Settings Paths

Settings-Paths.md

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 # Path Settings
 
+Cacti's Path Settings include mainly the locations of core binaries that
+Cacti must call in order to operate correctly.  Generally, these binaries
+are included in the Web Servers path, but being able to override these
+settings is important, especially for debugging issues.  Cacti's Paths
+sub-tab is broken into the following sub-sections:
+
+- **Required Tool Paths** - Paths that are essential for Cacti's operation
+
+- **Logging** - Settings associated with Cacti's logging facilities including log rotation
+
+- **Alternate Poller Path** - Locations for Cacti's spine binary and spine config file if not in the established default locations
+
+- **RRD Cleaner** - Setting for Cacti's RRDfile disposal of removed RRDfile when Data Sources are removed.
+
+When using Cacti's **Remote Data Collectors** or **Remote Pollers** the settings that
+refer for a `File Path`, or `Directory Path` will be local to the **Data Collector**.
+Therefore, you can have one set of paths for your Main Cacti site, and another set of
+paths for your Remote Poller, say in the case that they are on Windows.
+
+## Required Tools Paths
+
+The image below shows Cacti's **Required Tool Paths** settings.
+
+![Required Tools Paths](images/settings-paths-required.png)
+
+Those settings include:
+
+**snmpwalk Binary Path** - This is the path to the `snmpwalk` binary.
+
+**snmpget Binary Path** - This is the path to the `snmpget` binary.
+
+**snmpbulkwalk Binary Path** - This is the path to the `snmpwalk` binary.  This binary
+path is essential if you use SNMPv2 of SNMPv3 versions where **Data Queries** perform
+bulkwalks by default to increase performance.
+
+**snmpgetnext Binary Path** - This is the path to the `snmpgetnext` binary.
+
+**snmptrap Binary Path** - This is the path to the `snmptrap` binary.  This binary
+is important for SNMP Notification and Trap generation.
+
+**RRDtool Binary Path** - The location of the RRDtool binary that matches your RRDtool version.
+
+**PHP Binary Path** - The location of the PHP Binary, generally, this setting is always `/usr/php`, but can change for some users.
+
+## Logging
+
+The next set of settings define where Cacti's Standard Output and Standard Error files
+are to be placed, and how they should be rotated, and for how long they should be
+retained.  You can see those settings from the image below.
+
+![Logfile Settings](images/settings-paths-logging.png)
+
+Those settings include:
+
+**Cacti Log Path** - The location of Cacti's Standard Output (stdout) log file.
+
+**Poller Standard Error Log Path** - For Cacti's **Data Collector** functions only, the location of the Standard Error (stderr) log file.
+
+**Rotate the Cacti Log**  - Determines if Cacti or the package maintainer rotates the Cacti log.
+
+**Rotation Frequency** - Should the Log files be rotated `Daily` or `Weekly` or `Monthly`
+
+**Log Retention** - How many generations of Log files should be maintained.  Older files will
+be removed automatically.
+
+> **NOTE**: Some package maintainers control log rotation and therefore the log rotation
+> settings may be missing from certain version of Cacti if you install through a packaing
+> tool such as `apt-get`, `yum` or `dnf`
+
+## Alternate Poller Path
+
+The sub-section hold information on how to find Cacti's `spine` binary if it's installed.
+Since `spine` is written in ANSI C, it is not provided as a part of the Cacti install
+and must be compiled by the Cacti Administrator.  The benefit of the `spine` binary is that
+it's mufti-threaded and extremely scalable.  It's possible to poll enterprises with excess
+of 30,000 devices using spine on a reasonably large system.  The image below show's this
+sub-section.
+
+![Alternate Poller Path](images/settings-paths-alternate.png)
+
+Those settings include:
+
+- **Spine Binary File Location** - The path to the spine binary.
+
+- **Spine Config File Path** - This setting is optional.  If blank, Cacti will search
+  the following locations for a `spine.conf` file.
+
+    - **pwd** - The same directory as spine
+    - **../etc/** - One directory up and down to the `etc` directory from the `spine` binary.
+    - **/etc/** - The systems /etc/ directory.
+
+## RRD Cleaner
+
+This setting defines how Cacti manages RRDfiles from **Data Sources** that have been
+removed.  By default, Cacti does not manage these files, and leaves it to the Cacti
+Administrator to pro-actively manage them.  The RRD Cleaner settings can be seen in the
+image below.  Note that unless you enable `RRDfile Auto Clean`, you will not see
+the other settings by default.
+
+![RRD Cleaner](images/settings-paths-rrd-cleaner.png)
+
+Those settings include:
+
+- **RRDfile Auto Clean** - Denotes that you wish Cacti to manage RRDfiles from removed
+**Data Sources** potentially automatically.
+
+- **RRDfile Auto Clean Method** - This is the method to perform cleanup.  The options include:
+
+  - **Delete** - Simply remote the files once the **Data Source** is removed
+  - **Archive** - Archive the RRDfile to an Archive directory once it's removed.
+
+- **Archive directory** - The Archive directory to move old RRDfile to.
+
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