mysql database intact, no rrd files, strange graphs

[rnegut]

Hi!

Recently I've had one of my disk drives crash, which led to losing all cacti monitoring data of about a whole year. Fortunately, however, I had a recent back-up of the mysql database. I've downloaded cacti-0.8.6g (I was using an older version of cacti before the crash) since I thought this was a good moment for an upgrade anyway.

I've recreated the cacti database and loaded it up from the back-up. Copied over the cacti files, and attempted upgrading. Upgrading seemed to work flawless (success was reported on all items). The php poller runs nicely and graphs are created.

However all graphs are brand new! It seems that all data that was stored for over a year is now gone... I was under the impression that the rrd files are only used for caching and speeding up graph creation/rendering. Is this behavior normal? What happened to everything that was collected in mysql up till now? Can I get the graphs to show ALL data again?

Thanks in advance for any tips/help!
Radu

[gandalf]

I was under the impression that the rrd files are only used for caching and speeding up graph creation/rendering.

This is not correct!
MySQL stores administrative data (about Templates, rrd files, users, settings and the like). All "real" data is stored in RRDs.
If you do not want to loose them, you'll have to backup them as well (but pay attention to backing up open files as the rrd's might get updated during the backup run)
Reinhard

[rnegut]

I will keep the rrd files safer from now on...

Thanks for clearing that up; at least I will stop poking around at cacti trying to resurrect what was already long gone...

Radu