WorkDir

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg

HtmlDir

NOTE: Workdir overrides the settings for htmldir, imagedir and logdir.

Example:

 Htmldir: /www/mrtg/

ImageDir

Example:

 Imagedir: /www/mrtg/images

LogDir

Example:

 Logdir: /www/mrtg/logs

Forks (UNIX only)

For situations with high latency or a great number of devices this will speed things up considerably. It will not make things faster, though, if you query a single switch sitting next door.

As far as I know NT can not fork so this option is not available on NT.

Example:

 Forks: 4

EnableIPv6

If IPv6 is enabled and the target is a hostname, mrtg will try to resolve the hostname to an IPv6 address and, if this fails, to an IPv4 address. Note that mrtg will only use IPv4 if you specify an IPv4 address or a hostname with no corresponding IPv6 address; it will not fall back to IPv4 if it simply fails to communicate with the target using IPv6. This is by design.

Note that many routers do not currently support SNMP over IPv6. Use the IPv4Only per target option for these routers.

IPv6 is disabled by default.

Example:

 EnableIPv6: Yes

EnableSnmpV3

SNMPv3 is disabled by default.

Example:

 EnableSnmpV3: yes

Refresh

Example:

 Refresh: 600

Interval

• The generated HTML page contains the right information about the calling interval ...
• A META header in the generated HTML page will instruct caches about the time-to-live of this page .....

In this example, we tell mrtg that we will be calling it every 10 minutes. If you are calling mrtg every 5 minutes, you can leave this line commented out.

Example:

 Interval: 10

Note that unless you are using rrdtool you can not set Interval to less than 5 minutes. If you are using rrdtool you can set interval in the format

 Interval: MM[:SS]

Down to 1 second. Note though, setting the Interval for an rrdtool/mrtg setup will influence the initial creation of the database. If you change the interval later, all existing databases will remain at the resolution they were initially created with. Also note that you must make sure that your mrtg-rrd Web-frontend can deal with this kind of Interval setting.

MaxAge

To prevent this, you can add a 'reasonability' check by specifying a maximum age for log files. If a file seems to be older, mrtg will not touch it but complain instead, giving you a chance to investigate the cause.

Example:

 MaxAge: 7200

The example above will make mrtg refuse to update log files older than 2 hours (7200 seconds).

WriteExpires

NOTE: If you are running Apache-1.2 or later, you can use the mod_expire to achieve the same effect ... see the file htaccess.txt

Example:

 WriteExpires: Yes

NoMib2

An example of agents which do not implement base mib2 attributes are Computer Associates - Unicenter TNG Agents. CA relies on using the base OS SNMP agent in addition to its own agents to supplement the management of a system.

Example:

 NoMib2: Yes

SingleRequest

Examples

 SingleRequest: Yes

SnmpOptions

 timeout                   => $default_timeout,
 retries                   => $default_retries,
 backoff                   => $default_backoff,
 default_max_repetitions   => $max_repetitions,
 use_16bit_request_ids     => 1,
 lenient_source_port_matching => 0,
 lenient_source_address_matching => 1

The values behind the options indicate the current default value. Note that these settings OVERRIDE the per target timeout settings.

A per-target SnmpOptions[] keyword will override the global settings. That keyword is primarily for SNMPv3.

The 16bit request ids are the only way to query the broken SNMP implementation of SMC Barricade routers.

Example:

 SnmpOptions: retries => 2, only_ip_address_matching => 0

Note that AS/400 snmp seems to be broken in a way which prevents mrtg from working with it unless

 SnmpOptions: lenient_source_port_matching => 1

is set.

IconDir

Example:

 IconDir: /mrtgicons/

LoadMIBs

Example:

 LoadMIBs: /dept/net/mibs/netapp.mib,/usr/local/lib/ft100m.mib

Language

Currently the following laguages are supported:

big5 brazilian bulgarian catalan chinese croatian czech danish dutch eucjp french galician gb gb2312 german greek hungarian icelandic indonesia iso2022jp italian korean lithuanian malay norwegian polish portuguese romanian russian russian1251 serbian slovak slovenian spanish swedish turkish ukrainian

Example:

 Language: danish

LogFormat

Example:

 LogFormat: rrdtool

LibAdd

Example:

 LibAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/lib/perl/

PathAdd

Example:

 PathAdd: /usr/local/rrdtool/bin/

RRDCached

Only UNIX domain sockets are fully supported prior to RRDTool v1.5, and you should note that using RRDCached mode will disable all Threshold checking normally done by MRTG. Appropriate warning messages will be printed if necessary.

