The documentation could indeed be better. The book Nagios - System and Network monitoring from No Starch Press does contain some information about NagiosGrapher and it's config options. On the old nagios exchange forum a lot of helpful information was provided as well but it seems that it's lost now.

NagiosGrapher is a powerful tool. Chances are if you want to capture and graph data, this tool will work well for you. However, it lacks adequate documentation and, therefore, is very difficult to install. The latest version does have a simple "configure && make && make install" setup in an attempt to simplify things, but it doesn't write out working config files. The only documentation is a quick example file that glosses over logging levels at the end. A FIFO pipe with the wrong name is created when the system is installed. Users will need to debug this and figure out the system before you can get anything graphing and know if it is working.

Some description about what files are stored where, and what they do, would have been helpful. For example, there is a directory created in your /usr/local/nagios/etc called ngraph.d. Inside is a file nmgraph.ncfg. There's no description of what it does or is used for. The small docs that come with NagiosGrapher state that ngraph.ncfg (which is a different file) is the only file needed to configure the system. So what is this other file? And what are the "templates" directory under ngraph.d?

Most, if not all of the support information is in German which excludes people who don't know it. It would be more useful if it were at least in English. English is my second language and most computer information can be found in this language.

Your best bet with this program is to be a perl expert and read the source to see what is going on. Or, better yet, find a local expert to help you who has already installed the program.

Dont waste your time on trying this.