MRTG-NW-GUIDE(1)                     mrtg                     MRTG-NW-GUIDE(1)



NAME
       mrtg-nw-guide - MRTG for NetWare

SYNOPSIS
       This guide is intended to aid in the installation and configuration of
       MRTG on a NetWare server.

OVERVIEW
       MRTG is a relative newcomer to the NetWare platform. Earlier versions
       of NetWare could not run MRTG natively for several reasons:

       o   Absence of NetWare OS support in the MRTG package.

       o   A NetWare server commandline length limitation.

       o   Absence of the Rateup executable (Rateup.nlm).

       o   A standard installation method.

       o   Problems with NetWare's implementation of Perl.

       Support for the NetWare OS has now been fully added into MRTG,
       beginning with MRTG release 2.12.2.

       Liberallly minded operating systems support a commandline length
       approaching 1000 characters. In such environments it was an easy matter
       to pass the sometimes high number of parameters used by MRTG's Rateup
       executable directly on the commandline. Until NetWare 6.5, NetWare had
       a commandline limit of 512 characters. This limitation was also removed
       for NetWare 6.0 by Service Pack 5. For other NetWare versions and
       earlier Service Packs, this limitation remains. To permit a 'standard'
       interface for NetWare, the Rateup executable has been modified to also
       read its parameters from a file, and the MRTG script has been modified
       to support this method on a NetWare platform.  (See New Rateup Switch)

       A Rateup NLM is now available, along with the necessary scripts to
       build it if required. See the  NetWare Support section of this document
       for further details. Additionally, mrtg.pl has been revised because of
       the unique (to NetWare) name of executables (NLM).

       The absence of a specific installation procedure has caused MRTG to
       fail in the past because the Perl script could not find or load the
       Rateup executable. The installation method supplied here will solve
       this problem for now.

       The MRTG.pl script in the 2.12.2 (or later) version of MRTG has been
       configured to suit all likely versions of NetWare able to use Perl5,
       and bypasses all of the known problems with NetWare Perl running MRTG.

PREREQUISITES
       You will need the following:

       o   Perl 5.8.0 for NetWare with latest Perl Updates (February, 2005 or
           later; previous versions MAY work)

       o   NetWare 5.1 w/ SP8, NetWare 6.0 w/ SP5 or NetWare 6.5 w/ SP2.

       o   A copy of the MRTG Package (v2.12.2 at time of writting)

       o   Three .ncf files to execute the Perl scripts at the NetWare server
           console.

       o   A copy of the Rateup NLM (Pre-built or compiled)

       o   Optionally, any NetWare supported Web Server (Netscape, Apache 1.3
           or 2.0)

       For copies of the .ncf files and Rateup NLM, see NetWare Support in
       this document.

INSTALLING MRTG
       1.  Install the latest Perl 5.8.x release on your server. See the Perl
           documentation for details.

       2.  Create the following directories:

                    SYS:/Mrtg
                    SYS:/Mrtg/bin
                    SYS:/Mrtg/contrib    (Optional for this document)
                    SYS:/Mrtg/doc        (Optional for this document)
                    SYS:/Mrtg/html
                    SYS:/Mrtg/html/images
                    SYS:/Mrtg/html/work
                    SYS:/Mrtg/lib
                    SYS:/Mrtg/logs
                    SYS:/Mrtg/translate

       3.  Copy from the MRTG package the following files:

            \bin\*        to  SYS:/Mrtg/bin              All files. See Note 1.

           Note 1: Add a .pl extension to the mrtg, cfgmaker and indexmaker
           files.  The rateup.exe will NOT be needed on the NetWare server.

            \contrib\*    to  SYS:/Mrtg/contrib/         Include sub-directories
            \doc\*        to  SYS:/Mrtg/doc/             All files
            \images\*     to  SYS:/Mrtg/html/images/     All files
            \translate\*  to  SYS:/Mrtg/translate/       All files. See Note 2.

           Note 2: For English-only language support, all \translate files
           EXCEPT Locales_mrtg may be deleted.

            \lib\*        to  SYS:/Mrtg/lib              Include sub-directories. See Note 3.

           Note 3: This will create the SYS:/Mrtg/lib/mrtg2 and ./pod
           directories.

       4.  Create copies of the three .ncf files and install them:

            *.ncf         to  SYS:/Mrtg/bin

           See NetWare Support in this document for details on how to create
           copies of these files.

       5.  See Compiling Rateup.nlm"> in this document for details on
           compiling the Rateup NLM yourself if desired.  A prebuit verion is
           available in the .\mrtg\bin directory where it must remain.

