" command, the system actually returns the PNG, JPG, GIF binary, which in ASCII terms sometimes means to an ASCII console "Beep".

TheWitness

[TheWitness]

As for the duplicate Data Source issue, please read the following post for a fix. I can't believe that this is still happening unless you did it under Cacti 0.8.6b or earlier versions.

TheWitness

http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?t=6773