Mbuf RRD graph, dashboard meter

[jimp]

Yesterday I added an RRD graph for mbufs on the System tab, and I fixed up a few things on the dashboard including turning mbufs into a percentage meter (preserving the text count) and it now updates via AJAX. (Unrelated to mbufs I also did the same thing to the state table output).

If you're on a current snapshot, keep an eye on the graph and let me know if there are any tweaks to the format/output that might be beneficial.

[athurdent]

Just gitsynced, looks good. But my graph says "utilization, percent" and seems to display the actual MBUF size, not in percent.

[jimp]

Fixed, thanks!

[adam65535]

You rock man… this will be very helpful I think.  I just mentioned something like this a few days ago at the link below.  Are you psychic?
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,64272.msg348934.html#msg348934

I hope that someday (maybe 2.2 or 2.3) someone with development skills and the spare time might find it important to have alert thresholds for some of these monitored values.  I would love to get an alert from a site that was approaching limits like this.  It would be awesome to detect the impending problem before it causes issues.

Thanks again for this!

[adam65535]

I really like that you made the colors very different from each other.  I wish all the other graphs did the same.  It is very hard to tell the different between some of them like the states and the queues.

[Derelict]

Any way to get this kind of info on DHCP lease pools?

[adam65535]

This is why I am glad you used different colors…  See the queues screenshot below.  It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between most of the red colors below.


[jimp]

@Derelict:

Any way to get this kind of info on DHCP lease pools?

No. The calculations would be fuzzy at best, and it would involve parsing the entire DHCP leases file (which can be huge) once a minute.

Maybe if someone figures out a way to get the pool utilization stats from DHCPD directly (omapi?)

[jimp]

@adam65535:

I really like that you made the colors very different from each other.  I wish all the other graphs did the same.  It is very hard to tell the different between some of them like the states and the queues.

Yep, that was the idea… The other graphs do need better colors but thus far nobody has gone through the trouble of trying/finding new or better ones. It's not difficult, just not high on anyone's list of priorities. Check out rrdcolors.inc.php in every theme.

[jimp]

@adam65535:

This is why I am glad you used different colors…  See the queues screenshot below.  It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between most of the red colors below.

gitsync or try a snapshot from tomorrow.

[doktornotor]

@jimp:

gitsync or try a snapshot from tomorrow.

Much better now… :)

[jimp]

I'm torn because on the one hand, it makes them easy to distinguish, but on the other, I think it could look better with some better color choices than I made.

I documented the RRD color files pretty well when I did the update so if someone wants to come up with some variations (perhaps different colors for different themes), it should be much easier to jump in and figure out what goes where now.

[doktornotor]

@jimp:

I'm torn because on the one hand, it makes them easy to distinguish, but on the other, I think it could look better with some better color choices than I made.

Maybe you could find these tools handy for further tweaking:
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

[adam65535]

@jimp:

I'm torn because on the one hand, it makes them easy to distinguish, but on the other, I think it could look better with some better color choices than I made.

Thanks again for that.  I will check it out after the next snapshot for sure.  I vote for functionality over color matching any day :).  I like them being as different as can be.  If you can't easily tell the difference between them then the graphs are just eye candy :).

[Klaws]

I once edited the RRD GUI so I could seelct my own colors from a drop-down listbox of predefined colors (plus a "default" entry to reatin the theme's native color). I only provided this option for the Queue and Queue Drop colors and, boy, it already cluttered up the RDRD Settings page.

However, if anyone thinks that's an approach to pursue further, I could try to dig up my changes again. However, I'd need assistance with the GUI design, so it looks less butt-ugly.

[adam65535]

The color changes make the graphs so much more useful now.  It is very easy to tell the difference between all of the stats on all of the graphs.  I had to pretty much guess before but now it is very obvious which ones are which.

Thanks again!

[Klaws]

Wow, that's pretty cool. I've always thought that one of my traffic shaper queues was running rogue (but never saw it as an important enough issue to alayze and fix). Now I can see that nothing is running rogue, it was just my partially impaired color-vision.

Yes, the observant reader might have noticed that I have mucked about with the GUI to add options to change the queue colors. Of course, I shot my changes with a careless firmware update a day or two later :-), and never bothered enough to retrieve the changes from the backup.

[ptt]

Have noticed this error  ???  in "Status: System logs: General" :

php: rc.bootup: The command '/usr/bin/nice -n20 /usr/local/bin/rrdtool update /var/db/rrd/system-mbuf.rrd N:U:U:U:U:U' returned exit code '1', the output was 'ERROR: expected 4 data source readings (got 5) from N:U:U:U:U:U'

it seems to be harmless, but posted, just in case ;)

[jimp]

I saw it once, but haven't located the cause.

[NOYB]

/etc/inc/rrd.inc line 720

Is
mwexec("$rrdtool update $rrddbpath$ifname$mbuf N:U:U:U:U:U");

Should be
mwexec("$rrdtool update $rrddbpath$ifname$mbuf N:U:U:U:U");