CONFIGURING MRTG
       o   Refer to Novell documentation on configuring and loading SNMP
           support on your server if this is the device to be monitored.

       o   Edit sys:/mrtg/bin/MakeMrtgCfg.ncf:

           replace ccccc with the GET community name for the SNMP device
           (typically 'public'),

           replace ddddd with the DNS name or IP address of the device to be
           monitored.  e.g    public@www.myserver.com, public@10.202.65.180

           Note 1: These are NOT mail addresses, they just look like one!

           Note 2: If multiple devices are to be monitored, add their entries
           to the same line:

           e.g  perl cfgmaker.pl public@www.myserver.com public@10.202.65.180
           > sys:/mrtg/bin/mrtg.cfg

           In this "Getting Started", it is 'suggested' to only monitor a
           single device.

       o   At the server console, run:

            sys:/mrtg/bin/MakeMrtgCfg.ncf

           This will create Mrtg.cfg in sys:/mrtg/bin.

       o   Edit the Mrtg.cfg configuration file created in the previous step.
           Note the following:

           It was found, when testing MRTG on a NetWare 6.5 server using a NIC
           Interface, that mrtg.cfg contained the following message:

            ### Interface 1 >> Descr: 'Intel(R)-8255x-based-Network-Connection'...
            ### The following interface is commented out because:
            ### * has a speed of 0 which makes no sense
            #
            ...

           If this occurs, edit MakeMrtgCfg.ncf and add the following
           parameter as shown:

            perl sys:\mrtg\bin\cfgmaker.pl --zero-speed=nnn public@10.202.65.180 > sys:\mrtg\bin\Mrtg.cfg

           where nnn is the interface speed in bits per second. For a 100
           Megabit LAN NIC, nnn = 10000000. It will be necessary to re-execute
           the MakeMrtgCfg.ncf script before continuing with this section.

           Below line 16 (*** Global Defaults), add:

            HtmlDir:  <a path>  e.g  HtmlDir:  sys:/mrtg/html
            ImageDir: <a path>  e.g  ImageDir: sys:/mrtg/html/work
            LogDir:   <a path>  e.g  LogDir:   sys:/mrtg/logs
            IconDir:  <a path>  e.g  IconDir:  ./images

           Note 1. The HtmlDir entry specifies where MRTG will create its HTML
           pages.

           Note 2. The ImageDir entry specifies where the created graphic
           icons are placed.

           Note 3. The IconDir entry specifies where the supplied MRTG icons
           are located.  It MUST be a relative path from HtmlDir or absolute
           URL. The value shown is recommended.

       o   At the server console run:

            sys:/mrtg/bin/RunMrtg.ncf

           several times. By the third time it should run without showing
           error messages on the console screen.

           This should create.

           - A HTML page in the (HtmlDir) directory for each monitored device,

           - A .dat file in the (ImageDir) directory for each monitored
           device,

           - Several .png icons in the (ImageDir) directory,

           - Some log file entries in the (LogDir) directory.

           Note: If you experience a "Use of uninitialised value in split"
           error, it will be necessary to create a 'Path' environment variable
           at the server console; use the following example

            env path="SYS:\"  (The actual value is immaterial, as long as the var itself exists.)

       o   Edit sys:/mrtg/bin/MakeMrtgIndex.ncf. Change the indicated <path>
           shown in the following example to match the value entered for
           (HtmlDir).

            perl --noscreen sys:/mrtg/bin/indexmaker.pl sys:/mrtg/bin/Mrtg.cfg > <path>/index.html

       o   Create an index.html page linking the seperate device HTML page(s).
           At the server console, run:

            sys:/mrtg/bin/MakeMrtgIndex.ncf

           This will create index.html in the (HtmlDir) directory.

       o   Optionally, configure a Web Server to permit access to the
           directory specified in (HtmlDir) to view the MRTG graphs remotely,
           at, for example:

            http://ip_or_dns/mrtg/index.html

           A sample configuration for an Apache Webserver is shown:

            Alias /mrtg/ "SYS:/mrtg/html/"
            <Directory "SYS:/mrtg/html">
                        AllowOverride None
                        Order allow,deny
                        Allow from all
            </Directory>

       o   Set the property of the directory pointed to by (ImageDir), to
           'Purge Immediate'.

       o   Finally, read the MRTG documentation for much more detailed
           configuration/usage information.

       Welcome to MRTG!!

MAKE MRTG RUN ALL THE TIME
       MRTG can be made to run periodically by at least two means:

       o   Using CRON Scheduling

       o   Running MRTG in Daemon Mode

   CRON Scheduling
       To use CRON scheduling, create a CRON Scheduler entry to execute the
       RunMrtg.ncf file on a frequency appropriate for the server environment
       and information desired. The following entry in the sys:\etc\crontab
       file will execute MRTG every five minutes:

        0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * sys:\mrtg\bin\runmrtg.ncf

       The CRON Scheduler (cron.nlm) can be started automatically by adding it
       in AUTOEXEC.ncf or, manually loading it at the server console.

