Monthly Archives: September 2011

Move Cacti data from one platform to another one

In order to migrate Cacti's rrd-tool data from one system to a different one, that data has to be converted to XML-format first. That is also true if you move from x86 to a x86_64.

To to so, first convert all rrd-data in /var/lib/cacti/rrd to XML using the following line in that folder:

for i in find -name "*.rrd"; do rrdtool dump $i > $i.xml; done

Now pack up the resulting XML-files:

tar czf cacti-xml.tar.gz /var/lib/cacti/rrd/*xml

Move the tar.gz-container to the new system and unpack its files in the same directory using:

tar xzf cacti-xml.tar.gz

The re-conversion of those XML-files into rrd format is done using this line:

for i in find -name "*.xml"; do rrdtool restore $i echo $i |sed s/.xml//g; done 

Resetting the MySQL root password the dirty way

It happens to me quite often that I forget the root password of a MySQL-setup. In that case, a dirty way to reset the root user's password is to stop the database and run it with "--skip-grant-tables". This enables anyone to connect without a password and with all privileges which is certainly not recommended for regular use. After changing the password, the database is supposed to be restarted with regular settings.

The following lines document the actual doing. Remember to replace NEW_PASSWORD in the last line with your new one:

service mysql stop
mysqld --skip-grant-tables &
mysql -u root mysql
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('NEW_PASSWORD') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;
ps ax|grep mysqld | awk '{print $1}'|xargs kill -9
service mysql start