RackTables is a powerful and easy-to-use web-based server rack documentation tool. It is specially designed to track inventory, manage physical and virtual servers, IP addresses, and cables. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of RackTables on POP! OS Latest.
Before we start, ensure the following:
You have a running instance of POP! OS Latest.
You have root access or a user account with sudo privileges.
Before installing any new software package, it's good practice to update existing packages. To accomplish that, open the terminal and run the following command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
Next, we need to install some required packages to run RackTables. The packages are PHP, Apache web server, and MySQL or MariaDB database server. Use the following command to install them:
sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server php php-mysql php-gd php-mbstring php-xml -y
Now, we need to create a new database and user for RackTables. Log in to the MariaDB database server using the following command:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Provide the root password when prompted.
Create a new database, user, and grant permissions to the user over the database with the following commands:
CREATE DATABASE racktables_db;
CREATE USER 'racktables_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON racktables_db.* TO 'racktables_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
Note: Replace "password" with a secure password for the user.
We can download the latest RackTables version from the official website "http://racktables.org/download/" using the following command:
wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/racktables/RackTables-0.21.1.tar.gz
Use the following command to extract the downloaded file:
tar -xzf RackTables-0.21.1.tar.gz
Rename the extracted folder and move it to the "/var/www/html" directory:
sudo mv RackTables-0.21.1 /var/www/html/racktables
Copy the sample configuration file to the new file:
sudo cp /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/inc/config.php-dist /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/inc/config.php
Open the configuration file in a text editor:
sudo nano /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/inc/config.php
Update the following lines with the database details:
$pdo_dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=racktables_db';
$dbuser = 'racktables_user';
$dbpass = 'password';
Note: Replace "password" with the password you set up for the racktables_user.
RackTables requires write permissions on some folders, so use the following commands to set the correct permissions:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/racktables/
sudo chmod 750 /var/www/html/racktables/
sudo chmod 770 /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/inc
sudo chmod 770 /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/index.php
sudo chmod 770 /var/www/html/racktables/plugins
sudo chmod 770 /var/www/html/racktables/wwwroot/api.py
Great! You have successfully installed and configured RackTables. But, before launching RackTables, we need to restart some services to see the changes.
sudo systemctl restart apache2
sudo systemctl restart mysql
Now, RackTables is ready to use. Open your web browser and navigate to "http://localhost/racktables/wwwroot". You will see a successful installation page.
Provide the default administrator credentials:
Username: admin
Password: admin
Update your profile and change the administrator password as soon as possible.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed RackTables on POP! OS Latest.
Happy RackTables documenting :)
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