Q:

PHP script to update rrd database

I must developing an network monitor to monitoring several components using snmp. I save all received data in a round robin database.
I started to create an web based configuration center, that allows users to add devices to be monitored and access all the graphs (using rrdtool) of all devices.
I must run an daily, week, month and yearly update of the database. 
My question is, how can i launch an script that executes an snmp command to fetch the data from the device and stores it on the databse and runs on background ? By background, i mean that it is a process that not depends if the user has logged in in the web configuration page or not.
I never did something in PHP, therefore i am asking you. 
I hope you can help me out. Thank you in advance.
Best regard.

A:

I have developed such a system a few years ago. We used Cacti, in combination with Nagios and Smokeping. Of course, if your needs are simpler, you could use cron scripts to fetch your data. But Cacti is definetely worth a look (as well as Nagios, but unlike Cacti, it's not specifically targetted at RRD files)
Note that none of these systems require PHP. They run standalone, as daemons. It's then pretty straightforward to write a web interface on top of that.

