How to install Cacti Network Monitoring Tool on CentOS 6.4

Cacti is an open source, front-end for the data logging tool called RRDtool. It is a web based network monitoring and graphing tool.

Install the following required packages for Cacti. Cacti and some of the below prerequisites are not included in the CentOS official repository. So let us install them from EPEL repository. To install EPEL repository enter the following commands.

[root@server ~]# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
[root@server ~]# rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

Install Apache

Apache is used to display the the network graphs created by PHP and RRDtool.

[root@server ~]# yum install httpd httpd-devel -y

Install MySQL

MySQL is used to store the Cacti Database details.

[root@server ~]# yum install mysql mysql-server -y

Install PHP

PHP script is used to create graphs using RRDtool.

[root@server ~]# yum install php-mysql php-pear php-common php-gd php-devel php

php-mbstring php-cli php-mysql -y

Install PHP-SNMP

It is an extension for SNMP to access data.

[root@server ~]# yum install php-snmp -y

Install NET-SNMP

It is used to manage network.

[root@server ~]# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp-libs php-pear-Net-SMTP -y

Install RRDtool

It is a database tool to manage and retrieve data’s like Network Bandwidth and CPU Load etc.

[root@server ~]# yum install rrdtool -y

After installing all the above softwares, start them.

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/httpd start
[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/mysqld start
[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/snmpd start

Let the above services to start automatically on every reboot.

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

Installing Cacti Tool

[root@server ~]# yum install cacti -y

Configure MySQL

Login to MySQL server as root user and create a database for Cacti. Here i use Cacti database name as cacti, username as cacti and password as centos respectively.

[root@server ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 7
Server version: 5.1.69 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 database cacti;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'centos';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye

Now import Cacti Tables to Cacti Database. Find the location of the file cacti.sql and import it to cacti database. To find out this file, enter the following command.

[root@server ~]# rpm -ql cacti | grep cacti.sql
/usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.8a/cacti.sql

Note down the path of cacti.sql file and import it using the following command.

[root@server ~]# mysql -u cacti -p cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.8a/cacti.sql 
Enter password:

Now the tables are imported into cacti database.

Open the /etc/cacti/db.php and make the following changes.

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/cacti/db.php 
/* make sure these values refect your actual database/host/user/password */
$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";        ## Name of the Cacti Database ##
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cacti";       ## Username for Cacti database ##     
$database_password = "centos";              ## Database password ##
$database_port = "3306";
$database_ssl = false;

/*

Configure Apache server

Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf and add your network range or you can add a single ip. In this case, i add my local network ip range 192.168.1.0/24.

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf
Alias /cacti    /usr/share/cacti

<Directory /usr/share/cacti/>
        <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
                # httpd 2.4
                Require host localhost
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
                # httpd 2.2
                Order deny,allow
                Deny from all
                Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
        </IfModule>
</Directory>

Restart your apache server finally.

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

If you wanna to start the installer from a remote machine, you should allow the apache default port 80 through your iptables.

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
# Firewall configuration written by system-config-firewall
# Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
-A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 53 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 53 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
-A FORWARD -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT

Restart iptables.

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/iptables restart

Configure Cron for Cacti

Open the file /etc/cron.d/cacti and uncomment the following line.

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/cron.d/cacti
*/5 * * * *     cacti   /usr/bin/php /usr/share/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

The above cron job runs the poller.php script every five minutes and collects the data of the known hosts by Cacti.

Run Cacti installer

Navigate to your web browser using the URL http://ip-address/cacti. The following screen should appear, Click Next.

Select New install from the drop down box and click Next.

In the next screen make sure that all the values are valid and click Finish.

Now the installation is completed and it will ask the cacti username and password to login to admin console. The default username and password of Cacti is admin.

It will ask you to change the admin password now. Enter the new password and click Save.

Now you will get the main console window of Cacti.

Create Graphs

Click New Graphs on the left pane of console screen. Select the Host or create a new one and Select SNMP – Generic OID Template in Graph Templates section and click Create.