Install Monitoring Tool CACTI On RHEL CENTOS 6.3

ABOUT CACTI :-

Cacti is an open-source, web-based network monitoring and graphing tool designed as a front-end application for the open-source, industry-standard data logging tool RRDtool. Cacti allows a user to poll services at predetermined intervals and graph the resulting data. It is generally used to graph time-series data of metrics such as CPU load and network bandwidth utilization. A common usage is to monitor network traffic by polling a network switch or router interface via simple network management protocol (SNMP).

Required Packages for Cacti In RPM-based Operating Systems

ü  httpd

ü  php

ü  php-mysql

ü  php-snmp

ü  mysql

ü  mysql-server

ü  net-snmp

    ü  Apache : A Web server to display network graphs created by PHP and RRDTool.

ü  MySQL : A Database server to store cacti information.

ü  PHP : A script module to create graphs using RRDTool.

ü  PHP-SNMP : A PHP extension for SNMP to access data.

ü  NET-SNMP : A SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used to manage network.

ü  RRDTool : A database tool to manage and retrieve time series data like CPU load, Network Bandwidth etc.

INSTALL THE PRE-REQUIRED PACKAGES (FOR CACTI)

1 :- INSTALL APACHE

# yum install httpd* -y

2 :- INSTALL MYSQL

# yum install mysql* -y

3 :- INSTALL PHP

# yum install php* -y

4 :- INSTALL PHP-SNMP

# yum install php-snmp* -y

5 :- INSTALL NET-SNMP

# yum install net-snmp* -y

6 :- INSTALL RRDTOOL

# yum install rrdtool* -y

STARTING AND CHKCONFIG APACHE , MYSQL AND SNMP SERVICES

# /etc/init.d/httpd restart ; chkconfig httpd on

# /etc/init.d/mysqld restart; chkconfig mysqld on

# /etc/init.d/snmpd restart; chkconfig snmpd on

 NOW INSTALL THE CACTI ON CENTOS , RHEL

DOWNLOAD CACTI FROM :- 

wget  http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-0.8.8a.tar.gz 

Then Install Using RPM 

#rpm -ivh cacti-0.8.8a.  (using tab button)

                           OR

you need to install and enable  EPEL Repository. Once you’ve enabled repository, type the following command to install Cacti application. 

#yum install cacti* -y

CONFIGURE MYSQL SERVER FOR CACTI INSTALLATION

We need to configure MySQL for Cacti, to do this we need to set password for our newly installed MySQL server and then we will create Cacti database with user Cacti. If you’reMySQL is already password protected, then don’t need to set it again.

# mysqladmin -u root password YOUR-MYSQL-PASSWORD

CREATE MYSQL CACTI DATABASE

Login into MySQL server with newly created password and create Cacti database with userCacti and set the password for it

# mysql -u root -p

mysql>  create database cacti;

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR-MYSQL-PASSWORD'

mysql> FLUSH privileges;

mysql> quit;

INSTALL CACTI TABLES TO MYSQL

Find out the database file path using RPM command, to install cacti tables into newly createdCacti 

database, use the following command.

# rpm -ql cacti | grep cacti.sql

OUTPUT :-

/usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.7d/cacti.sql

Now we’ve of the location of Cacti.sql file, type the following command to install tables, here you need to type the Cacti user password

# mysql -u cacti -p cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.7d/cacti.sql

CONFIGURE MYSQL SETTING FOR CACTI

Make the following changes and save the file. Make sure you set password correctly.

# vim /etc/cacti/db.php

CONFIGURE APACHE SERVER FOR CACTI INSTALLATION.

Open the file called /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf 

#vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf

You need to enabled access to Cacti application for your local network or per IP level. For example we’ve enabled access to our local LAN network 192.168.1.0/24. In your case, it would be different.

Finally, restart the Apache service.

# /etc/init.d/httpd restart;

SETTING CRON FOR CACTI

OPEN file /etc/cron.d/cacti

# vim /etc/cron.d/cacti

Uncomment the following line. The poller.php script runs every 5mins and collects data of known host which is used by Cacti application to display graphs.

Cacti Installer Setup

Finally, Cacti is ready, just go to http://YOUR-SYSTEM-IPADDRESS-HERE/cacti/ & follow the installer instruction through the following screens. Click Next button.

choose installation Type as New Install

Make sure all the following values are correct before continuing. Click  Finish button.

Cacti Login Screen, enter username as admin and password as admin.

Once you’ve entered username and password, it will ask you to enter a new password for cacti.

Cacti Console Screen

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Some Important Links

1 For php-snmp package for centos 6.3

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/18075757/dir/scientific_linux_6/com/php-snmp-5.3.3-3.el6_2.8.x86_64.rpm.html

2 To Download The Cacti

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/19569839/dir/redhat_el_6/com/cacti-0.8.8a-2.el6.noarch.rpm.html

3 Cacti Official WebSite

 http://www.cacti.net/