Cacti Pi – How to Install Cacti on Raspberry Pi
How to install Cacti on Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Wheezy
apt-get update
apt-get install apache2
apt-get install php5
apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server
*you will be prompted to set a password for the mysql root user. take note of this as you will need it later!*
apt-get install php5-mysql php5-snmp rrdtool snmp snmpd
Run the following command to confirm required php modules are present:
php -m
mysql (For configuration, see note below)
SNMP (For configuration, see note below)
XML
Session
Sockets
LDAP (Required only when using LDAP authentication)
GD (Required only for some Plugins)
Edit php.ini to point to extension directory found in:
cd /usr/lib/php5/
The name of the extension directory which will likely be a number/date ie 20090626 or 20100525+lfs depending on your distro. My Raspberry Pi had the following:
vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
extension_dir = /usr/lib/php5/20100525+lfs/
Edit Apache2.conf to point to php.conf:
vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Include conf.d/*.conf
Create php.conf:
cd /etc/apache2/conf.d/
vi php.conf
Paste this in the file:
# PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language which attempts to make
# it easy for developers to write dynamically generated webpages.
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
#
# Cause the PHP interpreter to handle files with a .php extension.
AddHandler php5-script .php
AddType text/html .php
#
# Add index.php to the list of files that will be served as
# directory indexes.
DirectoryIndex index.php
Download Cacti:
cd /var/www/
wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-0.8.8a.tar.gz
Untar Cacti:
tar xzvf cacti-0.8.8a.tar.gz
Rename the directory for uniformity:
mv cacti-0.8.8a cacti
Drop into the Cacti directory:
cd cacti
Create the MySQL database:
shell> mysqladmin --user=root -p create cacti
Import the default cacti database:
shell> mysql --user=root -p cacti < cacti.sql
Create a MySQL username and password for Cacti.
shell> mysql --user=root -p mysql
mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'cacti';
mysql> flush privileges;
Edit include/config.php and specify the database type, name, host, user and password for your Cacti configuration.
vi include/config.php
$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cactiuser";
$database_password = "cacti";
Set the appropriate permissions on cacti’s directories for graph/log generation. You should execute these commands from inside cacti’s directory to change the permissions.
shell> chown -R www-data rra/ log/
Add a line to your crontab file:
vi /etc/crontab
*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1
Restart apache and mysql:
service apache2 restart
service mysql restart
Point your web browser to:
http://your-server/cacti/
Use ifconfig if you are unsure of your Raspberry Pi’s IP address
Log in the with a username/password of admin. You will be required to change this password immediately. Make sure all of the path variables show found on the following screen.
At this point you should have an operational install up and running with the default localhost being monitored for basic system info. In order to gather more info including processor and interface traffic edit the following:
cd /etc/snmp
cp snmpd.conf snmpd.conf_orig
vi snmpd.conf
Uncomment and edit the following:
#rocommunity secret 10.0.0.0/16
to:
rocommunity cacti
Then restart snmpd
service snmpd restart
You can now edit the host within cacti under console > device to allow for the use of snmp and add the snmp processor and interface data queries.
After allowing Cacti to complete a few polls you should have some thing like this:
These instructions are specific to Raspberry Pi’s latest distro, however should work for any Linux distro with some slight variables here and there.
UPDATE : If after install you find that your graphs and/or Cacti’s log ( console > System Utilities > View Cacti Log File ) is not in your local timezone see my article on Correcting Cacti Timezone
Leave a comment below if you have any questions of run into any trouble.
Leave a comment
Just want to say thanks for this AMAZING guide!
Worked 100% and was quite easy to follow.
Seems like you HAVE to update the php.ini with your timezone for the graphs to work.
Here is a link to the supported timezones that you can maybe add :
http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
Looking forward to more posts!
Gamma
08/20/2012
Thanks for your comment GammaRSA! Glad the guide helped!
In my experience in over 10 Cacti installs on Ubuntu, Debian and OSX, I have only had to update the php.ini files manually with a local timezone once. (see my post on Correcting Cact Timezone)
I will definitely add the php supported timezones to that post as I also used it to correct that issue I saw where my cacti log and graphs were in UTC rather than EDT causing me to assume it wasn’t graphing. (due to me not looking far enough ahead to see the graphs on the Cacti ‘Graphs’ tab. Needed to change the graph filter preset to applicable UTC time.)
