Remove Spikes From RRDtool Graphs

Robert — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:24:46 +0000

I use RRDtool to make graphs on various things I monitor like server stats, network stats and it does a relatively good job. My one (big) complaint is that when you restart you occasionally see these gigantic spikes that completely mess up the data. I’ve even seen spikes larger than what the system can technically handle.

Nobody mentioned there’s a removespikes.pl script (download) that will remove these outliers from your rrds. I put together a quick shell script to make it quick for when I need to run it again:


!/bin/sh

for i in /path/to/graphs/rrd/*;
do
        perl removespikes.pl $i;
done;

If you have a ton of graphs a quick shell script to iterate through the directly may be quicker. If you only have a handful like me, no big deal.

Keep the script around for the next time you have spikes to deal with.

Goodbye MRTG

Robert — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:35:45 +0000

I’ve finally got just about all the network graphs I maintain using RRDtool rather than MRTG. I started doing this since MRTG isn’t good for graphing things with more than 2 sets of numbers. I started doing this because I wanted to track cable modem data. I figured while I’m at it, I should move other stuff too.

So much easier to read, and so much faster since your not spitting out graphics files every time the system polls. Not to mention the quality of the graphing image is much nicer. These are shrunk a little and they still look great.

MRTG is still running, but I think I’ll shut it down as soon as I can verify things are working the way I want.

Robert Accettura's Fun With Wordage » graphing

Remove Spikes From RRDtool Graphs

Goodbye MRTG