[Xymon] errors with custom graphs

[Jeremy Laidman]

Sheel

Firstly let me suggest you delete the RRD file and confirm that it gets
re-created, then wait 15 minutes for 3 samples to arrive, and dump it once
more.  If it's still not working, then more investigation is needed, but
sometimes this fixes some problems, and helps to identify others.

Secondly, check the rrd-status.log file for indications of problems.

On 30 January 2015 at 08:34, Sheel Shah <Sheel.Shah at rd.com> wrote:

> This is what is showing when I click the green icon to view the detail:
>
> Hits : <number value>
>

Run the command "rrdtool info <filename.rrd> | grep last".  This should
give you some useful data.

Firstly, the timestamp of the last update should be shown.  This is
seconds-since-epoch so convert it to your current localtime with something
like "perl -e 'print scalar localtime 1422583073'".  Or run "date +%s" to
show the current time, and calculate the difference.  We'd expect the
last_update time to update when you get more data.

Secondly, check that the "ds" names match what you're putting out, and that
you have no extras or missing ones from your data.  You should see, for
example:

ds[Hits].last_ds = NaN

You might not get the NaN.  Just make sure that everything else looks OK.


> Are the datatypes required to be uniquely named?


Only per RRD file.  If you have the same DS names for another test going to
an RRD file with a different name, that's fine.


> In another column on the same host, I have similar data being displayed,
> with the same names. The graphing functions correctly in that column.
>

Should be fine.


> I apologize, but I am somewhat new to writing scripts in Xymon. I'm not
> familiar with the Xymon_rrd tool. Can you explain how to have it generate
> the rrd files and to run in debug mode?
>

No apology necessary.  With the awesome flexibility of Xymon comes a degree
of complexity, and using the extra features requires more than basic
knowledge of how Xymon works.

The xymond_rrd process is run by the xymond_channel process, which in turn
is run by xymonlaunch process - the master process that runs everything.
You should know that there are two xymond_rrd processes, and two
xymond_channel processes that run them, chained together.  One chain is for
data messages, and the other is for status messages.  You are doing data
collection from within test status messages (TEST2RRD), that that's the one
relevant to your situation.

On the Xymon server, the configuration file that determines what runs and
how it runs is tasks.cfg.  Have a look in tasks.cfg and find the
[rrdstatus] section.  (There's a similar [rrddata] section, for the other
channel, as discussed above.)  This is what causes xymond_rrd to run for
the status channel.  You can edit tasks.cfg and add extra parameters to the
command line, and what we want is to add the option to enable debugging.
For example, you could update the [rrdstatus] section to look like this:

[rrdstatus]

	ENVFILE /usr/lib/xymon/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg
	NEEDS xymond
	CMD xymond_channel --channel=status
--log=$XYMONSERVERLOGS/rrd-status.log xymond_rrd
--rrddir=$XYMONVAR/rrd --debug

Notice how I added "--debug" to the end of the last line.  After making the
edit, simply kill xymond_rrd (eg "pkill xymond_rrd") and it will re-start
with the new parameter.  Use "pgrep -f -l ^xymond_rrd" to show the
parameters being used by the two processes (one for data and one for
status).  If one now has "--debug" then you're OK.

The extra debug details will go into the log rrd-status.log.  Have a look
there for interesting details that might indicate a problem.

Cheers
Jeremy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.xymon.com/pipermail/xymon/attachments/20150130/b2e9c544/attachment.html>