Examples:

 RRDCached: unix:/var/tmp/rrdcached.sock
 
 RRDCached: localhost:42217

RunAsDaemon

Using daemon mode MRTG itself is responible for timing the measurement intervals. Therfore its important to set the Interval keyword to an apropiate value.

Note that when using daemon mode MRTG should no longer be started from cron as each new process runs forever. Instead MRTG should be started from the command prompt or by a system startup script.

If you want mrtg to run under a particular user and group (it is not recomended to run MRTG as root) then you can use the --user=user_name and --group=group_name options on the mrtg commandline.

 mrtg --user=mrtg_user --group=mrtg_group mrtg.cfg

Also note that in daemon mode restarting the process is required in order to activate changes in the config file.

Under UNIX, the Daemon switch causes mrtg to fork into background after checking its config file. On Windows NT the MRTG process will detach from the console, but because the NT/2000 shell waits for its children you have to use this special start sequence when you launch the program:

 start /b perl mrtg mrtg.cfg

You may have to add path information equal to what you add when you run mrtg from the commandline.

Example

 RunAsDaemon: Yes
 Interval:    5

This makes MRTG run as a daemon beginning data collection every 5 minutes

If you are daemontools and still want to run mrtg as a daemon you can additionally specify

 NoDetach:     Yes

this will make mrtg run but without detaching it from the terminal.

If the modification date on the configuration file changes during operation, then MRTG will re-read the configuration on the next polling cycle. Note that sub-files which are included from the main configuration do not have their modification times monitored, only the top-level file is so checked.

ConversionCode

Example: Suppose a particular OID returns a character string whose length is proportional to the value to be monitored. To convert this string to a number that can be graphed by MRTG, create a file arbitrarily named "MyConversions.pl" containing the following code:

 # Return the length of the string argument
 sub Length2Int {
   my $value = shift;
   return length( $value );
 }

Then include the following global keyword in the MRTG configuration file (assuming that the conversion code file is saved in the mrtg/bin directory along with mrtg itself):

 ConversionCode: MyConversions.pl

This will cause MRTG to include the definition of the subroutine Length2Int in its execution environment. Length2Int can then be invoked on any target by appending "|Length2Int" to the target definition as follows:

 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1&1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1:public@mydevice|Length2Int

See "Extended Host Name Syntax" below for complete target definition syntax information.

Target

Basic

The most basic format is "port:community@router" This will generate a traffic graph for the interface 'port' of the host 'router' (dns name or IP address) and it will use the community 'community' (snmp password) for the snmp query.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
    

If your community contains a "@" or a " " these characters must be escaped with a "\".

 Target[bla]: 2:stu\ pi\@d@router
    

SNMPv2c

If you have a fast router you might want to try to poll the ifHC* counters. This feature gets activated by switching to SNMPv2c. Unfortunately not all devices support SNMPv2c yet. If it works, this will prevent your counters from wraping within the 5 minute polling interval, since we now use 64 bit instead of the normal 32 bit.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@router1:::::2
    

SNMPv3

As an alternative to SNMPv2c, SNMPv3 provides access to the ifHC* counters, along with encryption. Not all devices support SNMPv3, and you will also need the perl Net::SNMP library in order to use it. It is recommended that cfgmaker be used to generate configurations involving SNMPv3, as it will check if the Net::SNMP library is loadable, and will switch to SNMPv2c if v3 is unavailable.

SNMP v3 requires additional authentication parameters, passed using the SnmpOptions[] per-target keyword.

Example: Target[myrouter]: 2:router1:::::3 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1'

noHC

Not all routers that support SNMPv2 or SNMPv3 provide the ifHC* counters on every interface. The noHC[] per-target keyword signals that the low-speed counters ifInOctets and ifOutOctets should be queried instead. cfgmaker will automatically insert this tag if SNMPv2 or SNMPv3 is specified but the ifHC* counters are unavailable.

Example: Target[myrouter]: #Bri0:router1:::::3 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1' noHC[myrouter]: yes

Reversing

Sometimes you are sitting on the wrong side of the link, and you would like to have mrtg report Incoming traffic as Outgoing and vice versa. This can be achieved by adding the '-' sign in front of the "Target" description. It flips the incoming and outgoing traffic rates.

Example:

 Target[ezci]: -1:public@ezci-ether.domain
    

Explicit OIDs

You can also explicitly define which OID to query by using the following syntax 'OID_1&OID_2:community@router' The following example will retrieve error counts for input and output on interface 1. MRTG needs to graph two variables, so you need to specify two OID's such as temperature and humidity or error input and error output.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14.1&1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.20.1:public@myrouter
    

MIB Variables

MRTG knows a number of symbolic SNMP variable names. See the file mibhelp.txt for a list of known names. One example are the ifInErrors and ifOutErrors. This means you can specify the above as:

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors.1&ifOutErrors.1:public@myrouter
    

SnmpWalk

It may be that you want to monitor an snmp object that is only reachable by 'walking'. You can get mrtg to walk by prepending the OID with the string WaLK or if you want a particular entry from the table returned by the walk you can use WaLKx where x is a number starting from 0 (!).

