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Tutorial: Installing Observium on Elementary OS

Observium is a network monitoring system that is available for free under a GPL license. In this tutorial, we will go through the process of installing it on Elementary OS.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure the following conditions are met:

• Your system is up to date.
• You have administrative privileges.
• You have a working internet connection.

Step 1: Install Required Dependencies

Before installing Observium, you need to install some required packages. Open the terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt install apache2 php php-cli php-json php-xml libapache2-mod-php composer fping mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common rrdtool snmp snmpd whois graphviz imagemagick mtr-tiny nmap ipmitool python3-mysqldb python3-pymysql python3-dev python3-jsonschema python3-setuptools python3-psutil subversion

This command will install all the necessary dependencies required by Observium.

Step 2: Install PHP Extensions

Now, we need to install a few PHP extensions. Execute the following command:

sudo apt install php-mysql php-gd php-mbstring php-snmp php-xml php-zip

Step 3: Download and Install Observium

We will now download and install Observium. Execute the following commands:

sudo mkdir /opt/observium
cd /opt/observium
sudo wget http://www.observium.org/observium-community-latest.tar.gz
sudo tar zxvf observium-community-latest.tar.gz --strip-components=1

This will download and extract Observium into the /opt/observium directory.

Step 4: Install and Configure MySQL

Observium requires a MySQL database to store its data. We need to create a new database and user for this purpose. Execute the following commands:

sudo mysql -u root -p

This will open MySQL in the terminal. Now, execute the following commands:

CREATE DATABASE observiumdb;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `observiumdb`.* TO 'observiumuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'observiumpassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

This will create a new database and user for Observium.

Step 5: Configure Apache

Now, we need to configure Apache to serve Observium. Execute the following commands:

sudo cp /opt/observium/scripts/observium_apache /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/observium.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart

This will copy the Apache configuration file to the correct location, enable the rewrite module, and restart the Apache service.

Step 6: Setup Observium

We will now setup Observium by executing the following command:

sudo /opt/observium/discovery.php -u

This will setup Observium and populate the devices from where data is available.

Step 7: Accessing the Observium Web Interface

You can now access the Observium web interface by opening your web browser and going to http://your_server_IP/observium.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we went through the process of installing Observium on Elementary OS. You can now use Observium to monitor your network and devices.

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