How to Install Cacti on Fedora CoreOS Latest

Cacti is an open-source network monitoring tool that is used to monitor and graph the performance of a network. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Cacti on Fedora CoreOS Latest.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Install required packages

Login to your Fedora CoreOS system and open the terminal. Run the following command to install the required packages:

sudo dnf install httpd mariadb-server php php-mysqlnd php-process net-snmp net-snmp-utils openssl-devel mariadb-devel rrdtool-devel php-snmp

This will install the Apache HTTP server, MariaDB database, PHP, SNMP, OpenSSL, RRDtool, and some other required packages on your system.

Step 2: Configure MariaDB

After installing the MariaDB server, run the following command to secure your MariaDB installation:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

This command will ask you to set the root password for the MariaDB server, remove anonymous users, disallow root login remotely, and remove the test database.

Once you have set up the root password, you can now create a database and user for Cacti. Run the following commands to create the database and user:

sudo mysql -u root -p

This will open the MariaDB shell, where you can run SQL queries. Run the following commands to create the Cacti database, user, and grant privileges:

CREATE DATABASE cacti;
CREATE USER 'cactiuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON cacti.* TO 'cactiuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Make sure to replace password with a strong password for the cactiuser account.

Step 3: Install Cacti

Visit the Cacti website and download the latest version of Cacti. Once downloaded, extract the contents to your system's webroot directory (/var/www/html/). You can do this using the following command:

sudo tar xzf cacti-x.x.x.tar.gz -C /var/www/html/

After extracting the files, rename the Cacti directory to cacti. You can do this using the following command:

sudo mv /var/www/html/cacti-x.x.x /var/www/html/cacti

Step 4: Configure Cacti

Now it's time to configure Cacti. Open the config.php file located in the Cacti directory (/var/www/html/cacti/include/config.php) with a text editor:

sudo nano /var/www/html/cacti/include/config.php

Find the following lines:

$database_username = 'cactiuser';
$database_password = 'cactiuserpassword';
$database_default = 'cacti';

Replace cactiuserpassword with the password you set in step 2 for the cactiuser account.

Save and close the file.

Step 5: Run Cacti installer

Now it's time to run the Cacti installer. Open a web browser and navigate to the following URL:

http://<your-server-ip>/cacti/install/

Replace <your-server-ip> with the IP address of your Fedora CoreOS system.

Follow the steps in the installer to install Cacti. When prompted for the database information, enter the following:

Once the installation is complete, remove the install directory from the webroot:

sudo rm -rf /var/www/html/cacti/install/

Step 6: Configure SNMP

Cacti uses SNMP to collect data from network devices. To test SNMP, run the following command:

snmpwalk -v 2c -c public localhost

This command should return a list of SNMP data from your local machine. If it doesn't, you may need to install SNMP and configure it on your network devices.

Step 7: Finalize Cacti configuration

Visit the Cacti login page by navigating to the following URL:

http://<your-server-ip>/cacti/

Use the following credentials to log in:

After logging in, change the admin password to a secure one.

You can now configure Cacti to monitor your network devices by adding them and creating custom graphs.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to install and configure Cacti on Fedora CoreOS Latest. We covered all the necessary steps to set up the tool, including installing required packages, configuring MariaDB, installing and configuring Cacti, testing SNMP, and finalizing the configuration. You can now use Cacti to monitor your network and create custom graphs.

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