Example:

  Target[myrouter]: WaLKstrangeOid.1&WaLKstrangeOid.2:public@myrouter

  Target[myrouter]: WaLK3strangeOid.1&WaLK4strangeOid.2:public@myrouter
    

SnmpGetNext

A special case of an snmp object that is only reachable by 'walking' occurs when a single snmpgetnext will return the correct value, but snmpwalk fails. This may occur with snmp V2 or V3, as the snmpgetbulk method is used in these versions. You can get mrtg to use getnext instead of getbulk by prepending the OID with the string GeTNEXT.

Example:

  Target[myrouter]: GeTNEXTstrangeOid&GeTNEXTstrangeOid:public@myrouter
    

Counted SNMP Walk

In other situations, an snmpwalk is needed to count rows, but the actual data is uninteresting. For example, counting the number of mac-addresses in a CAM table, or the number of simultaneous dialup sessions. You can get MRTG to count the number of instances by prepending the OID with the string CnTWaLK. The following will retrieve the number of simultaneous VOIP calls on some routers:

Example:

   Target[myrouter]: CnTWaLK1.3.6.1.4.1.9.10.55.1.1.1.1.3&CnTWaLK1.3.6.1.4.1.9.10.55.1.1.1.1.3:public@myrouter
    

Interface by IP

Sometimes SNMP interface index can change, like when new interfaces are added or removed. This can cause all Target entries in your config file to become offset, causing MRTG to graphs wrong instances etc. MRTG supports IP address instead of ifindex in target definition. Then MRTG will query snmp device and try to map IP address to the current ifindex. You can use IP addresses in every type of target definition by adding IP address of the numbered interface after OID and separation char '/'.

Make sure that the given IP address is used on your same target router, especially when graphing two different OIDs and/or interface split by '&' delimiter.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=ip.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: /1.2.3.4:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -/1.2.3.4:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors/1.2.3.4&ifOutErrors/1.2.3.4:public@myrouter
    

Interface by Description

If you can not use IP addresses you might want to use the interface names. This works similar to the IP address aproach except that the prefix to use is a \ instead of a /

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=descr.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: \My-Interface2:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -\My-Interface2:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors\My-If2&ifOutErrors\My-If3:public@myrouter
    

If your description contains a "&", a ":", a "@" or a " " you can include them but you must escape with a backlash:

 Target[myrouter]: \fun\:\ ney\&ddd:public@hello.router
    

Interface by Name

This is the only sensible way to reference the interfaces of your switches.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=name.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: #2/11:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -#2/11:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors#3/7&ifOutErrors#3/7:public@myrouter
    

If your description contains a "&", a ":", a "@" or a " " you can include them but you must escape with a backlash:

 Target[myrouter]: #\:\ fun:public@hello.router
    

Note that the # sign will be interpreted as a comment character if it is the first non white-space character on the line.

Interface by Ethernet Address

When the SNMP interface index changes, you can key that interface by its 'Physical Address', sometimes called a 'hard address', which is the SNMP variable 'ifPhysAddress'. Internally, MRTG matches the Physical Address from the *.cfg file to its current index, and then uses that index for the rest of the session.

You can use the Physical Address in every type of target definition by adding the Physical Address after the OID and the separation char '!' (analogous to the IP address option). The Physical address is specified as '-' delimited octets, such as "0a-0-f1-5-23-18" (omit the double quotes). Note that some routers use the same Hardware Ethernet Address for all of their Interfaces which prevents unique interface identification. Mrtg will notice such problems and alert you.

You can tell cfgmaker to generate configuration files with hardware ethernet address references by using the option --ifref=eth.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: !0a-0b-0c-0d:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -!0-f-bb-05-71-22:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14!0a-00-10-23-44-51& *BREAK*
            1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.14!0a-00-10-23-44-51:public@myrouter
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors!0a-00-10-23-44-51& *BREAK*
            ifOutErrors!0a-00-10-23-44-51:public@myrouter
    

Join the lines at *BREAK* ...

Interface by Type

It seems that there are devices that try to defy all monitoring efforts: the interesting interfaces have neither ifName nor a constant ifDescr not to mention a persistent ifIndex. The only way to get a constant mapping is by looking at the interface type, because the interface you are interested in is unique in the device you are looking at ...

