How to Install Cacti 1.1.10 on Ubuntu 16.04

Kent Ickler //

ADVISORY: The techniques and tools referenced within this blog post may be outdated and do not apply to current situations. However, there is still potential for this blog entry to be used as an opportunity to learn and to possibly update or integrate into modern tools and techniques.

What is Cacti?

Cacti is a network system that inputs system-generated quantifiable data and presents the data in spiffy graphs.

Net-Admin

In the Net-Admin world, it gives you time-critical and time-historical data to help you make important decisions. Typical data inputs are things like: switch-port-utilization, environmental information (temperature, humidity, etc.), system criticals: storage space, CPU time, etc.

Security-Admin

Combined with SIEM and other system data sources, Cacti can be used to generate security baseline and normalization patterns. It’s also a quick sanity check on the network.

Installing Ubuntu 16.04

We are installing from the ISO ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64.iso

Complete a the typical setup, however, ensure that the LAMP package is installed during OS install packet selection.

You will be prompted to create a MySQL root account password. Create the password (don’t leave it blank), keep it handy (you’ll need it soon when working with mysql and mysqladmin) and continue on.

After installation, login. Note all those updates we need to do!

Update Base System

sudo -s
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
reboot -h now

Configure Network

After the updates are completed, setup your network stack. Then reboot.:

sudo -s
nano /etc/network/interfaces

Notes on nano: CTRL+O to write changes, CTRL+X to close

Update your network settings and reboot once more.

reboot -h now 

Note on sudo & root

Most of the work done from here on out is done at root since most this work is done within /opt/ and installing bits.

sudo-s

Install Pre-Reqs

After the reboot login once again.

We have some pre-req’s that need to be installed for Cacti:

apt-get install php-xml php-ldap php-mbstring php-gd php-snmp php-gmp rrdtool snmp librrds-perl

Download Cacti files:

wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-1.1.10.tar.gz
tar xvzf cacti-1.1.10.tar.gz
mv cacti-1.1.10 /opt/cacti

Setup Log locations

mkdir /opt/logs
touch /opt/logs/cacti.log
touch /opt/logs/httpd_access.log
touch /opt/logs/httpd_error.log
chown -R www-data /opt/logs/*

Configure SQL Database

#Create cacti database

mysqladmin --user=root --password create cacti
###Enter your mysql root password

#Populate the Cacti database

mysql --user root -p cacti < /opt/cacti/cacti.sql
###Enter your mysql root password
###This process will take a few minutes, be patient and wait for the prompt to return

#Create Timezone tables in SQL

mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root -p mysql
###Enter your mysql root password

#Provision access for the cacti database and the timezone database to the cacti user

mysql --user=root --password mysql
###Enter your mysql root password.
###This will enter you into the mysql console for mysql database.
###NOTE: ‘somepassword’ referenced here is the cacti user password and must be the same as used in cacti configuration in the next section

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'somepassword';
mysql> GRANT SELECT ON mysql.time_zone_name TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'somepassword';

Exit

Configure Cacti files:

Note: ‘somepassword’ referenced here is the cacti database user password specified above.

nano /opt/cacti/include/config.php
### Find these variables and make the following changes

$database_type = 'mysql';
$database_default = 'cacti';
$database_hostname = 'localhost';
$database_username = 'cactiuser';
$database_password = somepassword;
$database_port = '3306';
$database_ssl = false;
$url_path = '';

Set File permissions:

NOTE: After setup is completed, the “Needed for setup” section should be reverted back to your Linux user for security reasons.

#Needed for setup

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/resource/snmp_queries
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/resource/script_server
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/resource/script_queries
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/scripts

#Needed always

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/rra/ /opt/cacti/log/
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/cache/mibcache
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/cache/realtime
chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/cacti/cache/spikekill

Configure Apache

touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/cacti.conf
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/cacti.conf

###Enter the following and save cacti.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>

    <Location />
       require all granted
   </Location>

   ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
   DocumentRoot /opt/cacti
   ErrorLog /opt/logs/httpd_error.log
   CustomLog /opt/logs/httpd_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Remove default/existing site from Apache

rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*

Enable Cacti site in Apache

a2ensite cacti.conf

Configure MySQL

nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

###Add following lines to the bottom of the configuration file:

Max_heap_table_size = 380M
Tmp_table_size = 64M
Join_buffer_size = 64M
Innodb_doublewrite = OFF
Innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1899M
Innodb_flush_log_at_timeout = 3
Innodb_read_io_threads = 32
Innodb_write_io_threads = 16

Configure Poller Crontab

nano /etc/crontab

###Add line at bottom

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

Restart Services

service apache2 restart
service mysql restart

Initiate web-gui install:

With all of the pre-req’s done, the web-gui install should go pretty easy. The NEXT button is at the bottom left of each page.

http://[your-cacti-ip]

Note: Be sure to update the cacti log path to be /opt/logs/cacti.conf

Be sure to check all of the available templates for install.

DONE! Login!

Default login for the first time is

USER: admin

PASSWORD: admin

You will be prompted to change your password upon first login.

____

Check out this follow up post about adding an HP ProCurve Switch to Cacti.