Cacti

This article describes how to set up Cacti on an Arch Linux system. Cacti is a web-based system monitoring and graphing solution.

Server Setup

This article assumes that you already have a working LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server. If you do not have a web-server set up already, you can follow these instructions to do so.

Cacti Setup

The following should all be performed as root.

• Install the necessary programs

# pacman -S cacti php-snmp

• Edit /etc/php/php.ini

• Uncomment the following lines:

;extension=mysql.so
;extension=sockets.so
;extension=snmp.so

• Comment the following line:

open_basedir=...

• Uncomment and set the following:

;date.timezone =

• Start mysqld and snmpd if they're not already running:

# /etc/rc.d/mysqld start
# /etc/rc.d/snmpd start

• Add mysqld and snmdp to the DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf to ensure that they're running at bootup

• Edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

• Inside the <Directory "/srv/http"> block, ensure that you have the following line:

AllowOverride All

• MySQL setup

• Create the cacti database, load the tables, and set the user. You will be asked for the MySQL root password for each of these commands.

# mysqladmin -u root -p create cacti
# mysql -u root -p cacti < /usr/share/webapps/cacti/cacti.sql
# mysql -u root -p
  mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'some_password';
  mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  mysql> exit

Note: As of march 2011 (mysql 5.5.9-1, cacti 0.8.7g-1) mysql fails to import the SQL due to an outdated syntax. You can update the file using this command:

cd /usr/share/webapps/cacti && mv cacti.sql cacti.sql.org && sed s/TYPE=/ENGINE=/g cacti.sql.org > cacti.sql

• Edit /usr/share/webapps/cacti/include/config.php. The password was specified in the previous step.

$database_username = "cacti";
$database_password = "some_password";

• Clean up cacti directory

# chown -R http:http /usr/share/webapps/cacti/{rra,log}
# rm /usr/share/webapps/cacti/.htaccess
# chmod +x /usr/share/webapps/cacti/{cmd,poller}.php /usr/share/webapps/cacti/lib/ping.php

• Optionally, install cacti-spine, a faster poller for cacti, from the AUR. Use the same password as in previous steps.

• Edit /etc/spine.conf

DB_User cacti
DB_Pass some_password

• Set up cron job to run poller every 5 minutes

# crontab -e

• Add the following to the end of the list

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/sudo -u http /usr/bin/php /usr/share/webapps/cacti/poller.php &> /dev/null

• Restart cron and apache

# /etc/rc.d/crond restart
# /etc/rc.d/httpd restart

Web Configuration

Open up a browser and go to http://your_ip/cacti. You should be welcomed with the cacti installer.

• Click Next
• Select New Install and click Next
• Ensure that all paths are ok. You need to specify versions of RRDTool and NET-SNMP. Get RRDTool Utility Version using 'rrdtool -v', and'net-snmp-config --version' for NET-SNMP. Click Finish.
  • If any paths are invalid, you'll need to figure out why. Check the apache error logs for hints.
• Login with username "admin" and password "admin".
• Change the password as requested, click Save.
• (Optional) If you chose to install spine, follow these instructions to set it up.
  • Click on Settings, on the left panel of the Console tab.
  • Select the Poller tab.
  • Change Poller Type to spine.
  • Adjust any other settings on the page as desired, then click Save.
  • Select the Paths tab.
  • Set Spine Poller File Path to /usr/bin/spine and click Save.

See Also

• LAMP - Set up a LAMP server

External Links

• http://cacti.net