This package contains two main tools: Orca and percollator.se.

Orca
=====

Orca is a tool useful for plotting arbitrary data from text files onto
a directory on a Web server.  It has the following features:

  * Configuration file based.
  * Reads white space separated data files.
  * Watches data files for updates and sleeps between reads.
  * Finds new files at specified times.
  * Remembers the last modification times for files so they do not have to
    be reread continuously.
  * Can plot the same type of data from different files into different
    or the same GIFs.
  * Different plots can be created based on the filename.
  * Parses the date from the text files.
  * Create arbitrary plots of data from different columns.
  * Ignore columns or use the same column in many plots.
  * Add or remove columns from plots without having to deleting RRDs.
  * Plot the results of arbitrary Perl expressions, including mathematical
    ones, using one or more columns.
  * Group multiple columns into a single plot using regular expressions on
    the column titles.
  * Creates an HTML tree of HTML files and GIF plots.
  * Creates an index of URL links listing all available targets.
  * Creates an index of URL links listing all different plot types.
  * No separate CGI set up required.
  * Can be run under cron or it can sleep itself waiting for file updates
    based on when the file was last updated.

An example of the output generated by Orca is located at:

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4996/orca-example/

Orca is written completely in Perl.  To install, configure and use
Orca read the INSTALL file.  Some sample configuration files for
Orca can be found in the sample_configs directory.

Orca is based on the RRD tool written by Tobias Oetiker.  To really
understand Orca you should understand RRD.  Get RRD from

http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/

I recommend reading the documentation that comes with RRD.  It will
explain how the data files Orca uses are created, maintained, and
used to create the GIFs that Orca creates.

percollator.se
==============

The other tool in this package is an updated version of percollator.se
written by Adrian Cockcroft.  Percollator.se is a tool written for Solaris
SPARC and Solaris x86 that collects a large amount of system and web
server statistics and prints them into a file for later processing
and plotting.  For documentation on the original percollator.se tool,
see the URL http://www.sunworld.com/swol-03-1996/swol-03-perf.html

This version of percollator.se collects much more data than the original
on Solaris systems.  I have designed an Orca configuration file designed
to read the output of this percollator.  Sample output from this set up
is displayed at

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4996/orca-example/

AVAILABLE AT
============

These tools are available for download from

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4996/

MAILING LISTS
=============

Discussions regarding Orca take place on the mrtg-developers mailing
list located at mrtg-developers@list.ee.ethz.ch.  To place yourself
on the mailing list, send a message with the word subscribe to it
to mrtg-developers-request@list.ee.ethz.ch.

INSTALLATION
============

Read and follow the installation steps in INSTALL.

AUTHOR
======

These two tools were written by Blair Zajac <bzajac@geostaff.com>.  I
welcome any patches for bugs or improvements, comments and suggestions.