MRTG-UNIX-GUIDE(1)                   mrtg                   MRTG-UNIX-GUIDE(1)

N?NA?AM?ME?E

       mrtg-unix-guide - The MRTG 2.17.7 Linux/Unix Installation Guide

D?DE?ES?SC?CR?RI?IP?PT?TI?IO?ON?N

       MRTG comes to you in Source Code. This means that you have to compile

       parts of it before you can use it on a Unix machine. These instructions

       help you to do so.

P?PR?RE?EP?PA?AR?RA?AT?TI?IO?ON?N

       In order to compile and use mrtg you need a C compiler and a copy of

       perl installed on your machine. In most cases this will already be

       available.  In case it is not, here are some starting points. Below

       I'll give you a detailed run through the whole compilation process.

       GCC The GNU C compiler comes preinstalled on most of the free Unicies

           out there.  For commercial derivatives you may have to download and

           compile it first. If you have no compiler at all there is a chicken

           and egg problem, but there are also precompiled versions of gcc

           available for most operating systems.

            http://gcc.gnu.org/

       Perl

           Large parts of the MRTG system are written in the Perl scripting

           language.  Make sure there is a recent copy of perl on your machine

           (try perl -v). At least version 5.005 is required for mrtg to work

           well. If you use SNMPV3 and other new features you should use at

           least 5.8.

           You can get the latest perl from

            http://www.perl.com/

       MRTG generates traffic graphs in the PNG format. To be able to do this

       it needs several 3rd party libraries. When compiling these libraries I

       urge you to make sure you compile them as s?st?ta?at?ti?ic?c libraries. There is

       just much less trouble ahead if you are doing it like this. See the

       Instructions in the next section for inspiration. Note that many free

       unices have all the required libraries already in place so there is no

       need to install another copy. To check it is best to skip all the

       library instructions below and go straight into the mrtg compile.

       If the first attempt fails and you do not get a working version of

       mrtg, try compiling new copies of all libraries as explained below. Do

       this B?BE?EF?FO?OR?RE?E you send email to me about problems compiling mrtg.

       gd  This is a basic graph drawing library created by Thomas Boutell.

           Note that all releases after Version 1.3 only create PNG images.

           This is because a) Thomas got into trouble because the GIF format

           which it used to produce uses a compression technology patented by

           Unisys. b) PNG is more efficient and patent free. MRTG can work

           with old and new version of the GD library. You can get a recent

           copy of GD from:

            http://www.boutell.com/gd/

       libpng

           Is required by gd in order to produce PNG graphics files. Get it

           from:

            http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

       zlib

           Is needed by libpng to compress the graphics files you create.  Get

           a copy from

            http://www.gzip.org/zlib

       And last but not least you also need mrtg itself. In case you have not

       yet downloaded it, you can find a copy on my website:

        http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/pub

L?LI?IB?BR?RA?AR?RY?Y C?CO?OM?MP?PI?IL?LA?AT?TI?IO?ON?N

       In this section I will give you step by step instructions on how to

       compile the various libraries required for the compilation of mrtg.

       Note that these libraries may already be installed if you have a _?*_?B_?S_?D

       or _?L_?i_?n_?u_?x system so you can skip recompiling them. The w?wg?ge?et?t program used

       below is a simple web downloader. You can also enter the address into

       your n?ne?et?ts?sc?ca?ap?pe?e if you don't have w?wg?ge?et?t available.

       First let's create a directory for the compilation. Note that this may

       already exist on your system. No problem, just use it.

        mkdir -p /usr/local/src

        cd /usr/local/src

       If you do not have zlib installed:

        wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz

        gunzip -c zlib-*.tar.gz | tar xf -

        rm zlib-*.tar.gz

        mv zlib-* zlib

        cd zlib

        ./configure

        make

        cd ..

       If you don't have libpng installed

        wget ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/libpng/png/src/libpng-1.2.40.tar.gz

        gunzip -c libpng-1.2.34.tar.gz | tar xf -

        mv libpng-* libpng

        cd libpng

        env CFLAGS="-O3 -fPIC" ./configure --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR

        make

        rm *.so.* *.so

        cd ..

       And now you can compile gd

       For versions up to 1.8.4, try:

        wget http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-1.8.4.tar.gz

        gunzip -c gd-*.tar.gz |tar xf -

        rm gd-*.tar.gz

        mv gd-* gd

        cd gd

       The \ characters at the end of the following lines mean that all the

       following material should actually be written on a single line.

        perl -i~ -p -e s/gd_jpeg.o//g Makefile

        make INCLUDEDIRS="-I. -I../zlib -I../libpng" \

             LIBDIRS="-L../zlib -L. -L../libpng" \

             LIBS="-lgd -lpng -lz -lm" \

             CFLAGS="-O -DHAVE_LIBPNG"

        cd ..

       For versions starting around 2.0.11, try:

        wget http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-2.0.33.tar.gz

        gunzip -c gd-2.0.33.tar.gz |tar xf -

        mv gd-2.0.33 gd

        cd gd

        env CPPFLAGS="-I../zlib -I../libpng" LDFLAGS="-L../zlib -L../libpng" \

            ./configure --disable-shared --without-freetype --without-jpeg

        make

        cp .libs/* .

