Gaps in graphs generated by rrdtool

I sometimes see questions like: "Why are there gaps in my Munin graphs?" or "How do I get rid of holes in Nagiosgraph charts?". Some classical answers may be found in Munin FAQ or in 'man munin.conf'.

There is one more option, though. The problem may be caused by buggy plugins. By rounding errors in the plugins, to be precise.

From my experience, the gaps are usually found in the graphs where the data is a sum of some indicators. For example, the CPU load graph. The maximum value is calculated as number-of-cpus*100%. The actual value is calculated as the sum of a number of values: the time spent by the CPU in user mode, in system mode, waiting for I/O, in idle state, etc. Under certain conditions, this sum may exceed 100%. In this case, Rrdtool will omit the measurement from the graph and there will be a hole.

To get rid of the gaps, for example, in Munin's 'cpu' plugin, I replaced the lines

        PERCENT=$(($NCPU * 100))
        MAX=$(($NCPU * 100))

with

        PERCENT=$(($NCPU * 100 + 200))
        MAX=$(($NCPU * 100 + 200))

200 might be an overkill, but it looked a bit better in my Munin :). Of course, another option is to check the actual data for being not greater than the max value.