MRTG(1)                        mrtg                       MRTG(1)



NAME
       mrtg - What is MRTG

DESCRIPTION
       The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to moni-
       tor the traffic load on network links.  MRTG generates
       HTML pages containing PNG images which provide a LIVE
       visual representation of this traffic. Check
       http://www.stat.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg/ to see what it does.

       Go to
        http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg for all
       the details about mrtg.

       Command-line options:

       Most items are set through the configuration file; com-
       mand-line options are specified here:

       --user username  and --group groupname
           Run as the given user and/or group. (Unix Only)

       --lock-file filename
           Use an alternate lock-file (the default is to use the
           configuration-file appended with "_l").

       --confcache-file filename
           Use an alternate confcache-file (the default is to use
           the configuration-file appended with ".ok")

       --logging filename|eventlog
           If this is set to writable filename, all output from
           mrtg (warnings, debug messages, errors) will go to
           filename. If you are running on Win32 you can specify
           eventlog instead of a filename which will send all
           error to the windows event log.

           NOTE:Note, there is no Message DLL for mrtg. This has
           the side effect that the windows event logger will
           display a nice message with every entry in the event
           log, complaing about the fact that mrtg has no message
           dll. If any of the Windows folks want to contribute
           one, they are welcome.

       --daemon
           Put MRTG into the background, running as a daemon.
           This works the same way as the config file option, but
           the switch is required for proper FHS operation
           (because /var/run is writable only by root)

       --fhs
           Configure all mrtg paths to conform to the FHS speci-
           fication; http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

       --check
           Only check the cfg file for errors. Do not do any-
           thing.

       --pid-file=s
           Define the name and path of the pid file for mrtg run-
           ning as a daemon

       --debug=s
           Enable debug options. The argument of the debug option
           is a comma separated list of debug values:

            cfg  - watch the config file reading
            dir  - directory mangeling
            base - basic program flow
            tarp - target parser
            snpo - snmp polling
            fork - forking view
            time - some timing info
            log  - logging of data via rateup or rrdtool

           Example:

            --debug="cfg,snpo"

USER PAGES
       MRTG is written in Perl and C and works under UNIX and
       Windows NT. MRTG is being successfully used on many sites
       around the net.  Check the MRTG-Site-Map on:

        http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/users.html

HIGHLIGHTS
       Portable
           MRTG works on most UNIX platforms and Windows NT.

       Perl
           MRTG is written in Perl and comes with full source.

       Portable SNMP
           MRTG Uses a highly portable SNMP implementation writ-
           ten entirely in Perl (thanks to Simon Leinen). There
           is no need to install any external SNMP package.

       SNMPv2c support
           MRTG can read the new SNMPv2c 64bit counters. No more
           counter wrapping.

       Reliable Interface Identification
           Router interfaces can be identified by IP address,
           description and ethernet address in addition to the
           normal interface number.

       Constant size Logfiles
           MRTG's logfiles do NOT grow thanks to the use of a
           unique data consolidation algorithm.

       Automatic Configuration
           MRTG comes with a set of configuration tools which
           make configuration and setup very simple.

       Performance
           Time critical routines are written in C (thanks to the
           initiative of Dave Rand my Co-Author).

       GIF free Graphics
           Graphics are generated directly in PNG format using
           the GD library by Thomas Boutell.

       Customizability
           The look of the webpages produced by MRTG is highly
           configurable.

       RRDtool
           MRTG has built-in hooks for using RRDtool. If you are
           strapped for performance this may help.

DETAILS
       MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to read the
       traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program
       which logs the traffic data and creates beautiful graphs
       representing the traffic on the monitored network connec-
       tion. These graphs are embedded into webpages which can be
       viewed from any modern Web-browser.

       In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates
       visual representations of the traffic seen during the last
       seven days, the last five weeks and the last twelve
       months. This is possible because MRTG keeps a log of all
       the data it has pulled from the router. This log is auto-
       matically consolidated so that it does not grow over time,
       but still contains all the relevant data for all the traf-
       fic seen over the last two years.  This is all performed
       in an efficient manner.  Therefore you can monitor 200 or
       more network links from any halfway decent UNIX box.

       MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic, though.  It is
       possible to monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can
       even use an external program to gather the data which
       should be monitored via MRTG. People are using MRTG, to
       monitor things such as System Load, Login Sessions, Modem
       availability and more. MRTG even allows you to accumulate
       two or more data sources into a single graph.

HISTORY
       In 1994 I was working at a site where we had one 64kbit
       line to the outside world. Obviously, everybody was inter-
       ested in knowing how the link was performing. So I wrote a
       quick hack which created a constantly updated graph on the
       web that showed the traffic load on our Internet link.
       This eventually evolved into a rather configurable Perl
       script called MRTG-1.0 which I released in spring 1995.
       After a few updates, I left my job at DMU to start work at
       the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Due to lack of
       time I had to put MRTG aside. One day in January of 1996,
       I received email from Dave Rand asking if I had any ideas
       why MRTG was so slow. Actually, I did. MRTG's programming
       was not very efficient and it was written entirely in
       Perl. After a week or so, Dave wrote back to me and said
       he had tried what I had suggested for improving MRTG's
       speed. Since the changes did not help much, he had decided
       to rewrite the time-critical sections of MRTG in C. The
       code was attached to his email. His tool increased the
       speed of MRTG by a factor of 40! This got me out of my
       'MRTG ignorance' and I started to spend my spare time
       developing of MRTG-2.

       Soon after MRTG-2 development had begun I started to give
       beta copies to interested parties. In return I got many
       feature patches, a lot of user feedback and bug fixes. The
       product you are getting now wouldn't be in this state if
       it hadn't been for the great contributions and support I
       received from of many people. I would like to take this
       opportunity to thank them all. (See the files CHANGES for
       a long list of folk people who helped to make MRTG what it
       is today.)

READ ON
       Learn more about MRTG by going to the mrtg home page on:
        http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg

AUTHOR
       Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> and many contributors



2.12.2                      2005-06-19                    MRTG(1)