Let me know what you utilize Cacti to monitor and how you’ve liked it this far!
n00badmin
08/20/2012
Love cacti so far!
Mostly use it to monitor my few systems at home(Desktop PC, Server, Media center, other PI) but the main goal was for monitoring a private wireless network/hobby of mine that uses Mikrotik routers.
Pi is running fine with about 10 devices with a average load of about 5-10%. But the thing that I am now concerned about is read/write on the SD card… I know the more devices I add the greater the I/O is going to be on the SD card since it writes quite a huge amount to log, so now I was wondering, did you add a Flashdisk or external storage for log files to reduce the load on the SD card or do you just leave it to write on the default path on the card? Since SD cards only have a limited read/write before they fail.
Gamma
09/05/2012
Working on a video version of this tutorial!
Stay tuned!!!
n00badmin
08/20/2012
Video up! Enjoy!
n00badmin
08/22/2012
Thanks for the userful post!
I ordered a Raspi with the purpose of replacing my old Slug as home network monitor, and cacti is something I was thinking to install.
Could you please explain a bit your hardware configuration?
Are you storing all data onto the SD card or do you have an additional USB stick or perhaps an HDD for that?
bitwelder
08/22/2012
Hey bitwelder,
Posted a reply complete with current graphs over at raspberrypi.org
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=14581&p=156101#p156101
To answer your question, I am storing all data to the /root partition on a 16GB SD card. I don’t forsee storage being an issue if running only Cacti as unless you are monitoring a large amount of devices and data points you should be fine as it’s very efficient. That being said I’ll likely look into adding a 500GB hard drive in the future.
I highly recomment Cacti as it will provide you with endless ability to monitor, troubleshoot and report on you network and it’s elements. I will be posting on how to install plugins and reporting tools as well to enhance Cacti’s abilities so stay tuned and let me know if I can assist with your install!
n00badmin
08/22/2012
greeting
I followed your tutorial and installed Cacti but in my experience these two error log and I appear blank charts
08/31/2012 08:50:12 AM – CMDPHP: Poller[0] Host[1] DS[8] WARNING: Result from SNMP not valid. Partial Result: U
08/31/2012 08:50:12 AM – CMDPHP: Poller[0] WARNING: SNMP Get Timeout for Host:’127.0.0.1′, and OID:’.1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.58.0′
gexe
08/31/2012
Hey gexe!
Thanks for checking out the tutorial!
Can you please click the data source DS[8] link found under System Utilities > Cacti Log File and advise what you are trying to graph.
A handy tip for troubleshooting SNMP errors or blank graphs is to manually walk the OID to see what the system returns.
For example I walked this OID and here’s what I get on my Pi:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ snmpwalk -v2c -c c4ct1 192.168.2.5 .1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.58.0
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.9.2.1.58.0 = No Such Object available on this agent at this OID
It appears this OID does not exist and would explain why you get a timeout.
Out of curiosity I tried walking this OID against my Cisco Router:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ snmpwalk -v2c -c c4ct1 192.168.1.10 .1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.58.0
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.9.2.1.58.0 = INTEGER: 1
Looks like I found your culprit. Can you confirm whether you have attempted to Graph Cisco CPU template?
Let me know.
Thanks
n00badmin
n00badmin
08/31/2012
I solved the above problems removing CPU chart manually added. Now show me errors in my log but displays blank charts.
gexe
08/31/2012
What errors errors are you seeing. And what charts are blank?
n00badmin
08/31/2012
gexe,
Please go to /var/www/cacti and run ls -lh and make sure www-data:www-data is the owner of the /rra and /log directories.
if not complete
chown -R www-data:www-data rra/ log/
n00badmin
08/31/2012
charts are empty … I do not show errors
http://uploadimage.ro/images/70676065212608914738.jpg
You can connect to me with TeamViewer if you want.
gexe
08/31/2012
Sounds good,
I’m just driving into work…I’ll shoot you an email and we can do a teamviewer session.
Talk to you shortly.
n00badmin
n00badmin
08/31/2012
Hi, Was was the resolution with this one, I think I have the same problem and have checked all steps but cannot find the cause.
takingthemick
(great tutorial though)
takingthemick
09/13/2012
hey, thanks for checking the tutorial out.
