drraw

drraw is a simple web based presentation front-end for RRDtool that allows you to interactively build graphs of your own design. A graph definition can be turned into a template which may be applied to many Round Robin Database files. drraw specializes in providing an easy mean of displaying data stored with RRDtool and does not care about how the data is collected, making it a great complement to other RRDtool front-ends.

drraw is extremely easy to install. If you already have a running web server with Perl installed, it should take you less than 10 minutes to get drraw running for testing. Furher configuration is also simple and kept to a minimum.

Unlike its predecessor (MRTG), RRDtool is not a tool that can be used on its own. Instead, it is a building block upon which many front-ends are built. Doing what MRTG does with RRDtool takes three pieces:

data collection engine

RRDtool (to store the data)

graphing engine

Most existing front-ends try to do everything, which drraw's author considers to be a design flaw for multiple reasons:

• Most data collection engines are specialized, too specialized to cover everything one needs.
• Most graphing engines use knowledge of what is being collected to define static graphs which makes it difficult to reuse the engine for data collected differently.
• Most of the time, only one of the two engines gets much attention from the developer(s) and the other one is minimal.
• Most existing graphing engines use rigid file based configurations to pre-generate thousands of images that may never get viewed.

In contrast, drraw

• is a graphing engine only
• a true web-based tool
• lets you collect data any way you want
• lets you collect data using as many means/tools as you wish

drraw brings you the following features:

• An easy interface to define graphs on the fly with all the power provided by RRDtool. Such graphs may be saved for future viewing, or used to define graph templates.
• Graph templates: A template is simply a graph definition missing the data source file names. Instead, templates offer a simple mechanism to find applicable database file names, allowing to apply the same graph to many different databases.
• The ability to define "dashboards" featuring (static or dynamic) sets of graph previews for pre-defined graphs and templates.
• A customizable browser allowing to navigate through graph, template and dashboard definitions.
• A viewing engine allowing the user to change the time boundaries on the fly.

Unfortunately, I've not been aware of any publicly available site for some time now. However, drraw is mentioned in the following:

• DIKU Technical Report 04/07: Experiences with Reducing TCP Performance Problems on ADSL

  « We highly recomment "drraw" »

• LISA 06: A Forensic Analysis of a Distributed Two-Stage Web-Based Spam Attack

  « drraw is indispensable, because it allows unrelated data to be collected in a single view. »

• Nagios System and Network Monitoring
• Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios

drraw is released under a BSD style license which should satisfy pretty much any use you may have for it, but if for some reason it doesn't, contact the author to make appropriate arrangements.

Free support for drraw is handled via two special mailing lists:

• drraw-announce: Timely release announcements.

  Note: posts to this list are crossposted to the drraw-users mailing list.

• drraw-users: General forum for drraw users. [ Archive ]

To receive timely release announcements, subscribe to drraw-announce.

• version 2.2b2 [2009-02-27] - http://web.taranis.org/drraw/dist/drraw-2.2b2.tar.gz
  

  Release Focus: RRDtool 1.2.x support.
  
  Major enhancements over 2.1.x releases:

  • Full support for RRDtool 1.2.x
  • Improved Graph editor
  • Dashboard style display for templates
  • Trending display for graphs and templates
  • Enhanced Data Source Templates

• version 2.1.3 [2005-06-19] - http://web.taranis.org/drraw/dist/drraw-2.1.3.tar.gz

  Release Focus: Minor bug fixes.
  
  Major enhancements over 2.0.x releases:

  • Customizable (main page) index
  • Improved Graph/Template/Dashboard editors
  • Mozilla friendly HTML

• Release archive

drraw is also available via third-party package systems:

• Debian package
• Gentoo Portage tree: Install by typing "emerge drraw".
• pkgsrc: This page has details on availability by OS & platform.
• FreeBSD Port

drraw is written in Perl (using RRDtool's RRDs.pm module) and will require a working web server supporting CGI scripts (such as Apache or IIS). The following versions are recommended:

• Perl 5.6 or later on Unix, ActivePerl 5.8.0 or later on Windows.
• RRDtool version 1.0.47 or later (including 1.2.1 and above).

The following tables summarize configurations that have been reported to work:

Perl CGI.pm 5.00503 2.46 5.006 2.56, 2.561 5.006001 2.752, 2.88, 2.89, 2.91, 2.93, 3.05, 3.11 5.008 2.81, 2.89, 2.91, 2.98, 2.99, 3.05, 3.10 5.008001 3.00 5.008002 3.00, 3.05, 3.11, 3.20 5.008003 3.01 5.008004 3.04, 3.05, 3.11, 3.25, 3.29 5.008005 2.89, 3.04, 3.05, 3.10, 3.15, 3.16, 3.17, 3.25, 3.29 5.008006 3.01, 3.05, 3.07, 3.10, 3.25, 3.31 5.008007 3.05, 3.10, 3.15, 3.16 5.008008 3.15, 3.16, 3.20, 3.23, 3.25, 3.27, 3.29 5.008008/mod_perl2 3.15 5.010000 3.29, 3.33 5.8 3.04 5.8.0 2.81 5.8.4 3.04

Web Server Versions Apache 1.3.0, 1.3.3, 1.3.9, 1.3.12, 1.3.17, 1.3.19, 1.3.23-1.3.24, 1.3.26-1.3.29, 1.3.31, 1.3.33-1.3.34, 1.3.36-1.3.37, 1.3.41, 2.0.40, 2.0.45-2.0.55, 2.0.58-2.0.59, 2.1.4, 2.2.0, 2.2.2-2.2.4, 2.2.6, 2.2.8 IBM_HTTP_SERVER 1.3.19.4 IBM_HTTP_Server 2.0.47.1-PK13230 Mathopd 1.5p1, 1.5p3, 1.6b5 Microsoft-IIS 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 MiniServ 0.01 Oracle-Application-Server-10g 10.1.2.0.2 TwistedWeb 1.1.0 fnord 1.10, 1.8, 1.9 iPlanet-WebServer-Enterprise 6.0 lighttpd 1.4.11, 1.4.13, 1.4.15, 1.4.18 mini_httpd 1.19 thttpd 2.23beta1

RRDs.pm drraw 1.000331 1.2, 0.x 2.0, 2.1 1.000351 0.x 2.0, 2.1 1.000371 2.1 1.000391 1.1, 1.0, 0.x 2.0, 2.1 1.000401 1.2, 1.1, 1.0, 0.x 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.000411 1.2, 0.x 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.000421 1.2, 1.1, 0.x 2.0 1.000451 1.2, 1.1, 0.x 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.000461 1.2 2.0, 2.1 1.000471 2.0 1.000481 1.2 2.0, 2.1 1.000491 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.000501 2.2, 2.1 1.100001 1.2 with local updates, 1.2, 0.x 2.0 1.2001 2.1 1.2004 2.1 1.2006 2.1 1.2008 2.1 1.2009 2.1 1.201 2.2, 2.1 1.2011 1.2 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.2012 2.0, 2.2, 2.1 1.2013 2.2, 2.1 1.2014 2.2, 2.1 1.2015 2.2, 2.1 1.2018 2.2, 2.1 1.2019 2.2, 2.1 1.2023 2.2, 2.1 1.2026 2.2, 2.1 1.2027 2.2, 2.1 1.2999070803 2.2