From: CmdrData Subject: mrtg for nt and cisco I have been using MRTG running on Windows NT now for a few months and find it to be pretty cool. Thanks so much for making a free tool. The first time I installed it was on a Proliant 2500 w/ dual 200 Mhz CPUs , and the setup was sloppy b/c I was learning how to run the program and make the config files, programatically. The setup I had was less than ideal. So I built a new Proliant 6500 w/ 4 x 200 Mhz CPUs and 3/4 GB RAM and hardware RAID5 using 6 drives a couple of months later. I also install Microsoft SQL server and IIS on the box. What I now have is an mrtg database in sql wh/ has 2 tables 1 for NT devices and 1 for Cisco Devices. The main web page I use has 2 combo boxes which load from these table devices descriptors which are names and not ips. The main reason I used sql was so the web page would get auto updated when a devices was added and also so I could automate the configuration file creation and the list of devices it choose to poll. I made a DTS package in sql which every 2 hours dumps parts of the two tables to text files (the sql 7.0 DTS wizard for this makes it easy to dump parts of a table to a file). these 2 files are used to update all the configs every 12 hours. To accomplish this I had to write a bunch of batch files that would read text file input and do some very repeatable tasks. I also set a few environment variables to make the writing and reading easier. Since your site was very useful in getting me started I wanted to give a little back. I have attached a few nt batch files which would be useful for anyone trying to set it up on NT. I still have more automating to do like making the default.asp page without needing hand editing, and I haven't automated the ntconfig process. But right now to add cisco devices all I need to do is add a record to a database! I am using this setup to monitor about 2700 + ports on mainly catalyst 6500's right now and it finishes its polling cycle in about 4 minutes. The machine seems to be cpu and disk bound. Quad 450's would be better and a raid with more drive heads would also be better. I used the START command with the /BELOWNORMAL switch in a couple of places to allow the OS to jump in if it needs to b/c the CPU rides at about 99-100% for most of the 4 minutes. SQL is not needed to make use of the attached scripts. The files just contain 3 items, name (wh/equals part of the workdir path), comm str and IP [or netbiosname]. I also had to hunt around for the nt info and put it in to one file which you can do a find and replace on to customize what nt targets you poll. Feel free to post these files if you like. What I still have not figured out is how to get the detailed port description to be used instead of the ifIndexs. The post you have on this doesn't work with the port for NT and I don't know Perl. If you have any suggestions on this I would appreciate it. I tried to compare the mrtg file from the nt port and the hack and the files were too different for me to splice together without real knowlegde of perl, etc. Anyhow love the app. I work for a web hosting company. thanks, -Jon