You can tell cfgmaker to generate such references with the option --ifref=type.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: %13:public@wellfleet-fddi.domain
 Target[ezci]: -%13:public@ezci-ether.domain
 Target[myrouter]: ifInErrors%13&ifOutErrors%14:public@myrouter
    

Extended positioning of ifIndex

There are OIDs that contain the interface index at some inner position within the OID. To use the above mentioned Interface by IP/Description/Name/Type methods in the target definition the keyword 'IndexPOS' can be used to indicate the position of ifIndex. If 'IndexPOS' is not used the ifIndex will be appended at the end of the OID.

Example:

 Target[myrouter]: OID.IndexPOS.1/1.2.3.4&OID.IndexPOS.1/1.2.3.4:public@myrouter
    

Replace OID by your numeric OID.

Extended Host Name Syntax

In all places where ``community@router'' is accepted, you can add additional parameters for the SNMP communication using colon-separated suffixes. You can also append a pipe symbol ( | ) and the name of a numeric conversion subroutine as described under the global keyword "ConversionCode" above. The full syntax is as follows:

 community@router[:[port][:[timeout][:[retries][:[backoff][:[version]][|name]]]]]
    

where the meaning of each parameter is as follows:

  Target[ezci]: 1:public@ezci-ether.domain:9161::4

Numeric IPv6 addresses

If IPv6 is enabled you may also specify a target using its IPv6 address. To avoid ambiguity with the port number, numeric IPv6 addresses must be placed in square brackets.

Example:

 Target[IPv6test]: 2:public@[2001:760:4::]:6161::4
    

External Monitoring Scripts

If you want to monitor something which does not provide data via snmp you can use some external program to do the data gathering.

The external command must return 4 lines of output:

 Target[myrouter]: `/usr/local/bin/df2mrtg /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s0`

Multi Target Syntax

You can also combine several target definitions in a mathematical expression. Any syntactically correct expression that the Perl interpreter can evaluate to will work. An expression could be used, for example, to aggregate both B channels in an ISDN connection or to calculate the percentage hard disk utilization of a server from the absolute used space and total capacity.

Examples:

 Target[myrouter]: 2:public@wellfleetA + 1:public@wellfleetA

 Target[myrouter]: .1.3.6.1.4.1.999.1&.1.3.6.1.4.1.999.2:public@mydevice /
     .1.3.6.1.4.1.999.3&.1.3.6.1.4.1.999.4:public@mydevice * 100
    

Note that whitespace must surround each target definition in the expression. Target definitions themselves must not contain whitespace, except in interface descriptions and interface names, where each whitespace character is escaped by a backslash.

MRTG automatically rounds the result of the expression to an integer unless RRDTool logging is in use and the gauge option is in effect for the target. Internally MRTG uses Perl's Math::BigFloat package to calculate the result of the expression with 40 digits of precision. Even in extreme cases, where, for example, you take the difference of two 64-bit integers, the result of the expression should be accurate.

SNMP Request Optimization

MRTG is designed to economize on its SNMP requests. Where a target definition appears more than once in the configuration file, MRTG requests the data from the device only once per round of data collection and uses the collected data for each instance of a particular target. Recognition of two target definitions as being identical is based on a simple string match rather than any kind of deeper semantic analysis.

Example:

 Target[Targ1]: 1:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ2]: 2:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ3]: 1:public@CiscoA + 2:public@CiscoA
 Target[Targ4]: 1:public@CISCOA
    

This results in a total of three SNMP requests. Data for 1:public@CiscoA and 2:public@CiscoA are requested only once each, and used for Targ1, Targ2, and Targ3. Targ4 causes another SNMP request for 1:public@CISCOA, which is not recognized as being identical to 1:public@CiscoA.

MaxBytes

If a number higher than MaxBytes is returned, it is ignored. Also read the section on AbsMax for further info. The MaxBytes value is also used in calculating the Y range for unscaled graphs (see the section on Unscaled).

Since most links are rated in bits per second, you need to divide their maximum bandwidth (in bits) by eight (8) in order to get bytes per second. This is very important to make your unscaled graphs display realistic information. T1 = 193000, 56K = 7000, 10 MB Ethernet = 1250000, 100 MB Ethernet = 12500000. The MaxBytes value will be used by mrtg to decide whether it got a valid response from the router.

If you need two different MaxBytes values for the two monitored variables, you can use MaxBytes1 and MaxBytes2 instead of MaxBytes.

Example:

 MaxBytes[myrouter]: 1250000

Title

Example:

 Title[myrouter]: Traffic Analysis for Our Nice Company

PageTop

Note that the continuation lines will all end up on the same line in the html page. If you want linebreaks in the generated html use the '\n' sequence.

