Persistent Quota Stats

[cwswpl]

I'm just setting up my new WR1043ND with Gargoyle 1.8.1.

The key reason I want gargoyle is to be able to apply a monthly quota to internet usage as my contract with the ISP involves punitive excess charges.

I've worked out how to setup the quota, and it looks like it's collecting usage history OK, but I notice that when the router is powered off and on again, the history is lost.

This won't do of course, for quotas measured over a month, there could easily be a power cut or fuse tripped in that time.

What's the method for ensuring that usage history remains persistent?

[Lantis]

Usage history is backed up every 4 hours.
On a reboot (issued through the system menu), the data is saved before rebooting.

A hard power cut will of course lose up to 4 hours of data.

Increasing the frequency of this is not recommended for preserving flash read/write lifespan.

[cwswpl]

Thanks Lantis. 4 hourly backups sounds fine, but then something is wrong in my case.

It was a hard poweroff (when I was installing physically I knocked the plug out of the wall).

But I lost more than 4 hours, the usage data I had collected from last night (14 hours before the power off) is all gone, it's as if it's just started recording from the latest uptime.

How should I diagnose? Maybe the backup process is disabled? Is there a UI for this?

[Lantis]

If you're familiar with command line, you can check that the task is scheduled to operate in the crontab

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8505

Code: Select all

crontab -l

Note, thats a lowercase L

should result in at least the following line

Code: Select all

0 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * /usr/bin/backup_quotas >/dev/null 2>&1

[cwswpl]

Yes I get the following:

0,1,11,21,31,41,51 * * * * /usr/bin/set_kernel_timezone >/dev/null 2>&1
0 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * /usr/bin/backup_quotas >/dev/null 2>&1
0 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * /tmp/bw_backup/do_bw_backup.sh

So looks like the job is scheduled, but maybe not being executed. Do cron jobs get written to a log?

I tried the logread command - nothing obvious there, but then I only got entries for the last 1.5 hours - shouldn't it show everything since uptime started? Does the log get backed up to flash also? I noticed the do_bw_backup job is also scheduled 4 hourly.

[Lantis]

Give it another day or so to monitor the behaviour.

I don't recall if they get logged.
But the logread is a ring buffer with a maximum size (can't recall how big).
But it just rotates the oldest data out.

[tapper]

Hi there mate. Try and upgrade to 1.9.x from here:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9415
1.8.1 had a few strange bugs.
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