Droping data from cacti database older than 60 days old

l1carter · Post by **l1carter** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:54 pm

Help,

I am looking for a script that can be run as a cron job to delete the data in my cacti db that is older than 60 days. I don't care to archive it I just want visiailbty for up to the last 60 days.

Is there a command that can be run to do this type of task?

Thanks,

Lee

Post by **TheWitness** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 6:05 pm

All you need to do is change your RRA Definitions and recreate your graphs. Please goto http://www.rrdtool.org for a RRA Tutorial.

TheWitness

l1carter · Post by **l1carter** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:18 am

Ok, I'm not looking to change my rra files (I don't think) what I am looking to do is drop data directly from the cactidb.

Something like:

delete from cactidb where (Info is older than 60 days).

Maybee a TRUNCATE TABLE will do it... Don't know... Also, I would need to run this directly from the command line not from within mysql as this will need to run as a crontab.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Lee

Post by **rony** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:23 am

I don't think you get it.....

The cacti database is only configuration information. The RRA files are the ones storing historical data and generating the graphs.

If you where to "clean out" tables in cacti, you would loose you configuration.

What prompted this, are you having space issues? Do you have binary logging turned on for mysql?

l1carter · Post by **l1carter** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:29 am

Ok,

when I look at the directory it looked as if all my rra files were the same 84k in size and didn't grow. I was under the impression that the RRA files were really formats of how the grapsh were to look and to instruct RRDTOOL on what data to pull from the database (absolute data type ect.) and that the database would actually grow in size at time when on.

To answer your question, yes we are running out of space on the cacti server and simply adding space may fix the problem for now but parsing the data to 60 days or less would be more of a perminate fix.

So if the database is holding no data only configuration information... backing up the database is buying nothing as well correct? (unless of course you made changes to your cacti server the you would want to backup the db again.)

So, I tired to read the simple how-to for begineers on RRD and din't quite grasp what is necessary to accomplish what I am after. Would you have an example or a different way to deliver the same info so that I may understand what is necessary?

Thanks,

Lee

Post by **rony** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:49 am

If your server is running out of space, then you need to figure out what is doing it.

Purging or cleaning the cacti database is, well, not the way to go. As I said before, and you acknowledge, the database is just configuration data.

RRA's will not change in size, that is the true beauty behind them. Once they have been created, they stay the same size.

Have you recently added a lot of devices? It is possible, you do need to add more space? Where are you lacking space?

Double check that you do not have Binary logging enabled for you mysql server. This is typically used for replication and creates a hugh binary file typically in your /var/lib/mysql directory tree.

l1carter · Post by **l1carter** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:52 am

We have added devices recently and gone back and added more interfaces on existing devices to graph more.

I'll check the mysql logging to see if that's it.

Thanks

Cacti