MRTG thoughts!!

MRTG is wonderful tool. You can use it to monitor traffic on your router or leased server located at remote IDC. Since it is written in Perl and some code in C language, it is portable and high performance tool.

"The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing GIF images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic."

What is SNMP and why should I care?

SNMP is Simple Network Management Protocol. It is use to manage IP network devices such as servers, routers, switches etc. Administrator can find or manage network performance, solve problem or even optimize it further. For more information on official UNIX/Linux SNMP please see UCD-SNMP/NET-SNMP Tutorials and an excellent resource at Snmplink.org

: Make sure snmp server installed

Please note that snmpd configuration does not require using mrtg with remote network devices such as Routers and switches. If you just want mrtg graphs for router

Run rpm commands query option to find out snmp server installed or not:

# rpm -qa | grep snmp

If snmp installed then please refer step # 2; otherwise snmp server and utils were not present and your need to install them using following steps (login as a root user):

(a) Visit rpmfind.net to get snmp server and utilities rpms. If you are fedora user then use yum command as follows to install it:

# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp

(b) If you are RHEL subscriber then use up2date command as follows to install:

#up2date -v -i net-snmp-utils net-snmp

: Determine if snmp server is running or not

Run 'ps' command to see if snmp server is running or not:

# ps -aux | grep snmp

Output:

root   5512  0.0  2.3  5872 3012 pts/0    S    22:04   0:00 /usr/sbin/snmpd

Alternatively, you can try any of the following two commands as well:

# lsof -i :199

Output:

COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
snmpd   5512 root    4u  IPv4  34432       TCP *:smux (LISTEN)

OR try out netstat command:

# netstat -natv | grep ':199'

Output:

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:199             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN

If you found service is running or listing on port 199 then please see step #3; otherwise start service using following command:

# service snmpd start

Make sure snmpd service starts automatically, when linux comes us (add snmpd service):

# chkconfig --add snmpd
----------------------------------------------
Install MRTG
We've put together a RPM for MRTG based off the various how-to's
posted. This RPM is for Fedora and RHEL systems and will work on Ensim
3.7/4.0 out of the box, cPanel versions will be posted shortly



Fedora 1

mrtg-2.10.5-1.0.rhfc1.ct.i386.rpm



RHEL3 based servers

mrtg-2.10.5-1.0.rhel3.ct.i386.rpm



Installation:



rpm -Uvh rpmname

rm -f /etc/cron.d/mrtg



You will need to edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/mrtg.conf if you wish to
allow access to more than just localhost - by default this is a
security measure.



After installing, make sure you don't have a cron line in /etc/crontab for mrtg. You may do this via



pico -w /etc/crontab



Then



service mrtg start


By
Sylesh