AHMED ZBYR

AHMED ZBYR

Biker, EV Enthusiast

RRDtool (Round Robin Database) stores time-series performance metrics (such as Nagios / PNP4Nagios / Cacti / Zabbix / Ganglia graphs) in a binary file format that depends on the underlying CPU architecture (i386 32-bit vs. x86_64 64-bit) and byte order (endianness).

When you migrate a Nagios server from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS by copying /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata directly, RRDtool refuses to read or update the copied .rrd files and logs:

ERROR: This RRD was created on another architecture

To migrate .rrd files across architectures without losing historical graphs, export each .rrd file to platform-independent XML on the 32-bit source server (rrdtool dump), transfer the .xml files to the 64-bit destination server, and rebuild native 64-bit .rrd files (rrdtool restore).

Step 1: Convert a Single .rrd File (dump and restore)

On a Nagios / PNP4Nagios server, performance data files are stored under /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata/<hostname>/:

cd /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata
  1. On the 32-bit source server, dump the binary .rrd file to XML: 
    rrdtool dump stats.rrd > stats.xml
  2. Copy stats.xml to the 64-bit destination server (for example, via scp or rsync).
  3. On the 64-bit destination server, restore the XML file into a native 64-bit .rrd file (-f overwrites an existing .rrd file if present): 
    rrdtool restore -f stats.xml stats.rrd
sudo chown nagios:nagios stats.rrd
  4. Verify the restored RRD header and data sources: 
    rrdtool info stats.rrd | head -n 20

Step 2: Batch-Convert All Nagios perfdata RRD Files

If you have hundreds of hosts and services under /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata, use a loop to convert all .rrd files at once.

1. Export All .rrd Files to .xml on the 32-Bit Source Server

cd /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata

find . -type f -name "*.rrd" -exec sh -c '
  for rrd; do
    rrdtool dump "$rrd" > "${rrd%.rrd}.xml"
  done
' sh {} +

2. Copy the Directory Tree to the 64-Bit Server

Transfer the exported .xml (and companion PNP4Nagios metadata) files to the new 64-bit server, or run the restore in place after copying:

rsync -avz /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata/ root@new-nagios-64bit:/usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata/

3. Restore All .xml Dumps to 64-Bit .rrd Files on the Destination Server

Important (PNP4Nagios Note): PNP4Nagios stores a small companion metadata .xml file alongside every <service>.rrd file (also named <service>.xml). If you use PNP4Nagios, dump to <service>.rrd.xml in Step 1 so you do not overwrite PNP4Nagios’s metadata XML files!

# Safe batch dump/restore naming (*.rrd.xml) that preserves PNP4Nagios metadata XMLs:

# On 32-bit source server:
cd /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata
find . -type f -name "*.rrd" -exec sh -c '
  for rrd; do
    rrdtool dump "$rrd" > "${rrd}.xml"
  done
' sh {} +

# On 64-bit destination server:
cd /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata
find . -type f -name "*.rrd.xml" -exec sh -c '
  for xml; do
    rrd="${xml%.xml}"
    rm -f "$rrd"
    rrdtool restore -f "$xml" "$rrd" && rm -f "$xml"
  done
' sh {} +

sudo chown -R nagios:nagios /usr/local/nagios/share/perfdata

Restart npcd and nagios on the destination server and verify that historical performance graphs load cleanly in the web UI.

References

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