unix-guide(1)

NAME

unix-guide - Instructions for running MRTG 2.9.29 on a
Unix Box

DESCRIPTION

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.

PREPARATION

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 ver
sion 5.005 is required for mrtg to work well. 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 com
pile them as static 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 instruc
tions 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 BEFORE 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/src/

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://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/

LIBRARY COMPILATION

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 libaries may already
be installed if you have a *BSD or Linux system so you can skip recompiling them. The wget program used below is a
simple web downloader. You can also enter the address into
your netscape if you don't have wget 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.gzip.org/zlib/zlib-1.1.4.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 http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libp

ng-1.0.15.tar.gz
gunzip -c libpng-*.tar.gz |tar xf rm libpng-*.tar.gz
mv libpng-* libpng
cd libpng
make -f scripts/makefile.std CC=gcc ZLIBLIB=../zlib ZLIB

INC=../zlib
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 version starting around 2.0.11, try:

wget http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-2.0.11.tar.gz
gunzip -c gd-2.0.11.tar.gz |tar xf mv gd-2.0.11 gd
cd gd
env CPPFLAGS="-I../zlib -I../libpng" LDFLAGS="-L../zlib

-L../libpng" ./configure --disable-shared --without

freetype --without-jpeg
make
cp .libs/* .

MRTG COMPILATION

Ok, now everything is ready for the mrtg compilation.

cd /usr/local/src
gunzip -c mrtg-2.9.29.tar.gz | tar xvf cd mrtg-2.9.29

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/lo

cal/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 every
thing 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 path
names 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 /usr/local/mrtg-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.

CONFIGURATION

The next step is to configure mrtg for monitoring a net
work device. This is done by creating an mrtg.cfg file which defines what you want to monitor. Luckily, you don't
have to dive straight in and start writing your own con
figuration file all by yourself. Together with mrtg you
also got a copy of cfgmaker. 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
bin subdirectory.

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

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

/home/mrtg/cfg/mrtg.cfg communi

ty@router.abc.xyz

This example above will create an mrtg config file in
/home/mrtg/cfg assuming this is a directory visible on your webserver. You can read all about cfgmaker in cfg
maker. One area you might want to look at is the possibil
ity of using --ifref=ip to prevent interface renumbering troubles from catching you.

If you want to start rolling your own mrtg configuration
files, make sure you read reference to learn all about the
possible configuration options.

RUNNING MRTG

Once you have created a configuration file, try the fol
lowing:

/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 /etc/crontab

*/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. Unfortu
nately, adding startup scripts differs widely amongst dif
ferent unix systems. The modern ones normally have a
directory called /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d/init.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 /etc/rc3.d or /etc/rc.d/rc?.d called S65mrtg (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 minimal script to put into init.d might look like this:

#! /bin/sh
cd /usr/local/mrtg-2.9.29/bin && ./mrtg --user=mrtg-user

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

Note that this will only work with RunAsDaemon: Yes in your mrtg.cfg file.

AUTHOR

Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch>

2.9.29 2003-04-12 UNIX-GUIDE(1)