Making a IRC Statistics Software - Helios.
Introduction
There are many good sites for website statistics. Tools such as Google Analytics are invaluable for any webmaster. But how do you measure the success of a chat? a IRC system? While total number of users per day is interesting, the real value is in the current number of users combined with other factors.
Helios, our new statistical software I've been working, is an internal tool for us on Snyggast Chatten. It collects data every five minutes, pretty much like mrtg. MRTG stands for Multi Router Traffic Grapher, and outputs images like this:
Where a webmaster can easily overlook the network usage of a particular server. The idea is to output similar graphs but include data such as current numbers of users, ram usage, etc.
Collected data
Currently we are collecting the following data every five minutes:
Relations, the real power
The real power of Helios is relations. In a 24 hour graph we can not only see where our tops are, but also the relationship between numbers of users and, for example, free ram. This provides us with valuable information about how the server feels but also how much a particular optimization gave us.
The actual charts
I've built the system around the open source grapher Open Flash Charts. It's a flash grapher, and it's open source. Since we will be measuring numbers of users (0-600) and it's relation with ram usage (0-2500 MB free) we need double Y-axes. The problem is that not many (if any) grapher actually supports this by default. But since Open Flash Charts are open source I could implement it myself. Turns out that many other users have been asking for this feature for a long time and my double y-axes code will be integrated in the next release of the software. It's always good to be able to contribute to projects..
Sample Chart
This is how the system currently looks:
At a first glance it's quite blurry and might be hard to see the relations. This is because the large number of data we actually need to see. The main line (with the dots) are numbers of chat users, the smaller line with dots are numbers of webcam users and the other 2 lines are how much ram we have left.
Why the name Helios?
In greek mythology, Helios is the sun god and referred to as the "the all-seeing". A fitting name for a system which idea is to monitor and see pretty much everything.
There are many good sites for website statistics. Tools such as Google Analytics are invaluable for any webmaster. But how do you measure the success of a chat? a IRC system? While total number of users per day is interesting, the real value is in the current number of users combined with other factors.
Helios, our new statistical software I've been working, is an internal tool for us on Snyggast Chatten. It collects data every five minutes, pretty much like mrtg. MRTG stands for Multi Router Traffic Grapher, and outputs images like this:
Where a webmaster can easily overlook the network usage of a particular server. The idea is to output similar graphs but include data such as current numbers of users, ram usage, etc. Collected data
Currently we are collecting the following data every five minutes:
- IRC data (Numbers of users, users in both public channels, active admins, webclient users)
- System data (Ram usage, HDD usage, CPU usage)
- Webcam data (Numbers of webcam users
Relations, the real power
The real power of Helios is relations. In a 24 hour graph we can not only see where our tops are, but also the relationship between numbers of users and, for example, free ram. This provides us with valuable information about how the server feels but also how much a particular optimization gave us.
The actual charts
I've built the system around the open source grapher Open Flash Charts. It's a flash grapher, and it's open source. Since we will be measuring numbers of users (0-600) and it's relation with ram usage (0-2500 MB free) we need double Y-axes. The problem is that not many (if any) grapher actually supports this by default. But since Open Flash Charts are open source I could implement it myself. Turns out that many other users have been asking for this feature for a long time and my double y-axes code will be integrated in the next release of the software. It's always good to be able to contribute to projects..
Sample Chart
This is how the system currently looks:
At a first glance it's quite blurry and might be hard to see the relations. This is because the large number of data we actually need to see. The main line (with the dots) are numbers of chat users, the smaller line with dots are numbers of webcam users and the other 2 lines are how much ram we have left.
Why the name Helios?
In greek mythology, Helios is the sun god and referred to as the "the all-seeing". A fitting name for a system which idea is to monitor and see pretty much everything.
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