Gnuplot = The DADA ABBU (Grandfather) of Graphing done via CLI

Whatis Gnuplot:

As defined the Wikipedia. …

Gnuplot is a command-line program that can generate two- and three-dimensional plots of functions, data, and data fits. It is frequently used for publication-quality graphics as well as education. The program runs on all major computers and operating systems (GNU/Linux, Unix, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and others).

I remember when I got in love with the MRTG and I spent many nights in mastering this giant. MRTG is overall a very good graphing too graph about any device but it usually works with snmp (and in some cases with shell scripts too). But what if I have data in a file with simple human readable format and I want to plot different columns in it? MRTG will not help in such cases, Gnuplot will come to rescue :)

I used Gnuplot to graph user download for the current month, In this example user data is taken from MYSQL radius DB and then graphed/plotted with Gnuplot.

As always being a duffer , dumber and incompetent, It took me 2-3 Days of continuous efforts to make it as a single script to make it bundled package.

Requirements for this script:

[You can modify it as per your requirements very easily, I just made it as per my own requirements : D ]

1. Linux / Ubuntu
2. Mysql with Radius DB
3. Gnuplot

What this script will do ?

This script will take accounting data for the specified users for the current month by auto detecting the month/year.The file will look something like following

2015-03-01   1688961371   937706875
2015-03-02   2989190965   2974464964
2015-03-04   534479492   31747041
2015-03-05   809968366   170112567
2015-03-06   2189812711   1555484772

First column is DATE
Second column is user DOWNLOADED data in bytes
Third column is user UPLOADED data in bytes
Then it will save this accounting data in /tmp/USERNAME.TXT  (Username is what supplied by the user)
Then gnuplot will start its magic and will graph the data based on the supplied data.

To install Gnuplot on Ubuntu , issue following command

apt-get install -y gnuplot

Now create bash script as follows

mkdir /temp
touch /temp/usergraph.sh
nano /temp/usergraph.sh

and paste following. Make sure to change things according to your network

#!/bin/sh
# Freeradius / Mysql user graph ON THE FLY using GNUPLOT
# It will also detect current year and current month and will pull only current time data
# You can modify this function by providing $2 function in the sql command
# By Syed Jahanzaib / aacable [at] hotmail.com
# Last modified on 5th June, 2015

# Defining BASH Variables
SQLUSER="root"
SQLPASS="sqlpassword"
SQLHOST="localhost"

# Date functions to find current date, month year
NOW=$(date)
MONTH=$(date +"-%m")
CMONTH=`echo $MONTH  | sed -e 's/-//g'`
YEAR=$(date +"-%Y")
CYEAR=`echo $YEAR  | sed -e 's/-//g'`
FMONTH=$(date +"%B")
FULLMONTH=`echo $FMONTH # | sed -e 's/-//g'`

# Name of file in which mysql will dump the user accounting data for the current month
TMP="/tmp/$1.txt"

# Fetch Accounting Data from MYSQL Freeradius radius DB, by using current Year/Month using username provide with the script , and output to file
mysql -u$SQLUSER -p$SQLPASS -h$SQLHOST -e "use radius; SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS date, SUM(allbytesdl) - COALESCE(SUM(specbytesdl), 0), SUM(allbytesul) - COALESCE(SUM(specbytesul), 0), SUM(alltime) - COALESCE(SUM(spectime), 0)
FROM (  SELECT LEFT(radacct.acctstarttime, 10) AS date,  acctoutputoctets AS allbytesdl, SUM(dlbytes) AS specbytesdl,  acctinputoctets AS allbytesul, SUM(ulbytes) AS specbytesul,
radacct.acctsessiontime AS alltime, SUM(rm_radacct.acctsessiontime) AS spectime  FROM radacct  LEFT JOIN rm_radacct ON rm_radacct.radacctid = radacct.radacctid
WHERE LEFT(radacct.acctstarttime, 7) LIKE '$CYEAR-$CMONTH%' AND radacct.username LIKE '$1' AND  FramedIPAddress LIKE '%' AND CallingStationId LIKE '%'   GROUP BY radacct.radacctid
) AS tmp GROUP BY date LIMIT 0, 50;" |awk '{print $1,$2,$3}' > $TMP
sed '1d' -i $TMP

# Run GNUPLOT SCRIPT on the FLY / by zaib
gnuplot << EOF
reset
set terminal jpeg size 1600,600
# Set output according to your requirement, like you can create file with the username for easier identification
set output "/var/www/radius.jpg"
set xdata time
set timefmt "%Y-%m-%d"
set format x "%d/%m"
set xtics 86400
set xtics rotate by -45
set xlabel "Date (day/month)"
set ylabel "Data Downloaded in GB"
set title "$1 - Download/Upload Report $FULLMONTH $YEAR\nThis report was created on $NOW\nPowered by Syed Jahanzaib / aacable@hotmail.com"
set key outside
set grid
set style data histogram
set style histogram cluster gap 1
set style fill solid
set boxwidth 0.9

plot "$TMP" using 1:(\$2/2**30):(sprintf("%.2f", \$2/2**30)) w boxes title "Download" lw 10, \
"$TMP" using 1:(\$3/2**30):(sprintf("%.2f", \$3/2**30)) w boxes lw 6 title "Upload", \
"$TMP" using 1:(\$2/2**30):(sprintf("%.2f", \$2/2**30)) w labels notitle tc rgb 'red', \
"$TMP" using 1:(\$3/2**30):(sprintf("%.2f", \$3/2**30)) w labels notitle tc rgb 'green'

EOF
# GNUPLOT Script ends here
# Thank you : )

Running the SCRIPT

Now execute the script by

/temp/usergraph.sh USERNAME

(like usergraph.sh zaib)

If everything goes well and you dont’ see any errors after executing this script, then you can view the output by

http://yourip/radius.jpg

That’s it …

I showed the very basic usage of Gnuplot. Very Very Basic Level of it. This is only what I have learned so far. But Gnuplot can do things beyond your imagination. Look at this gallery.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gnuplot_diagrams

Gnuplot is a very good and customizable tool which is used all over the world to create simple OR very complex graphs in a go. Above all good part is that it can take data from local files and all can be done via scripting or terminal.

You should give it a try :)

Regard’s
Syed Jahanzaib