Install Cacti on CentOS 6 / RHEL 6 | Network Monitoring Tool

Cacti is an open source web based network monitoring tool designed as the front end application for the RRDtool (Round-Robin database tool), it allows a user to poll the services at a interval of time and resulting in the graph format.

Cacti is generally used to get a graph data for the cpu and network bandwidth utilization, it monitors the network traffic by polling a router or switch via snmp.

Here is the small tutorial about installing Cacti on CentOS 6 / RHEL 6.

Requirements:

Install the following packages for the Cacti setup.

[root@localhost ~]# yum install httpd php php-mysql php-snmp mysql mysql-server net-snmb rrdtool net-snmp-utils

Install the following PHP extension.

[root@localhost ~]# yum install php-xml php-session php-sockets php-ldap php-gd

Make the services are started at start up.

[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig httpd on
 
[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig mysqld on
 
[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig snmpd on

Start the following services.

[root@localhost ~]# service httpd start
 
[root@localhost ~]# service snmpb start
 
[root@localhost ~]# service mysqld start

Database:

Create a database for Cacti, if you are configuring the MySQL for the first time; take a loot at How to secure the MySQL.

[root@localhost ~]# mysql –u root –p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 9
Server version: 5.1.73 Source distribution
Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the current input statement.
mysql>

Create Cacti database.

mysql> create database cacti;

Grant permission to the newly created database.

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘cactipassword’;
mysql> flush privileges;

Download Cacti:

Download cacti using the following command, latest release can be found here.

[root@localhost ~]# wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-0.8.8b.tar.gz

Extract downloaded file.

[root@localhost ~]# tar -zxvf cacti-0.8.8b.tar.gz

Move the extracted files to document root.

[root@localhost ~]# mv cacti-0.8.8b /var/www/html/cacti

Configure Cacti:

Import the default database to the cacti database.

[root@localhost ~]# mysql cacti < /var/www/html/cacti/cacti.sql -u root -p

Edit the config file to specify the database type, name, hostname, user and password information.

[root@localhost ~]# vi /var/www/html/cacti/include/config.php

Make the changes accordingly.

/* make sure these values reflect your actual database/host/user/password */
$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cactiuser";
$database_password = "cactipassword";
$database_port = "3306";
$database_ssl = false;

Add the cactiuser, this user must be created in such a way that logs and graphs directory can be accessed.

[root@localhost ~]# useradd -d /var/www/html/cacti -s /sbin/nologin cactiuser
[root@localhost ~]# cd /var/www/html/cacti/
[root@localhost ~]# chown -R cactiuser rra/ log/

Add the following entry in the crontab to poll every five min.

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