If you have been wondering why the overview and graphs pages say “no data to display” on the graphs when you first install Kontrollbase, it’s because there’s no data in the database being returned from the queries that generate the graphs – this is because a new install has no data to graph. This has […]

Progress on the Open Source enterprise grade MySQL monitoring system;  the schema for Monolith version 2 has been designed. Due to the many suggestions for features and the interest it has received I’ve put this on the front burner. That said, here is some more info on the next steps I’ll be taking.

• Monitored servers will use a command line agent (called remotely) to pull information from both MySQL and the OS.
• Historical information will include all values from global status and global variables, as well as CPU/Memory/IO/Disk usage.
• Standard graphing functions - the ones in the list from the previous post - will gather information from various view tables that contain historical data that is collected from the agent script. User defined graphing will allow you to look at historical values over time for any of the various global status or global variable settings (integer based ones anyway). …

I’ve released version 1.1.1 of the MySQL Cacti templates I develop. The new templates work around more Cacti limitations, including the limitation on the length of the data returned from the poller script. There’s also a new graph and many other niceties since the last release.

Note that there are TWO incompatible changes with [...]

I’ve created a set of Cacti templates for graphing stats about MySQL. While these were based on several other people’s work, there are many improvements. One of them in particular I want to bring up, and I’ll go so far as to say it ought to be a “best practice” for graphing. [...]

I finally have some images to show you what my improved Cacti templates look like.

These aren’t a perfect demo, since for example this server doesn’t have the query cache enabled, but it should show you what I’ve done. Note, for example, that each graph is labeled with the actual values of the images drawn on it. You don’t have to guess what the values are by squinting at the graphs.

You can click on any image to go to a larger version. Enjoy:

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Download MySQL Cacti templates

As promised, I’ve created some improved software for monitoring MySQL via Cacti. I began using the de facto MySQL Cacti templates a while ago, but found some things I needed to improve about them. As time passed, I rewrote everything from scratch. The resulting templates are much improved.

You can grab the templates by browsing the source repository on the project’s homepage.

In no particular order, here are some things I improved:

• Standard polling interval and graph size by default.
• Full captions on every graph; you don’t have to guess at how big the values are. Each graph has current, max, and average values printed at the bottom for every value on …

I have an issue I hope someone can help me with. I am generating RRDtool graphs (for Cacti monitoring templates for MySQL, which I’ll release soon) that have up to 11 different metrics on them. With that many lines or areas on a graph, it becomes very hard to pick colors that are easy to see and easy to distinguish from each other. What’s a good way to choose such colors? Is there a way to do it automatically — is there a formal method that will produce good results?

I know some color theory and I have read about how you can distinguish colors from each other (hue, value etc). But I am unsure the best way to choose this many colors. Trying by hand produces garish results or graphs that are just hard to read.

My first attempt to solve this with a program was to simply create …

Ok folks, just after testing out some new changes to this week’s release - I’ve uploaded a new version. Here are the following changes:

Changelog 1.2a
- changes line thickness to 1 for all graphs, 2 was too thick for running at 5 minute intervals for the poller
- added several scripts for running and logging monitor agent and report_generator
- changes talkback sripts to one script instead of 3