[Orca-users] Re: graphs not updating (although the data is) on a sol 2.8 host

[Blair Zajac]

orcausers wrote:
> 
> --- In orca-users at y..., Blair Zajac <blair at o...> wrote:
> > "Saladin, Miki" wrote:
> > >
> > > >       After I included the following in the orcallator script -
> > > >       WEB_LOG="/usr/apache/logs/access_log"
> > > >       WATCH_WEB="-DWATCH_WEB"
> > > >       WEB_SERVER="/usr/apache/bin/httpd"
> > > >       export WEB_LOG WEB_SERVER WATCH_WEB
> >
> > I would change WEB_SERVER to httpd so it can find the web server
> > process name.  WEB_SERVER does not need to be the complete path to
> > the web server program.
> >
> > > >       As per some emails in this forum - I did remove the rrd
> files for
> > > > this server - still no updating since the above change to the
> orcallator
> > > > collector. I also (in another moment if magical thinking) -
> emptied the
> > > > /orca/orca_html/hostname directory for this host - nothing.
> >
> > So just to be clear, the only change you made was to one machine and
> > you changed the start_orcallator script and the data stopped showing
> > up?
> >
> > Which version of orcallator.se are you using?
> >
> > What are the format of the output files that orcallator.se is
> generating?
> > Do they contain -DDD where D is a digit 0-9?
> >
> > Blair
> 
> point by point -
> - I started out with WEB_SERVER=httpd - the graph is always zeros
> despite the fact that ps -aef | grep httpd always returns a minimun of
> 10 httpd processes. But I certainly will change it back to just httpd.
> We are using apache.
> - your ? about just to be clear - what you describe is correct.
> - 3.2.1
> - if you are asking me about the format of the name of the output
> files - here is what they are -
>   percol-2002-05-15.gz  percol-2002-05-20.gz  percol-2002-05-25.gz
> percol-2002-05-16.gz  percol-2002-05-21.gz  percol-2002-05-26.gz
> percol-2002-05-17.gz  percol-2002-05-22.gz  percol-2002-05-27
> percol-2002-05-18.gz  percol-2002-05-23.gz
> percol-2002-05-19.gz  percol-2002-05-24.gz
> 
> I need to let you know that the orca data for this server resumed
> being updated friday at midnight - when it would have rolled over to
> a new percol file for Saturday. that's great but doesn't help me
> understand what happened - maybe it does not like the contents of
> what it is collecting changed within the interval of one percol file.

With your change to running orcallator.se, the output percol-* file
format changed in the middle of the file and when this happens, Orca
ignores those lines of the file that do not conform to the first line
of the file with the column names.

Since the next day data has a consistent first line, then Orca plots
it.

One solution is to upgrade to the latest orca, orcallator.se,
orcallator.cfg which work around this problem by opening a new
percol-YYYY-MM-DD-XXX file anytime the output format changes.

Just added this to the Orca FAQ:

 3.17) Why do my Orca plots no longer contain any data after I change
       anything related to orcallator, such as the subsystems to
       measure, or when something changes on the system, such as mount
       points, ethernet devices, etc.

       Orca's input data files must contain the exact number of
       columns either specified in the orcallator.cfg with the
       column_description listing the actual column names or the
       column names as specified in the first line of the input data
       file when column_description is set to `first_line'.  If the
       number of columns do not match, then Orca ignores this data to
       protect the RRD files from incorrect data added to them.

       The columns in the Orca's input files commonly happen with
       orcallator.se when the administrator tells orcallator to
       measure a different set of subsystems or when the system itself
       adds or removed mount points, disk drives, ethernet devices,
       etc.

       To work around this problem, upgrade to the latest version of
       Orca, orcallator.se and orcallator.cfg which now create a new
       data file anytime the number of columns changes.  The file
       format of the output files has changed from
       orcallator-YYYY-MM-DD to orcallator-YYYY-MM-DD-XXX where XXX is
       a monotonically increasing number that resets to 0 at the
       beginning of the next day.


> 
> I will make the change to the WEB_SERVER var and restart orcallator.
> 
> Thanks much for the input and on a holiday weekend no less!

You're welcome.

Best,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair at orcaware.com>
Web and OS performance plots - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/