[hobbit] More about linecount

[Richard.Hall]

Replying to myself ...

On Fri, 25 Aug 2006, Richard.Hall wrote:

> Greg,
>
> On Fri, 25 Aug 2006, Hubbard, Greg L wrote:
>
> > Well, now I know how linecount works.  I was hoping that it would let me
> > track the number of lines in a file and spot changes over time.  But
> > this is not what line count is for -- it is intended to match some
> > arbitrary subset of lines in a file, and then this is tracked via RRD as
> > a "derived" value, meaning what is graphed is how the count changes over
> > time, scaled into units per second.  This is perfect if you want to
> > watch the rate of login failures on your system, but not very useful for
> > what I wanted.
> >
> > So I will monitor changes in file size (which might show me changes),
> > but cannot readily translate this into a line count.
> >
> > So, an enhancement request -- add a "line count" as a file parameter, in
> > addition to all the normal things that are available now?
>
> If I'm remembering correctly what Henrik said about how linecount works
> (sorry, didn't keep the message), can't you do something like
>
>    totallines:.*
>
> to make the pattern match every line of the file?

Doh! Obviously not - you want the total, not the rate of change. Apologies
for the noise.

Richard