Install and configure cacti

Is very important have a good tool to monitor our devices in a networking. Cacti do this and very well. Cacti offers graphs using rrdtool to monitor the load average, ping latency, disk space and other relevant information over SNMP protocol. SNMP use the UDP port 161 for read and 162 UDP for trap, and use a hierarchial  database named MIB (Management Information Base). MIB is a collection of objects and variables that stores information about an agent.

In our scenario we’ll monitor two servers the NMS server and we’ll add another one to our network.

NMS SERVER CONFIG

- Install mysql, php, httpd, snmpd and cron:

# yum install mysql mysql-server httpd php-mysql php-snmp net-snmp net-snmp-utils cronie

- Configure EPEL repositories:

# rpm -ivh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
# rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/217521F6.txt
# yum repolist

- Auto start services:

# service mysqld start
# service http start
# service snmpd start
# service crond start
# chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on
# chkconfig --levels 235 snmpd on
# chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
# chkconfig --levels 235 crond on

- Install cacti:

# yum install rrdtool cacti

- Database config:

# mysql -u root
mysql> create database cacti;
mysql> grant all on cacti.* to 'cacti'@'localhost' identified by 'cacti';
mysql> quit;
mysql -u root cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.7i/cacti.sql

- cron poller.php:

# vi /etc/cron.d/cacti
*/5 * * * * cacti php /usr/share/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

- web files:

# chown -R cacti:root /usr/share/cacti
# vi /usr/share/cacti/include/config.php

# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.config

- Iptables rules for web access:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

# service iptables restart

default user/password: admin // admin

Access: http://ipserver/cacti

check all the tools are installed in our system before install cacti:

- Create graphs:
Management> Devices > device > Add

Create > new graphs

- SNMP Configuation (server client):

# yum nstall net-snmp net-snmp-utils
# chkconfig --levels 235 snmpd on
# vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

# service snmpd start
# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

# service iptables restart

check we can collect information about this server:

# snmpwalk -v 2c -c public 192.168.1.58

- Add host cacti:
Management > Devices > Add

Create > New Graphs

Management > Graph Trees > Default Tree > Add

- Section graphs: