Multiple graphs

Graphite provides two UI's, the tree browser/composer and the CLI. The tree browser is intended to be simple for new users and generally applicable to all single-graph use cases. The CLI however is geared towards power users and creating dashboards with multiple graphs. Beyond those two interfaces I am a big fan of creating independent "graphite portals" which are basically just separate pages (like a wiki page) that just embeds a lot of pre-created graph images (the URL API makes this fairly simple and the graphs will still be realtime). But it sounds like your needs are similar to what the CLI provides, so maybe you should try that first. Here's some simple steps to get a feel for how to use the CLI.

First, open up the CLI by click the "Command Line Interface" link at the top of the main page. It is important to note that there are currently several javascript bugs that cause the CLI to not work for IE, I recommend using firefox as that is what I have developed it against. Next it is a good idea to create a simple "blank" view which serves as a convenience later on (in the CLI, "view" is synonymous with "dashboard"). To do this simply type "save blank" and hit enter. Next you should create a view that contains some useful graphs. To do this, first you create a window by typing "create mywin" or whatever you want to title the window (no spaces allowed in titles at the moment). You should see a window appear with the graphite logo, now we need to draw something in it. Type "draw carbon.agents." and wait a moment and the CLI should present you with some auto-completion info so you can see what you may type next (this is how you navigate the tree in the CLI). Once you type the full path to something you want to draw you need to tell it what window to draw it in and maybe over what timeframe. Here is an example command: "draw carbon.agents.myserver.avgUpdateTime in mywin from -1h" (change "myserver" to whatever your system is called). This will draw a graph of carbon's update latency in your window showing the past one hour (-1h is "at-style" time borrowed from RRD, read about it here http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/rrdfetch.en.html). Now you can move the window and resize it to your liking. Create a few more windows and position them however you like, when you are ready you can save the window configurations as a view by typing "save myview". Once you do this type "load blank" and hit enter and all the windows should go away because we are resetting our state back to when we started. Type "load myview" and everything should come back just as you left it. This is the basics of the CLI, I will post a more thorough how-to on this soon on the wiki page.

I am able to save views, but they seem to have no windows. Loading them always brings back a blank screen. The 'views' command lists the views with no windows. Is there some other trick to this?

Thanks for the interesting software!

phreakocious, this Graphite question has been "Answered" but not marked "Solved" for 2.1 years now.

I am marking it "Solved" as the code has changed quite a bit since then.

Please submit a new question on this topic if the current code still does not do what you like.