   MRTG in Daemon Mode
       Refer to the MRTG-Reference document for information about the
       'RunAsDaemon' option. Its use is outside the scope of this document.

TROUBLESHOOTING
       Read the MRTG documents, Perl documents or, finally, submit questions
       to the MRTG User forums.

       For NetWare specific issues, submit questions to the Perl forum at
       news://developer-forums.novell.com/novell.devsup.perl (Novell Developer
       Forums).

COMPILING RATEUP.NLM
       In addition to the rateup.c and Makefile.Netware supplied with the MRTG
       release, you will also need:

       o   Metrowerks CodeWarrior with NetWare Support OR GCC Compiler (v3.0.3
           or later) with NlmConv Utility

       o   Novell LibC NDK (February 2004 or later)

       o   GD Graphics Library (v2.0.33 or later)

       o   LibPNG Graphics Library (v1.2.8 or later)

       o   ZLib Library (v1.2.3 or later)

       o   The get_ver.awk script

       o   A copy of the GNU build tools.    (See
           http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/)

       The auxiliary libraries can be obtained from:

       GD Graphics Library.   (See http://www.boutell.com/gd/ )

       PNG Graphics Library.   (See http://libpng.sourceforge.net/ )

       zLib Compression Library.   (See http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ )

       Edit the Makefile.Netware file as required to match your installation
       paths; search the file for the key word 'Edit'.

NETWARE SUPPORT
       For copies of the NCF and get_ver.awk scripts, see Appendix.

       For NetWare specific issues, submit questions to the Perl forum at
       news://developer-forums.novell.com/novell.devsup.perl (Novell Developer
       Forums).

       To move the MRTG application to a volume other than SYS: you will need
       to edit the NCF scripts provided plus the MRTG[.pl] script itself in
       two places.

NEW RATEUP SWITCH
       The MRTG[.pl] script, when used on a NetWare platform, uses
       Rateup[.nlm] with the new commandline switch:

            RATEUP -f filename

       where the filename parameter can include a leading path element.

       The file format is exactly the same as that used on the commandline by
       other operating systems, including the leading path and name of the
       Rateup NLM.

APPENDIX
       The Appendix includes 'copies' of the following files:

       o   The NCF files used during MRTG configuration,

       To create copies of these files, simply 'cut and paste' into your
       favourite 'text editor' and save under their respective names. You
       should remove the leading space from each line.

       MakeMrtgCfg.NCF

        # MakeMrtgCfg.NCF
        # Purpose : Create the MRTG Configuration File
        # Changed :  5/05/2005  New
        # Located : SYS:MRTG\BIN
        # Set For :
        # Params  :

        # Edit this file and:

        # Replace ccccc with your device GET SNMP Community Name - If unsure try 'public'.
        # Replace ddddd with your device IP (n.n.n.n) or domain name.

        perl --noscreen sys:\mrtg\bin\cfgmaker.pl ccccc@ddddd > sys:\mrtg\bin\Mrtg.cfg

        #
        # End of MakeMrtgCfg.NCF

       RunMrtg.NCF

        # RunMrtg.NCF
        # Purpose : Run the MRTG Application
        # Changed :  5/05/2005  New
        # Located : SYS:MRTG\BIN
        # Set For :
        # Params  :

        # The paths are as per the examples recommended in "Getting Started".

        perl --noscreen sys:\mrtg\bin\mrtg.pl sys:\mrtg\bin\mrtg.cfg

        #
        # End of RunMrtg.NCF

       MakeMrtgIndex.NCF

        # MakeMrtgIndex.NCF
        # Purpose : Create the HTML Index File for MRTG HTML data pages
        # Changed :  5/05/2005  New
        # Located : SYS:MRTG\BIN
        # Set For :
        # Params  :

        # Note: Edit this file and change the redirected output to the location
        #       specified for HtmlDir or WorkDir. The sys:\apache2\htdocs\mrtg\index.html
        #       is based on the examples in "Getting Started".

        perl --noscreen sys:\mrtg\bin\indexmaker.pl sys:\mrtg\bin\Mrtg.cfg > sys:\mrtg\html\index.html

        #
        # End of MakeMrtgIndex.NCF

LICENSE
       GNU General Public License

CREDITS
       The MRTG for NetWare exists largely through the efforts of Guenter
       Knauf and feedback from beta testers.

AUTHOR
       Norm W..



2.17.4                            2012-01-12                  MRTG-NW-GUIDE(1)