Example:

 PageTop[myrouter]: <H1>Traffic Analysis for ETZ C95.1</H1>
   Our Campus Backbone runs over an FDDI line\n
   with a maximum transfer rate of 12.5 megabytes per
   Second.

RouterUptime

If these interfaces are on the same router and the uptime and name should be displayed you have to specify its community and address again with the RouterUptime keyword.

If you want to use a special OID for querying the router uptime, use prepend the oid.

Example:

 Target[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1:public@194.64.66.250 + 2:public@194.64.66.250
 RouterUptime[kacisco.comp.edu]: public@194.64.66.250

 RouterUptime[kacisco.comp.edu]: hrSystemUptime.0:public@194.64.66.250

RouterName

A practical example: sysName on BayTech DS72 units always display "ds72", no matter what you set the Unit ID to be. Instead, the Unit ID is stored at 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0, so we can have MRTG display this instead of sysName.

Example:

 RouterName[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0

A different OID on a different host can also be specified:

 RouterName[kacisco.comp.edu]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.4779.1.1.3.0:public@194.64.66.251

MaxBytes1

MaxBytes2

IPv4Only

If set to no (the default), mrtg will use IPv6 unless the target has no IPv6 addresses, in which case it will use IPv4. If set to yes, mrtg will only use IPv4.

Note that if this option is set to yes and the target does not have an IPv4 address, communication with the target will fail.

This option has no effect if IPv6 is not enabled.

Example:

 Target[v4onlyrouter_1]: 1:public@v4onlyrouter
 IPv4Only[v4onlyrouter_1]: Yes

SnmpOptions (V3)

Security Modes

SNMPv3 has three security modes, defined on the device being polled. For example, on Cisco routers the security mode is defined by the snmp-server group global configuration command.

NoAuthNoPriv

Neither Authentication nor Privacy is defined. Only the Username option is specified for this mode.

Example:

 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1'
    

AuthNoPriv

Uses a Username and a password. The password can be hashed using the snmpkey application, or passed in plain text along with the ContextEngineID

Example:

 SnmpOptions[myrouter]: username=>'user1',authpassword=>'example',
   contextengineid=>'80000001110000004000000'
    

Priv

Both Authentication and Privacy is defined. The default privacy protocol is des.

Example: SnmpOptions[myrouter]: authkey=>'0x1e93ab5a396e2af234c8920e61cfe2028072c0e2', authprotocol=>'sha',privprotocol=>'des',username=>'user1', privkey=>'0x498d74940c5872ed387201d74b9b25e2'

snmp options

The following option keywords are recognized:

username

The user associated with the User Security Model

contextname

An SNMP agent can define multiple contexts. This keyword allows them to be polled.

contextengineid

A unique 24-byte string identifying the snmp-agent.

authpassword

The plaintext password for a user in either AuthNoPriv or Priv mode.

authkey

A md5 or sha hash of the plain-text password, along with the engineid. Use the snmpkey commandline program to generate this hash, or use Net::SNMP::Security::USM in a script.

authprotocol {sha|md5}

The hashing algorithm defined on the SNMP client. Defaults to md5.

privpassword

A plaintext pre-shared key for encrypting snmp packets in Priv mode.

privkey

A hash of the plain-text pre-shared key, along with the engineid. Use the snmpkey commandline program to generate this hash, or use Net::SNMP::Security::USM in a script.

privprotocol {des|3desede|aescfb128|aescfb192|aescfb256}

Specifies the encryption method defined on the snmp agent. The default is des.

PageFoot

Note that the continuation lines will all end up on the same line in the html page. If you want linebreaks in the generated html use the '\n' sequence.

The material will be added just before the </BODY> tag:

Example:

 PageFoot[myrouter]: Contact <A HREF="mailto:peter@x.yz">Peter</A>
  if you have questions regarding this page

AddHead

Example:

 AddHead[myrouter]: <link rev="made" href="mailto:mrtg@blabla.edu">

BodyTag

Example:

 BodyTag[myrouter]: <BODY LEFTMARGIN="1" TOPMARGIN="1" 
                      BACKGROUND="/stats/images/bg.neo2.gif">

AbsMax

Example:

 AbsMax[myrouter]: 2500000

Unscaled

Example:

 Unscaled[myrouter]: ym

WithPeak

Examples:

 WithPeak[myrouter]: ym

Suppress

Example:

 Suppress[myrouter]: y

Extension

Example:

 Extension[myrouter]: phtml

Directory

If the Directory option is specified, the files are instead put into a directory under WorkDir or Log-, Image- and HtmlDir). (For example the Directory option below would cause all the files for a target myrouter to be put into directory /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg/myrouter/ .)

