Cacti is a network monitoring tool that is used to track the performance of network devices. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps needed to install Cacti on your Arch Linux system.
Before starting the installation process, make sure that you have the following:
First, make sure that your system is up-to-date. Open your terminal and run the following command:
sudo pacman -Syu
Cacti requires a couple of packages to function properly. To install those packages, run the following command in your terminal:
sudo pacman -S apache mariadb php php-apache mysql php-gd php-snmp net-snmp rrdtool
To use Cacti, you need to install and configure MariaDB. To do so, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo mysql_secure_installation
During the installation of MariaDB, you will be prompted to set a root password. Make sure to remember this password as you will need it later.
After configuring MariaDB, you need to create a Cacti database. To do so, run the following commands in your terminal:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter your MariaDB root password when prompted. Then, create a new database called "cacti" and a new user account called "cactiuser" with the following command:
CREATE DATABASE cacti;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON cacti.* TO cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '<your-password>';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
In the above command, substitute <your-password> with a strong password of your choice.
To install Cacti, run the following command:
sudo pacman -S cacti
During the installation, you will be prompted to configure the installation settings. Follow the prompts and provide the required information, such as the timezone and Cacti database credentials.
To configure Apache to use Cacti, you need to modify the Apache configuration file. Open the file in your terminal using the following command:
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Add the following lines at the end of the file:
Alias /cacti /usr/share/webapps/cacti/
<Directory /usr/share/webapps/cacti/>
Require all granted
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
Save the file and exit the text editor.
To integrate Cacti with Apache, create a new file called cacti.conf in the /etc/httpd/conf/extra/ directory with the following command:
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/extra/cacti.conf
Add the following lines to the file:
<Directory "/usr/share/webapps/cacti">
AllowOverride None
Options None
Require all granted
</Directory>
Save the file and exit the text editor.
To start Apache web server, run the following command:
sudo systemctl start httpd.service
Finally, open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost/cacti/ to access the Cacti web interface. Use the default login credentials (username admin and password admin) to access the dashboard.
That's it! You have successfully installed Cacti on your Arch Linux system. You can now use Cacti to monitor and manage your network devices.
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