strange issue, graph not showing up, shows as litte RED X's

[ksoliz]

After playing around with cacti on VMware and I decied to setup it up run it on a semi production box after being very impressed.

Yesterday afternoon I got everything up and running on ubuntu 5.10 server with php5, apache2 and mysql 4., I used apt-get to get everything I needed, following mostly the wiki guide for ubuntu/cacti. I added about 10 devices (several cisco 6500's 7200's and a couple servers). Before I left work everything was working, graphs where being generated, poller was running like it was supposed, no errors at all. FYI on a side note not directly related Im also playing with php-weathermap. So for the cacti polling I have a shell script to run the poller.php and the weathermap script at the same time. Im not using the normal cacti cron job. Just wanted to point this out in case there where questions about how and where poller.php was running.

Anyways, this morning I got up to check everything and noticed for almost all my grahps that were working just fine I now see little red X's (no graphs). Its like the image or file dosent exsist or is missing. First thing I did was check for errors...

1. Poller error log is empty and cacti.log showed typical stuff...

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03/11/2006 08:10:08 AM - SYSTEM STATS: Time: 7.2613 s, Method: cmd.php, Processes: 1, Threads: N/A, Hosts: 13, Hosts/Process: 13, Data Sources 721, RRDs Processed 370  
03/11/2006 08:05:27 AM - SYSTEM STATS: Time: 26.1499 s, Method: cmd.php, Processes: 1, Threads: N/A, Hosts: 13, Hosts/Process: 13, Data Sources 721, RRDs Processed 370  
03/11/2006 08:00:10 AM - SYSTEM STATS: Time: 8.3070 s, Method: cmd.php, Processes: 1, Threads: N/A, Hosts: 13, Hosts/Process: 13, Data Sources 721, RRDs Processed 370  

2. Turned DEBUG on and noticed nothing strange, appeared to be normal details about SNMP gets and graph generation (output to long to post, I can post it if its really necessary)

3. Checked the apache error.log and here is where it gets strange below is one of many error'd rrd files, check it out...

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<snip>

ERROR: opening '/usr/share/cacti/site/rra/localhost_proc_7.rrd': No such file or directory

<snip>

root@ks-ubuntu:/usr/share/cacti/site/rra# find / -name localhost_proc_7.rrd
/var/lib/cacti/rra/localhost_proc_7.rrd

root@ks-ubuntu:/usr/share/cacti/site/rra# ls -l | grep localhost_proc_7.rrd
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  47840 2006-03-11 08:00 localhost_proc_7.rrd

If you look at that, it just dosent make sense... I know the file is there but apache cant find or simply cant display it, any ideas what is going on here?

I somewhat of a newbi to linux so at this point Im not sure where else to look at/for.

Also on another note I noticed when getting the cacti package for ubuntu its using the 0.8.6f version. What is the proper way to upgrade to the latest? Is it a simple as downloading just the 0.8.6h patches? Or do I need to get the new files for 0.8.6g then patch, next get the files for 0.8.6h then patch?

[gandalf]

Apache must have read access to the rrd files. Recommended setting is to

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chown cactiuser:cactiuser ./rra

where cactiuser is your cacti user id (running the poller, see crontab). My setting is -rw-r--r-- for all files within that directory
Reinhard

[ksoliz]

Apache must have read access to the rrd files. Recommended setting is to

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chown cactiuser:cactiuser ./rra

where cactiuser is your cacti user id (running the poller, see crontab). My setting is -rw-r--r-- for all files within that directory
Reinhard

See thats just it, I've done that using root. In the cacti documentation it says...

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Set the appropriate permissions on cacti's directories for graph/log generation. You should execute these commands from inside cacti's directory to change the permissions.

shell> chown -R cactiuser rra/ log/

(Enter a valid username for cactiuser, this user will also be used in the next step for data gathering.)

I have root set for that directory as well as running the shell script in the crontab for poller.php. What dosent make sense is all this was running find for several hours yesterday then somewhere last night the graphs just stopped showing up on the webpage. The really odd thing is the problem ISN'T consistant, some graphs that dont show will show if you refresh the page!

So are you saying the apache user needs permissions on the rra folder? The default ubuntu apache user is www-data. I never created a cacituser to run the cron job or poller. I just have root do all that, again new to linux so I understand this might not be the best method

[ksoliz]

Well I kinda figured it out, by accident no less...

So finding out about my no graph issue this morning I'm VPN'd from home. A while ago I just so happend to remote desktop to our HP openview server to check some other stuff not related to this cacti issue. While I was on there (a windows box) I thought hey, let me check cacti from here and see what happens. Guess what, no little red X's... every single graph works no problem.

So there is obivously something weird abouting making connections through our VPN to my cacti server. Initating the connection from the HPOV server to cacti works because there is no VPN in the way. Because of my limited experience and newness to Linux is there some sort of ipwrapper/firewall issue going on here, how and where would I check for such a thing? (on the linux box)

Also any thoughts on my other question about patching? I case you didnt see it...

Also on another note I noticed when getting the cacti package for ubuntu its using the 0.8.6f version. What is the proper way to upgrade to the latest? Is it a simple as downloading just the 0.8.6h patches? Or do I need to get the new files for 0.8.6g then patch, next get the files for 0.8.6h then patch?

Thanks for the help and support!

[gandalf]

Also any thoughts on my other question about patching? I case you didnt see it...

Also on another note I noticed when getting the cacti package for ubuntu its using the 0.8.6f version. What is the proper way to upgrade to the latest? Is it a simple as downloading just the 0.8.6h patches? Or do I need to get the new files for 0.8.6g then patch, next get the files for 0.8.6h then patch?

Thanks for the help and support!

Please post different questions using different topics. This makes life easier for those who have the same questions ...
Best way is:

• download latest release from http://www.cacti.net (php source or rpm if you prefer)
• install this (of course, rpm and source install differ), you will be prompted to point your browser to http://localhost/cacti/index.php or the like to perform automated upgrade steps
• apply all patches from the patches section at http://cacti.net/download_patches.php or use the pre-patches files from http://www.cacti.net/downloads/patches/ ... e-patched/

Reinhard