* * * * *

                                 Catching up

> **From:** <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
>  **To:** <[email protected]>
>  **Subject:** Indolence…
>  **Date:** Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:11:38 -0500
>
> Mark says you're falling down on the job. (No posts since last Tuesday??)
> Actually, that's not how he put it, but I felt compelled to sanitize, since
> I don't know you.
>

Yes, things have been quiet since last Tuesday [1]. I blame it on control
panels (and no, I'm not bothering to link to the umptzillion posts I've made
on control panels this time). But just as things were their darkest, Smirk
pulled me temporarily off that project and onto more important things, like
configuring a router for the DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service we'll be
offering (and the best part—I'll be getting free Internet service again!
Unlimited static IP (Internet Protocol) addresses! The ability to fix routing
problems! The ability to control my own reverse DNS (Domain Name Service)!
Woot!).

Since I got MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) playing nicely [2], I went
ahead and installed Cacti [3], a type of “next generation” version of MRTG
(Multi Router Traffic Grapher) [4] and a lot nicer to work with. Yes, the
interface is a bit klunky, but I can understand why it's klunky the way it's
klunky (you define your device and the type of monitoring you want. You then
select the actual items you want to monitor and the type of graphs you want
to generate (you can generate multiple types of graphs from the same data
source). Then you create the graphs, and add them to the viewing tree) but it
sure beats MRTG (where you hand generate the configuration file, then hand
generate a page with links to the various graphs, unless you like looking at
a raw directory dump in your web browser). Hopefully, the reports Cacti
generates are good enough for Smirk to use and we can retire MRTG.

And to make matters better, I no longer have to install Web-CP [5]. Granted,
it's a different one I have to install, but the new one (still haven't come
up with a pseudonym for it) seems more reasonable than Web-CP.

In other news, my friend Bill Lefler [6] send me the link to his blog (Bill
Lefler) [7], so now Mark has another programmer's blog he can read while
waiting for me to update mine.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/11/08.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/11/07.1
[3] http://www.cacti.net/
[4] http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/
[5] http://www.web-cp.net/
[6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/11/01.2
[7] http://www.srccoder.com/

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