The directory must already exist; mrtg will not create it.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter

NOTE: the Directory option must always be 'relative' or bad things will happen.

Clonedirectory

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter
 Clonedirectory[myrouter]: myclonedirectory

Optionally the target name can be changed in the cloning process.

Example:

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Directory[myrouter]: myrouter
 Clonedirectory[myrouter]: myclonedirectory mynewtarget

NOTE1: The clone directory must already exist; mrtg will not create it.

NOTE2: The Clonedirectory option must also always be 'relative' or bad things will happen.

NOTE3: This requires the File::Copy module

XSize and YSize

Note: XSize must be between 20 and 600; YSize must be larger than 20

Example:

 XSize[myrouter]: 300
 YSize[myrouter]: 300

XZoom and YZoom

Example:

 XZoom[myrouter]: 2.0
 YZoom[myrouter]: 2.0

XScale and YScale

Example:

 XScale[myrouter]: 1.5
 YScale[myrouter]: 1.5

YTics and YTicsFactor

Example:

Suppose you get values ranging from 0 to 700. You want to plot 7 lines and want to show 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 instead of 0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700. You should write then:

  YTics[myrouter]: 7
  YTicsFactor[myrouter]: 0.01

Factor

Example:

  Factor[as400]: 4096

Step

Example:

 Step[myrouter]: 60

PNGTitle

Example:

 PNGTitle[myrouter]: WAN Link UK-US

Options

growright

The graph grows to the left by default. This option flips the direction of growth causing the current time to be at the right edge of the graph and the history values to the left of it.

bits

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 8 (i.e. shown in bits instead of bytes) ... looks much more impressive :-) It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

perminute

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 60 (i.e. shown in units per minute instead of units per second) in case of small values more accurate graphs are displayed. It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

perhour

All the monitored variable values are multiplied by 3600 (i.e. shown in units per hour instead of units per second) in case of small values more accurate graphs are displayed. It also affects the 'factory default' labeling and units for the given target.

noinfo

Suppress the information about uptime and device name in the generated webpage.

nopercent

Don't print usage percentages.

transparent

Make the background of the generated gifs transparent.

integer

Print summary lines below graph as integers without commas.

dorelpercent

The relative percentage of IN-traffic to OUT-traffic is calculated and displayed in the graph as an additional line. Note: Only a fixed scale is available (from 0 to 100%). Therefore if IN-traffic is greater than OUT-traffic then 100% is displayed. If you suspect that your IN-traffic is not always less than or equal to your OUT-traffic you are urged to not use this options. Note: If you use this option in combination with the Colours options, a fifth colour-name colour-value pair is required there.

avgpeak

There are some ISPs who use the average Peak values to bill their customers. Using this option MRTG displays these values for each graph. The value is built by averaging the max 5 minute traffic average for each 'step' shown in the graph. For the Weekly graph this means that it builds the average of all 2 hour intervals 5 minute peak values. (Confused? Thought so!)

gauge

Treat the values gathered from target as 'current status' measurements and not as ever incrementing counters. This would be useful to monitor things like disk space, processor load, temperature, and the like ...

In the absence of 'gauge' or 'absolute' options, MRTG treats variables as a counters and calculates the difference between the current and the previous value and divides that by the elapsed time between the last two readings to get the value to be plotted.

absolute

This is for counter type data sources which reset their value when they are read. This means that rateup does not have to build the difference between the current and the last value read from the data source. The value obtained is still divided by the elapsed time between the current and the last reading, which makes it different from the 'gauge' option. Useful for external data gatherers.

derive

If you are using rrdtool as logger/grapher you can use a third type of data source. Derive is like counter, except that it is not required to go UP all the time. It is useful for situations where the change of some value should be graphed.

unknaszero

Log unknown data as zero instead of the default behaviour of repeating the last value seen. Be careful with this, often a flat line in the graph is much more obvious than a line at 0.

withzeroes

Normally we ignore all values which are zero when calculating the average transfer rate on a line. If this is not desirable use this option.

noborder

If you are using rateup to log data, MRTG will create the graph images. Normally these images have a shaded border around them. If you do not want the border to be drawn, enable this option. This option has no effect if you are not using rateup.

noarrow

As with the option above, this effects rateup graph generation only. Normally rateup will generate graphs with a small arrow showing the direction of the data. If you do not want this arrow to be drawn, enable this option. This option has no effect if you are not using rateup.

noi

When using rateup for graph generation, you can use this option to stop rateup drawing a graph for the 'I' or first variable. This also removes entries for this variable in the HTML page MRTG generates, and will remove the peaks for this variable if they are enabled. This allows you to hide this data, or can be very useful if you are only graphing one line of data rather than two. This option is not destructive - any data received for the the variable continued to be logged, it just isn't shown.

