Rain Gauge is a tool to simplify the process of collecting detailed information from mysql database servers when specific conditions are triggered. Collections are packaged and centralised in one place, with a convenient web interface to let you explore the data easily. This tool uses a modified version of the percona toolkit script pt-stalk to handle collecting data from remote servers.

Installation consists of two parts: setting up the web interface, and setting up the collector.

Installation of the web interface is super simple! Just clone the RainGauge project in the document root of your webserver:

git clone git://github.com/box/RainGauge.git

There are a few things to configure in the conf/config.inc.php file if you want, but those aren't necessary

The collection scripts are a bit more involved. You'll want to create a separate user account in mysql. You'll also need to customise a couple of the scripts to put in the address of the web server where you installed the web interface, and change and options you may want to send to pt-stalk. Then you'll install a service and start it.

cp RainGauge/scripts/raingauge_package_and_send.sh /usr/bin/
cp RainGauge/scripts/pt-stalk-raingauge /usr/bin/

vi /usr/bin/raingauge_package_and_send.sh

Now change SERVER='' to be the web server where you installed the interface. The collection script will do a http post to copy collected data to a central location

mysql -uroot -e "GRANT PROCESS, SUPER ON *.* TO 'raingauge'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'SuperSecurePass'"

cp RainGauge/scripts/raingauge_rc /etc/raingauge_rc
cp RainGauge/scripts/raingauge_service /etc/init.d/raingauge

vi /etc/raingauge_rc

Edit the following line to use the same password you created for the mysql user:

PT_MYSQL_PASS=''

sudo service raingauge start

You will probably want to clean up old collections after a while, try 2 days to start:

[[ -d /www/RainGauge/collected/ ]] && find /www/RainGauge/collected/ -mindepth 1 -mtime +2 -exec rm -rf {} \;

Copyright 2014 Box, Inc. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.