Duplicate a device (deep copy)

[Chreek]

Hi folks,

I am currently looking for a solution to duplicate a device, it's graphs and it's data sources. Refering to TheWhitness (see Thread) it is an upcoming feature. Is this a "deep" or "shallow" copy?

I would like to request the deep copy as enhancement, which could be usefully for users with external data sources. If I go through duplicating a device with external data source now, I have to do a lot of steps (list maybe not completed):
A) Duplicate the host
B) Duplicate all data sources of the host
C) Fill in the path of the data sources
D) Duplicate the graphs
E) Assign the data sources as graph items
F) Put host to tree

IMHO these steps are nasty and not necessarily in the most cases. A deep clone of a device, which means duplicating all data sources as well as graphs, would be very nice.

Step B) could be solved by allowing variables within the data source path. A small example: Instead of pointing the absolute path, e.g. /var/rrd/4711_db1.rrd, a variable with the hostname, like /var/rrd/|hostname|_db1.rrd could very boost up the duplication procedure so that filling in the path will be needless.

All in all it's not really a problem, but if you want to set up more than 100 devices, manually duplicating is very stupid. If there is a solution for my issue, please let me know. Otherwise please state, if you find this feature such necessary than I do.

Thanks and regards

Chreek

[gandalf]

Not officially supported, but used with success: http://forums.cacti.net/about7683.html
Reinhard