I’ve packaged up and released version 1.1.2 of the Cacti templates I’ve written for MySQL, Apache, memcached, nginx etc.

Anyone who would like to help write documentation (or do anything else, for that matter) is welcomed to participate. I’ll give commit access at the drop of a hat.

Changelog:

2009-05-07: version 1.1.2

        * The parsing code did not handle InnoDB plugin / XtraDB (issue 52).
        * The servername was hardcoded in ss_get_by_ssh.php (issue 57).
        * Added Handler_ graphs (issue 47).
        * Config files can be used instead of editing the .php file (issue 39).
        * binary log space is now calculated without a MySQL query (issue 48).
        * There was no easy way to force inputs to be filled (issue 45).
        * Some graphs were partially hidden without --lower-limit (issue 43).
        * Flipped some elements across the …

Cacti is a great tool for collecting information about systems and graphing it. However, it likes to use SNMP, and SNMP is often not desirable. Instead, I often see the need for a method that is:

• Secure. Use trusted, well-known, encrypted communication. Do not open up new ports.
• Zero install on the monitored system.
• As little installation or modification on the monitoring system as possible.

Over the last several years, I’ve slowly created more and more software to create Cacti graphs via standard POSIX command-line utilities over SSH with key-pair authentication. (I’ve also created similar software for Nagios, but that’s another matter.) The major problem with the work I’ve done is that it’s totally un-publicized.

The system works by passing command-line arguments to a local PHP script like any other Cacti script. This …

A nice write up here: http://www.masterzen.fr/2009/04/13/introducing-mysql-snmp/ “It’s a Net-SNMP perl subagent that connects to your MySQL server, and reports various statistics (from show status or show innodb status, or even replication) through SNMP.”

This might find its way into Kontrollbase soon…

A nice write up here: http://www.masterzen.fr/2009/04/13/introducing-mysql-snmp/ “It’s a Net-SNMP perl subagent that connects to your MySQL server, and reports various statistics (from show status or show innodb status, or even replication) through SNMP.”

This might find its way into Kontrollbase soon…

Thanks to Days of Wonder the company I work for, I’m proud to release in Free Software (GPL):

mysql-snmp – monitor a MySQL server with SNMP History

At Days of Wonder, we’re using MySQL for almost everything since the beginning of the company. We were initially monitoring all our infrastructure with mon and Cricket, including our MySQL servers. Nine months ago I migrated the monitoring infrastructure to OpenNMS, and at the same we lost the Cricket MySQL monitoring (which was done with direct SQL SHOW STATUS LIKE commands).

I had to find another way, and since OpenNMS excels at SNMP, it was natural to monitor MySQL through SNMP. My browsing …

This is an issue that keeps rearing its ugly head over and over again, and since it greatly affects performance, it is most important that DBAs of any DMBS running on Linux come to grips with it. So I decided to do some research and try different settings on my notebook. Here are my findings.

What can you find on the web?

A Wikipedia search for the word swappiness will come up empty (any volunteers out there want to write an article?). A Google search will show some pretty old material—the best article I found is from 2004: Linux: Tuning Swappiness. This article includes a detailed discussion with some interesting remarks by Andrew Morton, a Linux kernel maintainer.

So, what is swappiness?

Towards the end of the email thread quoted in the article, you’ll find this definition (sort of):

> I’ve read the source for where …

I just read about the release of Honey Monitor for MySQL. I read through the features. I looked at the screenshots. Then I read about the licensing. Then I read about the fact that it only runs on windows XP or Vista. So, my questions for the ages…

1. Why, in this age of multiple OSes battling each other for market share, would you write an application that is OS specific? Every app should run in a vendor neutral web browser unless there’s a really really good reason. Monitoring software, are you kidding? Monitoring software must be vendor neutral and web-based. I will never use anything that ties me to windows or linux or osx, it has to be cross platform. End of story.
2. Why, when MySQL is so heavily used on Linux and Solaris, would you write an application for MySQL that can only be run on Windows? Every MySQL DBA …

I just read about the release of Honey Monitor for MySQL. I read through the features. I looked at the screenshots. Then I read about the licensing. Then I read about the fact that it only runs on windows XP or Vista. So, my questions for the ages…

1. Why, in this age of multiple OSes battling each other for market share, would you write an application that is OS specific? Every app should run in a vendor neutral web browser unless there’s a really really good reason. Monitoring software, are you kidding? Monitoring software must be vendor neutral and web-based. I will never use anything that ties me to windows or linux or osx, it has to be cross platform. End of story.
2. Why, when MySQL is so heavily used on Linux and Solaris, would you write an application for MySQL that can only be run on Windows? Every MySQL DBA …

Spread the word; Just added Kontrollbase to MySQL Forge: http://forge.mysql.com/projects/project.php?id=318

Spread the word; Just added Kontrollbase to MySQL Forge: http://forge.mysql.com/projects/project.php?id=318