General questions on cacti usage

[ellerbrockr]

Been using cacti for a while now and it works just great, but I have a couple of questions:

1) We have a fairly dynamic environment with a couple of large routers with many, many interfaces that change from time to time (customer connections). The admin to manually create and add graphs to trees becomes a pain after a while. This limitation is mentioned in this thread: http://forums.cacti.net/about10336.html ... indexhosts in which the developers stated they are thinking about a solution. Has the thought process progressed in the last 8 months? I would really like to have some form of auto graph creation based on a hosts re-index. Note that this request is not related to the poller re-index script. I want graphs to be created and deleted automagically based on the current re-index status of the host.

2) When a hosts interfaces change (an interface has been deleted), is there a way to automatically detect an orphaned graph and move the graphs off the graph trees? Maybe move them into a "Orphaned" tree holding area for manual intervention?

3) I am allowed to place the same graph multiple times on the same graph tree branch. Is this by design? I find that I need to do too much manual checking and cleanup after I make a mistake.

4) Is there a way to query two snmp branches defined in an XML file and the do lookups from the one branch to the other branch to extract details like circuit descriptions? The index values do not match. The one branch contains the index value where to find the relevant details in another branch. So far it looks like I can only do this kind of magic with a script which I really want to avoid.

5) Is there a way to create graphs and add them to a tree/multiple trees in one step? This appears to be a two step process forcing me to manually search through long lists of graphs everytime I create one or two new graphs for a host - see question 1. Also error prone as I tend to get this wrong and create duplicates on the trees - see question 3. Maybe on creation of new graphs automatically jump to a search filter of the newly created graphs.

[gandalf]

Been using cacti for a while now and it works just great, but I have a couple of questions:

1) We have a fairly dynamic environment with a couple of large routers with many, many interfaces that change from time to time (customer connections). The admin to manually create and add graphs to trees becomes a pain after a while. This limitation is mentioned in this thread: http://forums.cacti.net/about10336.html ... indexhosts in which the developers stated they are thinking about a solution. Has the thought process progressed in the last 8 months? I would really like to have some form of auto graph creation based on a hosts re-index. Note that this request is not related to the poller re-index script. I want graphs to be created and deleted automagically based on the current re-index status of the host.

There's a new script that may be run by crontab to regularly reindex all hosts

2) When a hosts interfaces change (an interface has been deleted), is there a way to automatically detect an orphaned graph and move the graphs off the graph trees? Maybe move them into a "Orphaned" tree holding area for manual intervention?

At the time of writing: NO. With cacti 0.9, there will be some API to solve this

3) I am allowed to place the same graph multiple times on the same graph tree branch. Is this by design? I find that I need to do too much manual checking and cleanup after I make a mistake.

May be worth a feature request

4) Is there a way to query two snmp branches defined in an XML file and the do lookups from the one branch to the other branch to extract details like circuit descriptions? The index values do not match. The one branch contains the index value where to find the relevant details in another branch. So far it looks like I can only do this kind of magic with a script which I really want to avoid.

You may use two branches as long as the indexes match. It is not possible to take some value off one branch and index into a second one

[quoue]5) Is there a way to create graphs and add them to a tree/multiple trees in one step? This appears to be a two step process forcing me to manually search through long lists of graphs everytime I create one or two new graphs for a host - see question 1. Also error prone as I tend to get this wrong and create duplicates on the trees - see question 3. Maybe on creation of new graphs automatically jump to a search filter of the newly created graphs.[/quote]Possible. Goto Graph Management, filter your graphs that go into one tree branch and select Place on a Tree. Hit GO to see a selection panel that allows specifying the wanted subtree
Reinhard

[ellerbrockr]

Been using cacti for a while now and it works just great, but I have a couple of questions:

1) We have a fairly dynamic environment with a couple of large routers with many, many interfaces that change from time to time (customer connections). The admin to manually create and add graphs to trees becomes a pain after a while. This limitation is mentioned in this thread: http://forums.cacti.net/about10336.html ... indexhosts in which the developers stated they are thinking about a solution. Has the thought process progressed in the last 8 months? I would really like to have some form of auto graph creation based on a hosts re-index. Note that this request is not related to the poller re-index script. I want graphs to be created and deleted automagically based on the current re-index status of the host.

There's a new script that may be run by crontab to regularly reindex all hosts

I think I might have trouble expressing myself. I know about the script - thats not what I am asking about. I want to automatically create/delete/place graphs on a tree when a re-index occurs. New graphs must automatically be created when new interfaces appear and old graphs must automatically get deleted/archived when interfaces get deleted.

3) I am allowed to place the same graph multiple times on the same graph tree branch. Is this by design? I find that I need to do too much manual checking and cleanup after I make a mistake.

May be worth a feature request

Is there anything special I need to do to request a feature? I am a newbie to cacti, but not OS - I maintain a little app over at http://iptrack.sf.net and an email/forum post is enough for me to add something to the TODO list.

4) Is there a way to query two snmp branches defined in an XML file and the do lookups from the one branch to the other branch to extract details like circuit descriptions? The index values do not match. The one branch contains the index value where to find the relevant details in another branch. So far it looks like I can only do this kind of magic with a script which I really want to avoid.

You may use two branches as long as the indexes match. It is not possible to take some value off one branch and index into a second one

This would really be a very cool feature! Hint?

5) Is there a way to create graphs and add them to a tree/multiple trees in one step? This appears to be a two step process forcing me to manually search through long lists of graphs everytime I create one or two new graphs for a host - see question 1. Also error prone as I tend to get this wrong and create duplicates on the trees - see question 3. Maybe on creation of new graphs automatically jump to a search filter of the newly created graphs.

Possible. Goto Graph Management, filter your graphs that go into one tree branch and select Place on a Tree. Hit GO to see a selection panel that allows specifying the wanted subtree
Reinhard

I think my expression into words lacks again. I want a button right next to this output:

+ Created graph: router03 - Buffers slot 6
+ Created graph: router03 - Buffers slot 8
+ Created graph: router03 - Buffers slot 9
+ Created graph: router03 - Buffers slot 10
+ Created graph: router03 - Buffers slot 11
+ Created graph: router03 - CPU slot 6
+ Created graph: router03 - CPU slot 8
+ Created graph: router03 - CPU slot 9
+ Created graph: router03 - CPU slot 10
+ Created graph: router03 - CPU slot 11
+ Created graph: router03 - Memory slot 6
+ Created graph: router03 - Memory slot 8
+ Created graph: router03 - Memory slot 9
+ Created graph: router03 - Memory slot 10
+ Created graph: router03 - Memory slot 11

that allows me directly to click onto "Add to tree" with the above selection. Manually picking out the above graphs from lists of 100's even with filters is time consuming and error prone. Did it this morning after adding 5 new line cards to a router - not fun.

[gandalf]

Automatic tree add: not available at present.
Feature Requests go to the Feature Request Forum
Reinhard