noo

Same as above, except relating to the 'O' or second variable.

nobanner

When using rateup for graph generation, this option disables MRTG adding the MRTG banner to the HTML pages it generates.

nolegend

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will stop MRTG from creating a legend at the bottom of the HTML pages it generates.

printrouter

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will print the router name in the graph it generates. This option is overridden by the value of PNGTitle if one is given

pngdate

When using rateup for graph generation, this option will print a timestamp in the graph it generates, including a timezone if one is specified by the 'Timezone' parameter. This is aequivalent to setting TimeStrPost[x]: RU

logscale

The logscale option causes rateup to display the data with the Y axis scaled logarithmically. Doing so allows the normal traffic to occupy the majority of the vertical range, while still showing any spikes at their full height.

logscale displays all the available data and will always produce well-behaved graphs. People often consider a logarithmically scaled graph counterintuitive, however, and thus hard to interpret.

expscale

The expscale option causes rateup to display the data with the Y axis scaled exponentially. Doing so emphasizes small changes at the top of the scale; this can be useful when graphing values that fluctuate by a small amount near the top of the scale, such as line voltage.

expscale is essentially the inverse of logscale.

secondmean

The secondmean option sets the maximum value on the graph to the mean of the data greater than the mean of all data. This produces a graph that focuses more on the typical data, while clipping large peaks.

Using secondmean will give a more intutive linearly scaled graph, but can result in a uselessly high or low scale in some rare situations (specifically, when the data includes a large portion of values far from the actual mean)

If a target includes both logscale and secondmean in the options, the secondmean takes precedence.

Example:

 Options[myrouter]: growright, bits

kilo

Example:

 kilo[myrouter]: 1024

kMG

Example: velocity in nm/s (nanometers per second) displayed in nm/h.

 ShortLegend[myrouter]: m/h
 kMG[myrouter]: n,u,m,,k,M,G,T,P
 options[myrouter]: perhour

Colours

Format is: Col1#RRGGBB,Col2#RRGGBB,Col3#RRGGBB,Col4#RRGGBB

Important: If you use the dorelpercent options tag a fifth colour name colour value pair is required: Col1#RRGGBB,Col2#RRGGBB,Col3#RRGGBB,Col4#RRGGBB,Col5#RRGGBB

Colour1

First variable (normally Input) on default graph.

Colour2

Second variable (normally Output) on default graph.

Colour3

Max first variable (input).

Colour4

Max second variable (output).

RRGGBB

2 digit hex values for Red, Green and Blue.

Example:

 Colours[myrouter]: GREEN#00eb0c,BLUE#1000ff,DARK GREEN#006600,VIOLET#ff00ff

Background

Example:

 Background[myrouter]: #a0a0a0a

YLegend, ShortLegend, Legend[1234]

YLegend

The Y-axis label of the graph. Note that a text which is too long to fit in the graph will be silently ignored.

ShortLegend

The units string (default 'b/s') used for Max, Average and Current

Legend[1234IO]

The strings for the colour legend.

Example:

  YLegend[myrouter]: Bits per Second
  ShortLegend[myrouter]: b/s
  Legend1[myrouter]: Incoming Traffic in Bits per Second
  Legend2[myrouter]: Outgoing Traffic in Bits per Second
  Legend3[myrouter]: Maximal 5 Minute Incoming Traffic
  Legend4[myrouter]: Maximal 5 Minute Outgoing Traffic
  LegendI[myrouter]:  In:
  LegendO[myrouter]:  Out:

Note, if LegendI or LegendO are set to an empty string with

 LegendO[myrouter]:

The corresponding line below the graph will not be printed at all.

Timezone

Example:

 Timezone[myrouter]: Japan

The Timezone is the standard timezone of your system, ie Japan, Hongkong, GMT, GMT+1 etc etc.

Weekformat

The UNIX version of rateup uses the libc implementation of strftime. On Windows, the native strftime implementation does not know about %V. So there we use a different implementation of strftime that does support %V.

Example:

 Weekformat[myrouter]: W

RRDRowCount

Example:

 RRDRowCount[myrouter]: 1600

RRDRowCount30m

Example:

 RRDRowCount30m[myrouter]: 800

RRDRowCount2h

Example:

 RRDRowCount2h[myrouter]: 400

RRDRowCount1d

Example:

 RRDRowCount1d[myrouter]: 200

RRDHWRRAs

Note, this setting will only affect newly created RRDs (targets).

