[ntp:questions] NTP MRTG graphs?

Dennis Hilberg Jr dont at spam.me
Sat Jul 28 18:48:55 UTC 2007


Pete Stephenson wrote:
> I've been interested in using MRTG (or a similar graphing utility) to 
> graph various properties of my time server like the offset, jitter, 
> frequency, number of unique users, number of abusive users, etc.
> 
> I was reviewing David Taylor's page at 
> http://www.david-taylor.myby.co.uk/ntp/NTPandMRTG.txt and it's been most 
> helpful.
> 
> However, I also see that there are several other public time servers 
> that are generating quite detailed graphs and I was wondering if anyone 
> would be willing to share the scripts used to get the numerical data 
> from NTP, format it into a way that MRTG can interpret, and the MRTG 
> config files needed to analyze and graph it.
> 
> Since MRTG only deals with integers, it rounds (or truncates, not 100% 
> sure) decimal values to the closest integer. This isn't terribly useful, 
> as I'd like to see some of the finer changes over time. I attempted to 
> multiply all the decimal values by 1000 and have MRTG work with those, 
> and this has met with some success, but I'd much rather have the graphs 
> show something in a reasonable scale (like 0-20ms offset, rather than 
> 0-20,000us). Obviously this can be done, as I've seen graphs for NTP 
> servers made this way, but I'm getting a headache wrangling (and 
> failing) with MRTG to get it right.
> 
> Cheers!
> 

Hi Pete,

Like Roger said, you should try RRDtool.  It will do what you are asking for.

I have my scripts available that I use to create my RRDtool plots.  Check 
out http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.html for the data plots, and 
http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/scripts/ntp for the actual scripts.

Also, be sure to check out Steven Bjork's website 
http://www.wraith.sf.ca.us/ntp/index.html#monitoring for help with creating 
RRDtool plots with ntp.  It helped me out a lot with figuring out RRDtool, 
as documentation alone is not much help.

The documentation is somewhat helpful though, 
http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/index.en.html .  But it's much more 
helpful to see some scripts in action rather than rely completely on the 
documentation, IMHO.

Good luck!

-- 
Dennis Hilberg Jr <timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com>

NTP Server Information: http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.html




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