Nothing surprises me about the inability of users to follow instructions. I thought a root crontab was the same as specifying a user of root in the /etc/crontab. I learned a little something today.

Thanks again.

On 11/08/2013 05:29 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote:

You might not be surprised to hear that this problem occurs very frequently.

Even *after* I added the big red box that tells you not to do crontab -u !

adam.

On 2013-11-08 22:18, Ross Ashley wrote:

...

I ran the /etc/crontab as documented in the installation instructions and it suddenly, inexplicably began to work. It's almost as if the writer of the install doc knew what they were doing. Shocking. :-)

Thanks.

On 11/08/2013 05:13 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote: Where in the install guide did it tell you to do that?

What else did you modify?

Ross Ashley rashley@katto.com wrote:

I set the poller to run from the root crontab.

Here is the crontab -l

33 */6 * * * /opt/observium/discovery.php -h all >> /dev/null 2>&1 */5 * * * * /opt/observium/discovery.php -h new >> /dev/null 2>&1 */5 * * * * /opt/observium/poller-wrapper.php 2 >> /dev/nul

On 11/08/2013 02:13 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote: And what user does the poller run as from cron?

Ross Ashley rashley@katto.com wrote:

No. The device data, like OS type and version looks fine but all of the graphs are empty. I ran the poller as root so all the rrds are updated that one time.

On 11/08/2013 02:00 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote: Is it populating any other data?

The fact that the RRDs are being created means that the poller is running, at least once.

adam.

On 2013-11-08 18:57, Ross Ashley wrote: Yes, I thought of that :-) But I'm getting the same behavior on localhost, which led me to believe that I'd screwed something up. Permissions seem OK.

On 11/08/2013 01:52 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote: You might want to try a less functionally retarded device, to make sure everything works, first.

adam.

On 2013-11-08 18:51, Ross Ashley wrote: I'm trying to setup an airport extreme. I think I've successfully set it up both from the command line with add_device.php and from the web page, (I deleted it and then added it). The static info for it appears but any graphic info doesn't. All the graphs are empty, showing Nan

rrdtool dump yields Nan for all data other than static info. Here is a portion of what I mean;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE rrd SYSTEM "http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/rrdtool.dtd">

<!-- Round Robin Database Dump -->

<rrd> <version>0003</version> <step>300</step> <!-- Seconds --> <lastupdate>1383934188</lastupdate> <!-- 2013-11-08 13:09:48 EST -->

<ds> <name> icmpInMsgs </name> <type> COUNTER </type> <minimal_heartbeat>600</minimal_heartbeat> <min>NaN</min> <max>1.0000000000e+11</max>

<!-- PDP Status -->

<last_ds>69</last_ds> <value>0.0000000000e+00</value> <unknown_sec> 288 </unknown_sec>

</ds>

<ds> <name> icmpOutMsgs </name> <type> COUNTER </type> <minimal_heartbeat>600</minimal_heartbeat> <min>NaN</min> <max>1.0000000000e+11</max>

<!-- PDP Status -->

<last_ds>31</last_ds> <value>0.0000000000e+00</value> <unknown_sec> 288 </unknown_sec>

</ds>

...

I followed the installation instructions twice :-) but I can't seem to get any data to appear.

Can someone give me an idea of something to check?

Thanks.

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I'm not actually sure where that mistake came from. My installation needed root /usr/bin/python /opt/observium/poller-wrapper.py 2 >> etc..

That was the problem. Since I messed the cron statement up and didn't know that polling at 5 minute intervals populated the thing, it just didn't work. I thought the cron could be added later after I was sure everything worked.

Anyway, everything works now.

On 11/08/2013 05:43 PM, Adam Armstrong wrote:

On 2013-11-08 22:36, Ross Ashley wrote:

...

Nothing surprises me about the inability of users to follow instructions. I thought a root crontab was the same as specifying a user of root in the /etc/crontab. I learned a little something today.

They are actually the same thing. It's likely that there was some other error.

You should probably have put the stuff in /etc/cron.d/observium, that's the 'modern' way to do it.

We wrote the guide specifically so people could copy/paste and not actually have to think for themselves. The number of silly mistakes we get like this is astronomical.

...

*/5 * * * * /opt/observium/poller-wrapper.php 2 >> /dev/nul

This line is broken, if that's what was really in the cron... :)

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