Ntpd / gps need some love part II

fragged

To make ntp rrd graphs look nicer I did some changes on my system to allow full scaling from negative to positive values and I made the graph scale a bit nicer (in my opinion).

Modify rrd.inc to allow negative values. I'm not sure if all of these can actually go to negative, but this was a lazy initial edit. I'm sure none of the values should ever get anywhere close to 1000 though.


$rrdcreate .= "DS:offset:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";
$rrdcreate .= "DS:sjit:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";
$rrdcreate .= "DS:cjit:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";
$rrdcreate .= "DS:wander:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";
$rrdcreate .= "DS:freq:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";
$rrdcreate .= "DS:disp:GAUGE:$ntpdvalid:-1000:1000 ";

Modify the status_rrd_graph_img.php file to scale things better for the actual graph. Another part to touch in this file would be the COMMENT/GPRINT part for ntp graph to tweak the number of decimals etc.


$graphcmd .= "--alt-autoscale ";
$graphcmd .= "--alt-y-grid ";
$graphcmd .= "--units-exponent 0 ";
$graphcmd .= "--rigid ";

I've never touched any of the pfSense code before and I don't have a github account nor have I signed the CLA. I would very much appreciate it if someone could take a look at this, make the actual changes needed and post a pull request.

ntprrd_modified.PNG_thumb

charliem

@fragged:

To make ntp rrd graphs look nicer I did some changes on my system to allow full scaling from negative to positive values and I made the graph scale a bit nicer (in my opinion).

Can you post a diff? Would be easier for others to test.

Modify rrd.inc to allow negative values. I'm not sure if all of these can actually go to negative, but this was a lazy initial edit. I'm sure none of the values should ever get anywhere close to 1000 though.

As far as I know, only offset and frequency could have possible negative values. Jitter and wander are calculated as RMS averages and so should always be positive. Dispersion is related to delay and latency measurements, both of which should be positive (unless you live in a Tardis …)

stephenw10

Plotting negative offset seems like a good idea. What does it show now if it can't go negative? Worst case it shows zero offset unrealistically.

Steve

fragged

Negative values are clipped off completely resulting in gaps in the graph.

robi

@charliem:

As far as I know, only offset and frequency could have possible negative values. Jitter and wander are calculated as RMS averages and so should always be positive. Dispersion is related to delay and latency measurements, both of which should be positive (unless you live in a Tardis …)

I'd say it's still good if the graphs themselves could plot negative values, because that could potentially show if there are some problems with ntpd.

I plan to test next week and post a diff too.