M?MR?RT?TG?G C?CO?OM?MP?PI?IL?LA?AT?TI?IO?ON?N

       Ok, now everything is ready for the mrtg compilation.

        cd /usr/local/src

        gunzip -c mrtg-2.17.7.tar.gz | tar xvf -

        cd mrtg-2.17.7

       If all the libraries have been preinstalled on your system you can

       configure mrtg by doing a simple:

        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2

       Otherwise you may have to give some hints on where to find the various

       libraries required to compile mrtg:

        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2       \

                    --with-gd=/usr/local/src/gd      \

                    --with-z=/usr/local/src/zlib     \

                    --with-png=/usr/local/src/libpng

       If you have RRDtool available you might want to tell mrtg about it so

       that you can opt to use rrdtool with mrtg. Check mrtg-rrd.

       Configure will make sure your environment is fit for building mrtg.  If

       it finds a problem, it will tell you so and it will also tell you what

       to do about it. If everything is OK, you will end up with a custom

       Makefile for your system. Now type:

        make

       This builds the rateup binary and edits all the perl pathnames in the

       scripts. You can now install mrtg by typing

        make install   (requires gnu install)

       All the software required by MRTG is now installed under the

       _?/_?u_?s_?r_?/_?l_?o_?c_?a_?l_?/_?m_?r_?t_?g_?-_?2 subdirectory.

       You can now safely delete the libraries we compiled above. Then again,

       you might want to keep them around so that you have them available when

       compiling the next version of mrtg.

C?CO?ON?NF?FI?IG?GU?UR?RA?AT?TI?IO?ON?N

       The next step is to configure mrtg for monitoring a network device.

       This is done by creating an _?m_?r_?t_?g_?._?c_?f_?g file which defines what you want

       to monitor. Luckily, you don't have to dive straight in and start

       writing your own configuration file all by yourself. Together with mrtg

       you also got a copy of c?cf?fg?gm?ma?ak?ke?er?r. This is a script you can point at a

       router of your choice; it will create a mrtg configuration file for

       you. You can find the script in the _?b_?i_?n subdirectory.

        cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /home/httpd/mrtg'  \

                 --global 'Options[_]: bits,growright' \

                 --output /home/mrtg/cfg/mrtg.cfg    \

                  community@router.abc.xyz

       This example above will create an mrtg config file in _?/_?h_?o_?m_?e_?/_?m_?r_?t_?g_?/_?c_?f_?g

       assuming this is a directory visible on your webserver. You can read

       all about cfgmaker in cfgmaker. One area you might want to look at is

       the possibility of using -?--?-i?if?fr?re?ef?f=?=i?ip?p to prevent interface renumbering

       troubles from catching you.

       If you want to start rolling your own mrtg configuration files, make

       sure you read mrtg-reference to learn all about the possible

       configuration options.

R?RU?UN?NN?NI?IN?NG?G M?MR?RT?TG?G

       Once you have created a configuration file, try the following:

        /usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg /home/mrtg/cfg/mrtg.cfg

       This will query your router and also create your first mrtg trafic

       graphs and webpages. When you run mrtg for the first time there will be

       a lot of complaints about missing log files. Don't worry, this is

       normal for the first 2 times you start mrtg. If it keeps complaining

       after this time you might want to look into the problem.

       Starting mrtg by hand is not ideal in the long run. So when you are

       satisfied with the results you can automate the process of running mrtg

       in regular intervals (this means every 5 minutes by default).

       You can either add mrtg to your crontab with a line like this:

        0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * \

              <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \

                       --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

       or if you live in Linux Land the line may look like this if you are

       using "crontab -e"

        */5 * * * *  <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \

                              --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

       or like this if you use _?/_?e_?t_?c_?/_?c_?r_?o_?n_?t_?a_?b

        */5 * * * *  mrtg-user  <mrtg-bin>/mrtg <path to mrtg-cfg>/mrtg.cfg \

                                        --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

       You can also run mrtg as a daemon process by adding the line

        RunAsDaemon: Yes

       to your mrtg configuration file and then creating a startup script in

       your system startup sequence. Unfortunately, adding startup scripts

       differs widely amongst different unix systems. The modern ones normally

       have a directory called _?/_?e_?t_?c_?/_?i_?n_?i_?t_?._?d or _?/_?e_?t_?c_?/_?r_?c_?._?d_?/_?i_?n_?i_?t_?._?d where you put

       scripts which starts the process you want to run when the system boots.

       Further you must create a symbolic link in _?/_?e_?t_?c_?/_?r_?c_?3_?._?d or

       _?/_?e_?t_?c_?/_?r_?c_?._?d_?/_?r_?c_??_?._?d called _?S_?6_?5_?m_?r_?t_?g (this is just a sample name ... it is

       just important that it starts with S followed by a two digit number).

       If you are not sure about this, make sure you consult the documentation

       of your system to make sure you get this right.

       A m?mi?in?ni?im?ma?al?l script to put into _?i_?n_?i_?t_?._?d might look like this:

        #! /bin/sh

        cd /usr/local/mrtg-2.17.7/bin && ./mrtg --user=mrtg-user \

              /home/httpd/mrtg/mrtg.cfg  --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

       Note that this will only work with R?Ru?un?nA?As?sD?Da?ae?em?mo?on?n:?: Y?Ye?es?s in your mrtg.cfg

       file.

A?AU?UT?TH?HO?OR?R

       Tobias Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>

2.17.7                            2018-07-13                MRTG-UNIX-GUIDE(1)