mrtg-ping-probe - ping probe module for Multi Router Traffic Grapher

mrtg-ping-probe is a ping probe module for MRTG 2.x. It is used to monitor the round trip time and packet loss to networked devices. MRTG uses the output of mrtg-ping-probe to generate graphs visualizing minimum and maximum round trip times or packet loss.

mrtg-ping-probe is not run directly, but is called by MRTG as a helper when it needs to determine ping time to a host.

Act responsibly: do not use mrtg-ping-probe to ping devices without the owner's permission. Just imagine if 10,000 people decided to ping your hosts! mrtg-ping-probe is meant to be used within your network to get round trip time performance figures for your network.

To use mrtg-ping-probe you need to configure MRTG to call it from within the definition of a target host. This is done in the MRTG config file, which is usually /etc/mrtg.conf.

Here's an example snippet: change the target name and IP address to suit your needs.

Target[your.target.ping]: `/usr/bin/mrtg-ping-probe 123.456.789.123`

SetEnv[your.target.ping]: MRTG_INT_IP="123.456.789.123" MRTG_INT_DESCR="ping"

MaxBytes[your.target.ping]: 100

AbsMax[your.target.ping]: 200

Options[your.target.ping]: gauge, growright

YLegend[your.target.ping]: ping time (ms)

ShortLegend[your.target.ping]: ms

Legend1[your.target.ping]: Maximum Round Trip Time in ms

Legend2[your.target.ping]: Minimum Round Trip Time in ms

Legend3[your.target.ping]: Maximal 5 Minute Maximum Round Trip Time in ms

Legend4[your.target.ping]: Maximal 5 Minute Minimum Round Trip Time in ms

LegendI[your.target.ping]:  Max:

LegendO[your.target.ping]:  Min:

Pay close attention to the backticks in the first line which tell MRTG to execute the nominated external program. Note also that you need to use the "gauge" option, since the results of subsequent ping probes are independant values and not an incrementing counter.

mrtg(1).

The latest release of mrtg-ping-probe can be found on the web at http://pwo.de/projects/mrtg/

This manual page was written by Jonathan Oxer <jon@debian.org>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).