Installing and configuring cacti on ubuntu to monitor the network – Research and Education Network for Uganda

In a recent article, http://“https://blog.renu.ac.ug/index.php/2020/06/17/using-Cacti-to-monitor-your-bandwidth-consumption/”, we learnt how to monitor bandwidth consumption using Cacti and the assumption was that your service provider had given you access to their own Cacti tool which they use to monitor your consumption.

In this article, we shall learn how to install and configure Cacti on your own server either on premise or in the cloud.

Our installation focus is going to be on Ubuntu though it could also be installed on Windows which requires installation of a lot more software as compared to Linux. If you want to install on windows use the link below,

“http://“https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/networking_and_servers/97817 88299183/1/ch01lvl1sec11/installing-Cacti-on-a-windows-system”

With your own Cacti you will be able to monitor not only the bandwidth consumption but also the state (up or down) of your devices and how long they have been in that state.

Before installation there are a few prerequisite that need to be fulfilled;

Apache; this would be used to display network graphs created by PHP and RRDTool.
MySQL; This is the database server that stores Cacti information.
PHP; This is a scripting language for creating graphs using RRDTool.
PHP-SNMP; This is a PHP extension for access data by PHP.
RRDTool; This is a database tool for managing and retrieving time series data like CPU load, Network Bandwidth among others.

Installations procedure ;

Update your system

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo reboot

Check and see if Apache and PHP are installed.

apache2 –version
php –version

If they are not installed go on and install them as well as MySQL,

sudo apt install -y apache2 mariadb-server mariadb-client libapache2-mod-php php-mysql

In addition, for proper working of cacti, some PHP extensions need to be installed.

sudo apt install -y php-xml php-ldap php-mbstring php-gd php-gmp

Install SNMP and RRDTool as well

sudo apt install -y snmp php-snmp rrdtool librrds-perl

For better performance it is highly advisable to make a few changes in MySQL,

sudo vim /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

Update;

Collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Add at the bottom of the file;

max_heap_table_size = 128M

tmp_table_size = 64M

join-buffer_size = 64M

innodb_file_format = Barracuda

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 512M

innodb_flush_log_at_timeout = 3

innodb_read_io_threads = 32

innodb_write_io_threads =16

innodb_io_capacity = 5000

innodb_io_capacity_max = 10000

Change the timezones in the PHP configurations files below and this is mandatory because the configured zone is checked against the system and MySQL times zones before Cacti is fully installed. Edit the php.ini files below;

sudo vim /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

Note: the 7.0 depends on the version of PHP

sudo vim /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini

Updates:

Date.timezone = EAT

Note: Do not forget to uncomment the line by removing ; at the beginning of the line and the value of this depends on your country.

Memory_limit = 512M

Max_execution_time = 60

Restart the MySQL service

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

Install Cacti

wget https://www.Cacti.net/downloads/Cacti-latest.tar.gz

Extract the Cacti archive using tar and copy the the extracted file to /var/www/html directory.

tar xzvf Cacti-latest.tar.gz
sudo mv Cacti-1.2.12 /var/www/html/cacti

Note: Cacti-1.2.12 description depends on the cacti version installed

Create a MySQL database

sudo mysql -u root -p
create database Cacti;
exit

Import the default Cacti database

sudo mysql -u root -p Cacti < /var/www/html/cacti/Cacti.sql

Create a MySQL username and password for Cacti.

sudo mysql -u root
grant all privileges on Cacti.* TO Cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘put here your desired password and take note of it’;
Flush privileges;
Exit

Grant the database access to the MySQL.time_zone_name

sudo mysql -u root mysql < /usr/share/mysql/MySQL_test_data_timezone.sql

Log into MySQL and grant permissions to Cactiuser

sudo mysql -u root
GRANT SELECT ON mysql.time_zone_name TO Cactiuser@localhost;Flush privileges;
Exit

Edit config.php and specify the database type, name, host, user and password for your Cacti configuration.

sudo vim /var/www/html/cacti/include/config.php

Updates;(these should be similar to the details you used earlier when creating the MySQL username and password)

database_type = “mysql”;

database_default = “Cacti”;

database_hostname = “localhost”;

database_username = “Cactiuser”;

database_password = “Cacti”;

Set the appropriate permissions on Cacti’s directories for graph/log generation.

cd /var/www/html
chown -R www-data:www-data *

Edit the crontab file so that Cacti can poll every five minutes

sudo vim /etc/cron.d/Cacti

Add:

*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/html/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Edit the Apache configuration file.

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/Cacti.conf

Add;

Alias /Cacti /var/www/html/cacti

Options +FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride None

Require all granted

</IfVersion>

Order Allow,DenyAllow from all

</IfVersion>

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off

php_flag short_open_tag On

php_flag register_globals Off

php_flag register_argc_argv On

php_flag track_vars On

# this setting is necessary for some locales

php_value mbstring.func_overload 0

php_value include_path .

</IfModule>

DirectoryIndex index.php

</Directory>

Restart apache service

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Create a log file for Cacti to write its data

sudo touch /var/www/html/cacti/log/Cacti.log
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/cacti/log

Visit http://<ipaddress>/Cacti and login using admin as the username and password

You will be prompted to change the password after login

Accept license agreement and click begin

Select New Primary Server as an installation type for the new installation and then click Next.

Cacti will perform a few checks on the configurations if everything is okay click next and if not you will be alerted.

Click next until you find the page below. Here tick all options and click next.

On the next pages click next and finish installing
After installation is complete login with;

Username: Admin

Password: “use the new password”

After login, the interface below will be displayed.

Conclusion

Congratulation, at this point you have Cacti installed on your server and you are ready to monitor devices on your network and by default your server is added to the tool.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING;

https://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
https://phoenixnap.com/kb/how-to-set-or-change-timezone-date-time-ubuntu
https://www.tecmint.com/install-cacti-network-monitoring-on-rhel-centos-fedora/
https://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/unix_configure_cacti.html