Example:

 RRDHWRRAs[myrouter]: RRA:HWPREDICT:1440:0.1:0.0035:288

TimeStrPos

Example:

 TimeStrPos[myrouter]: RU

TimeStrFmt

Example:

 TimeStrFmt[myrouter]: %H:%M:%S

ThreshDir (GLOBAL)

Example:

 ThreshDir: /var/mrtg/thresh

ThreshHyst (GLOBAL)

Example for 5%:

 ThreshHyst: 0.05

ThreshMailServer (GLOBAL)

ThreshMailSender (GLOBAL)

Example:

 ThreshMailSender: mrtg@example.com

ThreshMailAddress (PER TARGET)

Example:

 ThreshMailAddress[_]: admin@example.com
 ThreshMailAddress[router]:

This would bring threshold releaed mail to all but the target called 'router'.

ThreshMinI (PER TARGET)

ThreshMaxI (PER TARGET)

ThreshDesc (PER TARGET)

ThreshProgI (PER TARGET)

ThreshProgOKI (PER TARGET)

ThreshMinO, ThreshMaxO, ThreshProgO, and ThreshProgOKO

SetEnv

Example:

 SetEnv[myrouter]:  EMAIL="contact_email@someplace.net"
                    HOST="www.some_server.net"

HW Failure Bassed Threshold Checking

There the all target specific threshold variables have a Hold-Winters counterpart:

 ThreshMailAddress -> HWThreshMailAddress
 ThreshMinI        -> HWThreshMinI
 ...

The global variables for threshold checking are shared except for the

 ThreshHyst        -> HWThreshHyst

And HWThreshDesc sets the HWTHRESH_DESC variable.

Pre- and Postfix

Note that a space is inserted between the prepended text and the Keyword value, as well as between the Keyword value and the appended text. This works well for text-valued Keywords, but is not very useful for other Keywords. See the "default" target description below.

The example will make mrtg use a common header and a common contact person in all the pages generated from targets defined later in this file.

Example:

 PageTop[^]: <H1>NoWhere Unis Traffic Stats</H1><HR>
 PageTop[$]: Contact Peter Norton if you have any questions<HR>

To remove the prepend/append value, specify an empty value, e.g.:

 PageTop[^]:
 PageTop[$]:

NoSpaceChar

Example:

  NoSpaceChar: ~
  Target[^]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.482.50.2.4.20.0&1.3.6.1.4.1.482.50.2.4.21.0:get@~
  Target[a]: a.tolna.net
  Target[b]: b.tolna.net
  Target[c]: c.tolna.net
  Target[d]: d.tolna.net

Default Values

Example:

 YSize[_]: 150
 Options[_]: growright,bits,nopercent
 WithPeak[_]: ymw
 Suppress[_]: y
 MaxBytes[_]: 1250000

To remove the default value and return to the 'factory default', specify an empty value, e.g.:

 YLegend[_]:

There can be several instances of setting the default/prepend/append values in the configuration file. The later setting replaces the previous one for the rest of the configuration file. The default/prepend/append values used for a given keyword/target pair are the ones that were in effect at the point in the configuration file where the target was mentioned for the first time.

Example:

 MaxBytes[_]: 1250000
 Target[myrouter.somplace.edu.2]: 2:public@myrouter.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[_]: 8000
 Title[myrouter.somplace.edu.2]: Traffic Analysis for myrouter.somplace.edu IF 2

The default MaxBytes for the target myrouter.someplace.edu.2 in the above example will be 1250000, which was in effect where the target name myrouter.someplace.edu.2 first appeared in the config file.

Minimal mrtg.cfg

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Target[r1]: 2:public@myrouter.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[r1]: 8000
 Title[r1]: Traffic Analysis ISDN
 PageTop[r1]: <H1>Stats for our ISDN Line</H1>

Cfg for several Routers.

 WorkDir: /usr/tardis/pub/www/stats/mrtg
 Title[^]: Traffic Analysis for
 PageTop[^]: <H1>Stats for
 PageTop[$]: Contact The Chief if you notice anybody<HR>
 MaxBytes[_]: 8000
 Options[_]: growright

 Title[isdn]: our ISDN Line
 PageTop[isdn]: our ISDN Line</H1>
 Target[isdn]: 2:public@router.somplace.edu

 Title[backb]: our Campus Backbone
 PageTop[backb]: our Campus Backbone</H1>
 Target[backb]: 1:public@router.somplace.edu
 MaxBytes[backb]: 1250000

 # the following line removes the default prepend value
 # defined above

 Title[^]:

 Title[isdn2]: Traffic for the Backup ISDN Line
 PageTop[isdn2]: our ISDN Line</H1>
 Target[isdn2]: 3:public@router.somplace.edu