cacti is a very useful tool for monitoring your devices on network.
While there are many tutorials on installation and use of cacti this tutorial aims on providing just enough information to make installation work and graphing possible.
Cacti requires that the following software is installed on your system.
* RRDTool 1.0.49 or 1.2.x or greater
* MySQL 3.23 or greater, 4.1.x or 5.x or greater
* PHP 4.3.6 or greater, 5.x greater highly recommended for
advanced features
* A Web Server e.g. Apache
On you freebsd box
# cd /usr/ports/net/cacti# make configenable plugins
# make && make installThis will take care of all the packages it requires like
* apache
* rrdtool
* net-snmp
* php5-extensions
* php5 (With MySQL and SNMP Support)
* mysql server
To start snmp, apache and mysql in every reboot type
# echo 'snmpd_enable="YES"' >>/etc/rc.conf# echo '/usr/local/libexec/mysqld --user=mysql &' >> /etc/rc.conf
# echo '/usr/local/sbin/apachectl start' >>/etc/rc.confTo configure your snmp run the following command
# snmpconfIf you are installing mysql for the first time then
# chown -R mysql:mysql /var/db/mysqlFor Apache 2.x
You should make sure that the following line is present in your httpd.conf file.
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache/libphp5.soIn httpd.conf itself
<IfModule mod_dir.c>
<IfModule mod_php3.c>
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_php4.c>
DirectoryIndex index.php3 index.html
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_php3.c>
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_php4.c>
DirectoryIndex index.html
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
</IfModule>Or you can simply have
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htmFinally add these two lines
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phpsAdd an alias for your cacti.
For eg: if you have your cacti setup on /usr/local/share/cacti then add an alias with
Alias /cacti /usr/local/share/cactiAlternatively you can configure symbolic link too.
Now configure Mysql
First set root password
# mysqladmin --user=root password newpassword
# mysqladmin --user=root --password reload
Create a database for cacti
# mysqladmin --user=root --password create cacti
Import the default cacti database
# mysql cacti
Create a mysql username and password for cacti
# mysql --user=root --password mysql
mysql> Grant all on cacti.* to 'cactiuser'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
Edit the file include/config.php to reflect the current database changes.
Edit your crontab
# crontab -e
*/5 * * * * cactiuser php /var/www/html/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&
1
Open your browser and access http://thewebser/cacti
This completes the instllation.
Creating graph, graph template, host template and other useful stuffs will be covered in next part of the tutorial.
I have data template and graph template for
Proxim wireless device like Tsunami showing SNR, signal and noise.
Deliberant wirelss device showing RSSI and channel.