His issue was related to Cacti’s timezone. be sure to follow the Correcting Cacti Timezone post as you may be actually graphing , just not where you are looking.
let me know if you require more assistance.
n00badmin
09/13/2012
I’ll check that now, although device shows status as ‘unknown’ although it gathers name, model, location etc in the SNMP details.
rra directory is empty but the permissions/owner are set correctly.
Will just confirm timezone though.
takingthemick
takingthemick
09/13/2012
I’ve set my timezone now in both php.ini and rebooted but images
still do not load and RRA directory is empty.
Device shows status as ‘unknown’ although it gathers name, model, location etc in the SNMP details.
rra directory is empty but the permissions/owner are set correctly.
takingthemick
takingthemick
09/13/2012
If the RRA directory is empty it sounds like the poller is not running. Is /etc/crontab updated correctly? Check System Utilities > View Cacti Log, any errors?
What graphs are you making?(Traffic, etc)
What selection do you currently have under ‘downed device detection’? (ie SNMP uptime, Ping etc)
Please also ensure your SNMP.conf file has been updated correctly and snmpd has been restarted. (sudo service snmpd restart)
Let me know if you still have issues.
n00badmin
09/13/2012
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data
gexe
08/31/2012
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K Apr 4 04:49 log
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4.0K Aug 31 09:30 rra
gexe
08/31/2012
Thanks for your help … just waiting for other interesting tutorials.
gexe
08/31/2012
Glad I could help get you up and running!!!
n00badmin
08/31/2012
Is there a reason you got cacti from the site, rather than just doing an apt-get install cacti?
When I run apt-cache search cacti, I see both Cacti and the Cacti Spine are available.
I’m a complete newbie to LAMP in general, so this tutorial looks very helpful.
Geoff
09/13/2012
Hi Geoff,
Apt-Get would work fine, however I wanted to be sure I was getting 0.8.8a and I wanted to control where Cacti and its elements were installed.
n00badmin
09/13/2012
I get a HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error) when trying to navigate to cacti for the first time. I made a test php page in the cacti dir and that works fine. I’m a bit of a linux noob and cant figure it out! Any ideas?
Thanks
Danger
11/07/2012
Since my last post I’ve installed from a fresh raspian image and it worked fine…. Must of played with somthing on the previos Pi
Danger
11/19/2012
Thanks for the info – great to use and very helpful. I’m up and running on my pi. A couple of suggestions: 1. for the cron job, I directed the output to a logile in the same dir as the cacti log, very helpful to work out why rrd stopped working when I changed the timezone!! Also, 2. do you need to do “apt-get upgrade” after the update in the beginning for the changes to be applied?
Colin
11/24/2012
followed the tutorial, not one error until i attempt to go to http://myserverip/cacti
Nothing, server error, page not found. I read through the tutorial again,,,the apache server is working as I get the default “its working” page when I got to the http://myserverip
What have I missed? Seems like apache is loading files from the www root, and not from the cacti directory inside of www
thank you
piface
piface
12/26/2012
hey check the permissions of your cacti directory.
ls -lh
what do you get?
n00badmin
01/03/2013
Not sure if I am missing something here but I cannot even install apache! Get loads of unresolved dependencies from apt
Aaron
01/13/2013
[...] http://n00blab.com/cacti-pi/ [...]
Cacti on Raspberry Pi « 0ddn1x: tricks with *nix
02/12/2013
Hello, I installed cacti regarding this Tutorial, but on my raspberry the “treeview” looks different than on other “cactis”: http://www.imgbox.de/users/public/images/MawpMqRcS1.jpg
i installed cacti also on an debian-linux regarding this tutorial and there it looks normal: http://www.imgbox.de/users/public/images/ybhzEmSIxI.jpg
is there an package which i need to install additionaly on the Pi ?
Thx
Kevin
03/20/2013
Hey Kevin, the difference was subtle at first, but interesting question, you can see in the tutorial vi at 24:35ish I have you “normal” one displaying while viewing on mac osx in firefox after completing this install.
what browser are you using to view? what version of cacti are you running? 0.8.8a??
n00badmin
03/24/2013