[Orca-users] What should missing values be set to?

[Blair Zajac]

Nicholas.Penney at uk.ing.com wrote:

> 
> I am coding up a script to reformat sar reports into files suitable for 
> feeding in to the orca plotting process and I now have several files for 
> testing. 

What OS is this for?

> Looking at the original sar file I see lines like this:
> 
>       00:00:00 runq-sz %runocc swpq-sz %swpocc
>       01:00:01     1.4       1
>       02:00:00     1.5       7
>       03:00:00     1.4       6
>       04:00:00     1.2       4
>       05:00:00     5.2      14
> 
> Where sar is not filling in values for the swpq-sz and %swpocc fields.  
> I have used nulls in the reformatted file for these missing values, but 
> when the files are fed to the orca process I get this message:
> 
>         /apps/orca/bin/orca: number of columns in line 2 of 
> `/var/orca/data/host01/sar-2004-06-27-000' does not match column 
> description.
> 
> I am guessing that orca does not see the nulls and just skips to the 
> next fields value, hence finding less values that it has header titles.

Yes, that's correct.  Orca always needs a non-whitespace value in every column, 
otherwise it ignores it.

> What should I place in the reformated file, in place of a null field, to 
> tell orca there is no value for this field?

The character

U

which stands for Unknown.  Orca and RRDtool will properly handle these.

Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair at orcaware.com>
Plots of your system's performance - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/