Is it possible to SET the interface statistics in Linux after it's been brought up? I'm dealing with rrdtool (mrtg) that gets upset by a daily ifdown and ifup which brings the interface counters back to zero. Ideally I would like to continue counting from where I left and setting the interface values to what they were before the interface went down seems to be the easiest path.
I checked writing to /sys/class/net/ax0/statistics/rx_packets but that gives a Permission Denied error.
netstat, ifup, ifconfig and friends don't seem to support changing these values either.
Anything else I can try?
You can't set the kernel counters, no - but do you really need to?
MRTG will usually graph a rate, based on the difference between samples. So your MRTG/RRD will store packets-per-second values every cycle (usually 5min but maybe 1min). When your device resets the counters, then MRTG will see the value apparently go backwards - which will be discounted as out of range, so one failed sample. But, the next sample will work, and a new rate be given. If you're getting a big spike in the MRTG graph at the point of the reset, this will be due to an incorrect 'counter rollover' detection. You can prevent this by either setting the MRTG AbsMax setting (to prevent this high value from being valid) or (better) by using SNMPv2 counters (where a reset is more obvious). If you set your RRD file to have a large enough heartbeat and XFF, then this one missing sample will be interpolated, and so your graphs (which, remember, show the rate rather than the total) will continue to look fine. Should you need the total, it can be derived by sum(rate x interval) which is automatically done by the Routers2 frontend for MRTG/RRD.