Step-by-step instructions to get Cacti installed on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Desktop Edition

So after yesterdays rant, I went back and figured out how to install the Cacti monitoring software (OSS, Free) onto a Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Desktop installation. This guide uses packages only, no compiling, no Makefiles or anything like that…..You should be able to just follow this and get a fully functioning Cacti installation in about 30 minutes. Here are the steps:

  1. install ubuntu 9.04 (“Jaunty Jackalope“) Desktop Edition on your machine
  2. Login, open a Shell window and install ubuntu LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) server stack on your machine
    “sudo tasksel install lamp-server”.
    Note: Make sure you remember the password for “root” user in mysql Database, write it down somewhere, we will need it later on.
  3. Get a superuser shell started since it will make for less typing.
    “sudo -i”
    followed by your password. Be carefull from now on, you’re ROOT and can literally destroy your system if you issue the wrong command. Follow along by typing the commands in the rest of this document and answering the prompts where appropriate.
  4. Issue:
    “apt-get install rrdtool snmp php5-snmp php5 php5-gd”
    This will get all of the prereqs installed on your system. Answer “yes” when prompted for additional packages. 
  5. Issue:
    “apt-get install cacti-cactid”
    This will get cacti and cacti server installed. Again answer “yes” when prompted for additional packages.
  6. You’ll be presented with a bunch of ANSI screens that ask for information or give you choices to configure “libphp-adodb” package. Follow as per below:
    • Click “Okay” on php.ini update path (screen 1).
    • Choose “Apache 2” from the pull down on next screen (screen 2).
    • Click “Okay” on cacti and spine configuration screen (screen 3).
    • At this point some config scripts will run and you’ll see a bunch on jiberish on the screen. Let it go, don’t touch nothing.
    • Click “yes” on the dbconfig-common screen and provide the password from step 2. (above) for the mysql “root” user (screen 4).
    • Now you’re prompted to choose a password for a new mysql user known as “cacti”. I used the same password as “root” user since my system is single user only. You will need to confirm the password on the next screen (screen 5,6).
    • Almost there……..
  7. Now the hard part is over. Start your browser and point it at http://localhost/cacti — assuming you’re running the browser on the cacti machine — or the appropriate IP address instead of localhost.
  8. Click “Next” on the first screen (might want to read it too).
  9. Select “New Install” on screen 2 and Click “Next”
  10. On the next screen (Path Check screen) make sure everything is found and make 100% sure to select “RRDTool 1.2.x” from the RRDTool utility version pull down. Click “Finish” when you’re done.
  11. You’ll see the login screen. Use Username “admin” and Password “admin” to login. On the next screen you’re forced to change the password for user admin. This is a good thing. Change the password to something complicated and easy to remember (does that exist?). Click “Save”.
  12. Make sure under Configuration Settings/Paths that “Spine Poller file path” is correctly set to “/usr/sbin/spine”, and its found.
  13. Make sure under Configuration Settings/Poller you select “Poller type” and set it to “spine” and Click “Save”. You’re done……Please RTFM for more Cacti info (or come back here and you might potentially find another episode of my ramblings). Have Fun!!

Many Ayromlou

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12 responses to “Step-by-step instructions to get Cacti installed on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Desktop Edition”

  1. Thanks for this. Worked great. I noticed that this installed version 0.8.7b, and the current version is 0.8.7e. How easy is this to upgrade? Any chance of a tutorial?

  2. Hi Anonymous,

    Glad you got it working……Yep the Ubuntu repo version is a couple of revs behind. This was my "easy" version of the install. I would not recommend "upgrading" the repo version to the current by hand. It's ugly. If you want to do that (now that you have most of the pre-reqs installed), I would uninstall 0.8.7b (just the cacti package) and reinstall the current version according to the instructions that usually come with the tar file.

    Hope you get it working…..

    TTYL
    Many

  3. The perfect tutorial for installing cacti on ubuntu machine. It works perfect for me.

    Thank you so much!

  4. Hmmm..

    Followed all instructions.

    Getting 404 error.

    Any suggestions?

  5. Hi E,

    You sure you got everything installed properly. Do you get 404 error when you go to http://localhost/cacti URL?

    That normally means that the webserver can not find the page. I'm not really sure what the problem could be, other than to say that the instructions do work (I've tried it myself two more times after I wrote them). Other posts here also confirm that.

    Please check the steps again and see if you might have missed something. Sorry, but that's all I can suggest.

    Hope you get it working….

    TTYL
    Many

  6. I get this error…

    *** WARNING: ucf was run from a maintainer script that uses debconf, but
    the script did not pass –debconf-ok to ucf. The maintainer
    script should be fixed to not stop debconf before calling ucf,
    and pass it this parameter. For now, ucf will revert to using
    old-style, non-debconf prompting. Ugh!

    Please inform the package maintainer about this problem.

  8. ecamp.ph,

    Not too sure what you've done, but try switching the "Poller" from spine to the other option (I forget right now). If that doesn't work then something is definitely fishy. Hope this helps…..

    TTYL
    Many

  9. /usr/sbin/spine how to set this path for manualy
    can u give me instuction for this

  10. Hi Anonymous,

    As per instructions there is a tab called Configuration Settings" and in that tab you'll find a field called "Paths". That's where the /usr/sbin/spine is supposed to be typed into.

  11. Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back
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  12. Sure, go ahead and take as much as you need, as long as you attrib it I don’t have a issue at all :-)

    TTYL
    Many

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