Weathermap Does Have a Future

[netniV]

It's been an ongoing project for the past two to three years.

[jackie]

Cacti 1.0 was released in Jan 2017, and we have been waiting for a compatible version of weathermap since then. We have the sense that Howie has moved on to more lucrative and fun pursuits, which is totally understandable, and no one else is picking up the development. Very much agree weathermap is a fantastic piece of software.

[netniV]

Howie has been doing some development from time to time but as it's no longer part of his day job, there's less time available for it. Just implementing one new feature in Cacti 1.3 allowing users to enable two factor authentication has taken several days work to test, retest, platform check all so it's as easy as enabling an option, scanning a code, verifying the code so you'll still be able to login.

I have too many projects on myself to be a full time developer on Weathermaps though I do submit things were I can. It would be nice if there were a new influx of wanting developers

[Howie]

End of Cacti 1.x plans

[msantana]

Indeed the Weathermap plugin is a powerful tool. I also rely heavily on it as well. I haven't fully migrated to Cacti 1.X yet because of the lack of a compatible Weathermap plugin. Unfortunately I'm not a programmer, all I can do is hope someone can donate their time and talent for this new app.

Regards,

[netniV]

Yes, more developers is always a good thing!

[JHS]

First, I would like to thank you for writing such an awesome tool that has greatly helped countless Network Engineers worldwide to operate their networks.
It is indeed the one plugin that truly separates Cacti from other solutions and has improved networks in so many ways and situations that no one will be able to really grasp the impact this “little” plugin has had.

But this is also the problem for Cacti as “the Nr. 1” open source performance management platform.
Like so many others, we haven’t moved to Cacti 1.x, simply because Weathermap isn’t supported and frankly, we will probably never make the move if this completely understandable decision means the end for the Weathermap Plugin.

The main problem for me/us, we are Network Engineers and no web developers (quite far from it actually).
So @Cacti-Devs: how can we help to make this announcement a re-start for the Weathermap 1.x plugin and not the end?
Is there maybe someone already thinking about taking over Weathermap development but hasn't got the resources?

[JJX]

Probably cacti developers should pay effort and add it in the cacti as a standard plugin.

Its really necessary and adds a tremendous value to Cacti as a product

[netniV]

Cacti Devs are always stalking Howie

Integrating Weathermaps is unlikely as it is a system in its own right (it doesn't actually need Cacti and works with multiple data input sources) and as its Howie's baby, so we wouldn't want to take that away from him.

[Howie]

What we're planning is to split out the Cacti plugin (the actual map management and map viewing web pages, and the cacti-specific parts of the poller) so that it can be managed by people with a stake in it working That's also a much smaller project to dump on someone than the whole mess of map drawing and data collection stuff.

The rest (which is mostly complete in the new version) will remain as-is. The editor is the main thing there that still needs a bit of work. That division should make things easier for any other groups who wanted to integrate it, too (I know you don't care so much about those, which is reasonable, but I do).

And just to be clear, if that process seems to be taking a while, that's still my fault - I have some work to do to separate it all.

[netniV]

It's been half a day, are we nearly there yet ?

[jhonnyx]

What we're planning is to split out the Cacti plugin (the actual map management and map viewing web pages, and the cacti-specific parts of the poller) so that it can be managed by people with a stake in it working That's also a much smaller project to dump on someone than the whole mess of map drawing and data collection stuff.

The rest (which is mostly complete in the new version) will remain as-is. The editor is the main thing there that still needs a bit of work. That division should make things easier for any other groups who wanted to integrate it, too (I know you don't care so much about those, which is reasonable, but I do).

And just to be clear, if that process seems to be taking a while, that's still my fault - I have some work to do to separate it all.

That is a great idea, much better for you and NMS project developer will not be on your neck.

Open up a crowdfunding pool, set some target. this is a great job, you deserve it.

Cheers

[Ahuber]

Hey Howie;
Thanks for giving us the news. Your weathermap project is a worthy one. We are quite dependent on a 'snapshot' view of our network.
I hope that the weathermap view becomes incorporated into cacti. Even as a Beta plugin with text based configuration, I can settle for that since it will allow me to be on the modern version of Cacti, whilst still being able to have weathermaps.
Thanks for your time towards Cacti.

-^#$#?

[netniV]

You can do that now anyway. The currently downloadable version of 1.0.0 of Weathermaps runs under Cacti 1.2, it is the GUI for the editor that isn't operational properly.

[Howie]

With text-based configuration, you don't even need the Cacti plugin. That's the way it always used to work. A cron job to produce maps. And we walked uphill to the cron server, and uphill back, and we liked it

Seriously though, as far as I know the map generation stuff is pretty much fine. I will be pushing out 0.98a soon (this week I hope) which is 0.98 with PHP 7 fixes, so that is also an option if you don't need the Cacti plugin.