As far as I can tell, there are no RRDTool bindings for php5 for Ubuntu 9.04. It appears as though it existed in prior distributions that included php4, but Ubuntu 9.04 no longer includes php4.
Several others are talking about compiling it from source, but this seems very wrong and unnecessary to me.
If you have any other information about how to easily via apt-get make RRDTool functions work in php in Ubuntu 9.04, please leave a comment here.
I’m not sure why this has to be so complicated.
There’s not really a easy/good way to install it, but it’s definitely doable. Unfortunately it involves compiling from source though, as you mentioned (eek). Here’s a little guide I wrote up on it a few days ago. Maybe it’ll help, if it’s not too late?
http://thirdroute.com/installing-rrdtool-for-php-on-ubuntu-server/
Anyways, just ran across your post today and thought, “Hey, I can relate!” If you have any questions, fire an email or comment my way.
I was just looking at how I could install rrd for apache / php in ubuntu 10.04 and it occured to me. On another server I run, 9.04, it has cacti installed and running. I know cacti is php and cacti shows rrd graphs but not sure about the details yet. May be worth looking into though. I know it’s a late post but hope it helps.