MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is monitoring utility, which runs on many platforms and is capable of collecting and graphing statistical information such as network traffic, CPU/Memory/Disk space usage, etc. MRTG can gather information using both SNMP protocol and external scripts. Below are few pieces of my MRTG config file together with scripts, which I felt like sharing.
Category: Linux
Linux is my primary operating system. I used it on the servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and even mobile phones since approximately 1997. I’ve tried a number of distributions over the years, and even created a couple myself. I still look around sometimes to see what others are up to. But most of my machines are running some sort of Red Hat – either a quick and easy Fedora Linux, or a stable and secure Red Hat Enterprise Server, or a cheaper CentOS alternative.
And while by now I am very comfortable in the Linux environment (both graphical and command line), I still discover a lot of new and interesting things about it. When I come across something worthy, I usually share it with the rest of the Open Software world, using this category.
The Art of Unix Programming
Spent most of the weekend reading the Eric Raymond’s draft of The Art of Unix Programming, which appears to be surprisingly usefull and easy to read. I think I’ve already recommended to all people that I know. If I haven’t, here is your chance.
Unicode in Linux
Installed RT bugraq/ticketing system for our developers. Seems to work as good as it does for our support team.
Another step to the victory with Unicode support in both X and console. Today I’ve managed to fix the pseudographics (think mc) in console. It looks much better now. Even displays russian characters in mutt. Does not let me input them yet, though. Most updated /etc/sysconfig/i18n looks like this now:
LANGUAGE=en_US.utf8 LANG=en_US.utf8 LC_LOCALE=ru_RU.utf8 LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.utf8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8 SYSFONT=ruscii_8x16
Linux, Quake III, and Nvidia
Long time no updates. That is because I wa busy with Quake III ;). Actually, making it run was much easier then I thought it will be. What I did was downloading of NVidia drivers from NVidia site and installing them. For those, running Red Hat-based distributions, drivers are available in rpm format. Everything works fine after changing driver from “nv” to “nvidia” in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (video card: Riva TNT 64 for the record).
MP3 broadcasts
I have spent few hours today trying to implement another crazy idea of mine :) This time I want to have an mp3 broadcast continiously coming out of my home server. I was not sure where to start, so I have played with Icecast, Shoutcast, and Apache::MP3. The latest didn’t work yet because I forgot to add mod_perl to my web server, which I planning to do today/tomorrow. Apache::MP3 looks very nice on their example site, although I am not sure it is quiet what I need. If you are interested, you can find Apache::MP3 at CPAN. And Icecast I beleive is somewhere near NullSoft and WinAmp.
Some documentation on setting up things can be found at LDP and with the help of Google.