Should the Manage Plugin Be a Base Part of Cacti?

Post by **TheWitness** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:39 pm

Please submit your vote. Personally, I think so. It would need some tweaking, because depending on the port, you may want to do more than a SYN. But what a start!!

TheWitness

fmangeant · Post by **fmangeant** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 1:30 am

TheWitness wrote:Please submit your vote. Personally, I think so.

Hi Larry

personally, I don't think so... IMHO Cacti should only graph things, and not monitor them. Here we're using Hobbit Monitor (a rewritten "version" of Big Brother, much more powerful) to monitor ~ 2200 devices (routers, Unix & Windows servers, AS/400, MVS, etc.), and do a lot of network tests. Hobbit generates graphs with RRDtool, but I don't use this part since it lacks the powerful templates mechanism of Cacti, there are no graph permissions, etc.

The only monitor function that I would like to see in Cacti would be a way to know when an SNMP agent is down, to avoid BIG gaps in graphs

r_chetanjain · Post by **r_chetanjain** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:38 am

Its a gr8 start for this plugin with good amount of updates.....even the author is now trying to have a interface which will look like more of Big Brother or something...

Adding New Plugins to the core will allow more and more developer a initiative to bring more thoughts...After this i think we can easily call Cacti as .. " Network Monitoring and Graphing System "

Chetan Jain

streaker69 · Post by **streaker69** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:30 pm

As a long time Big Brother user and a recent convert to Cacti, I would like to see the Manage Plugin integrated into the base. I like having one location to go to monitor my system, and I feel the less configuration of 'accessories' the better.

On a side note, great changes to the Monitor Plugin Cigamit. I installed it today in about 2 minutes right before I left work and it went in with no problems. You added all the changes that I was looking for in Monitor at this point.

melchandra · Post by **melchandra** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:43 pm

I personally see great value in having a minimalistic base. This allows individual cacti administrators to customize their installations to their own perference. I like the fact that cacti is small, simple, and easy to get up and going. From a philosophical standpoint, the less you have as part of the base package the better. I would spend the time and effort in improving the entire plug-in archtecture so that it is easy to install plugins, and extend the functionality.

Post by **rony** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:47 pm

melchandra wrote:I personally see great value in having a minimalistic base. This allows individual cacti administrators to customize their installations to their own perference. I like the fact that cacti is small, simple, and easy to get up and going. From a philosophical standpoint, the less you have as part of the base package the better. I would spend the time and effort in improving the entire plug-in archtecture so that it is easy to install plugins, and extend the functionality.

I couldn't have said it better.

egarnel · Post by **egarnel** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 1:43 pm

melchandra wrote:I personally see great value in having a minimalistic base. This allows individual cacti administrators to customize their installations to their own perference. I like the fact that cacti is small, simple, and easy to get up and going. From a philosophical standpoint, the less you have as part of the base package the better. I would spend the time and effort in improving the entire plug-in archtecture so that it is easy to install plugins, and extend the functionality.

ditto. It makes things a lot cleaner

torstentfk · Post by **torstentfk** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:00 am

Hi,

if cacti is small everyone can get it up and running. plugins are great.
What about this: very usefull plugins are a basepart of cacti, but not enabled on default setup. If you want to use it, you must chnage the user rights to access this plugin (as it is now when installing new plugins)?

Torsten

egarnel · Post by **egarnel** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:13 am

torstentfk wrote:Hi,

if cacti is small everyone can get it up and running. plugins are great.
What about this: very usefull plugins are a basepart of cacti, but not enabled on default setup. If you want to use it, you must chnage the user rights to access this plugin (as it is now when installing new plugins)?

Torsten

Initially, that is good idea, but given the fact that many plugins are "third party" It is better to have a stable core and leave the customizations in the modular parts. Webmin is a good example of this. There is the main webmin program and the core plugins - all which are maintained by the authors and then there are the 3rd party modules maintained by others. These 3rd party modules are skipped over during a webmin upgrade and only the core program and built-in modules are upgraded.

Howie · Post by **Howie** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:26 am

melchandra wrote:I personally see great value in having a minimalistic base. This allows individual cacti administrators to customize their installations to their own perference. I like the fact that cacti is small, simple, and easy to get up and going. From a philosophical standpoint, the less you have as part of the base package the better. I would spend the time and effort in improving the entire plug-in archtecture so that it is easy to install plugins, and extend the functionality.

I agree too. I'd far rather have a stable base to build on than a "kitchen sink" system. The plugin API will allow those things to be added, especially if it is extended in future versions. The only plugins we actually use where I work are THold and Weathermap - we already have monitoring, backup, logging etc elsewhere.

Besides, you guys have plenty to do as it is... taking on more might be a bad idea.

eddievenus · Post by **eddievenus** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:49 am

Here is my 2 cents. I am just a user and I am only responding because I believe that this is more than just a simple question of adding this one plugin. This question is just the tip of the iceburg. If you begin adding plugins into the core, where does it end?

Initally I thought it is a good idea to incorporate this into Cacti. But I have to say that though it is a GREAT addon, it is best as just that, an addon. It is a plugin, and should remain that way. In fact perhaps more should be offloaded into plugin status. Make everything modular so that the base is as small as possible and the end user can choose what they want to do with it. Besides does it really matter if this is incorporated directly or as a plugin? Not from where I sit. What reasons would it need to be integrated? So that other parts of Cacti can use the code? If other plugins wish to make use of it they can do that already such as what Manage plugin does with thold. That functionality already exists from what I know. Adding the plugin archtecture directly to the core is the right next step. And I applaude you for already taking that on.

Adding too much to the core functionality of Cacti does not make it better, only potentially larger and more cumbersome. This does not really seem to be problem with one plugin here or there, but after some time and several plugins Cacti may not resemble the application you all set out to create. Leave this as a plugin, maybe include this plugin along with the base package if you feel that it is that important, maybe along with a few others like thold and monitor, but keep it out of the base progam and keep that seperation intact. I believe that keeping it seperate allows everyone more flexability. You do not have to program as much code and we do not have to potentially disable integral parts of the program to get what we want out of it.

I personally use the Manage plugin and would like to see it more integrated into certain aspects of Cacti, but that can be done without absorbing it into the base code of Cacti and I think that it behooves everyone to keep it seperate..

EddieVenus

pestilence · Post by **pestilence** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:19 pm

My humble opinion is that cacti can and should be involved in a more powerfull network monitoring and data gathering platform.
This is a major overlap for this Open Source program, i know allot of companies using it, and i am sure they would welcome such an addition to this platform.

nelissen · Post by **nelissen** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:53 am

melchandra wrote:I personally see great value in having a minimalistic base. This allows individual cacti administrators to customize their installations to their own perference. I like the fact that cacti is small, simple, and easy to get up and going. From a philosophical standpoint, the less you have as part of the base package the better. I would spend the time and effort in improving the entire plug-in archtecture so that it is easy to install plugins, and extend the functionality.

I totaly agree here...well said

sdetroch · Post by **sdetroch** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:55 am

I prefer to have the plugin architecture 'polished' and the admin should be able to decide which plugins to install.
Sven

JJX · Post by **JJX** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 12:44 pm

I think it would be nice "plugin architecture" to be inside cacti by default.
I dont think that out there exist a cacti installation without one more plugin!

Cacti