cacti for Debian 

----------------
originally written by Thorsten Sauter <tsauter@gmx.net>
Fri,  3 Sep 2004 11:25:28 +0200

last edited by sean finney <seanius@debian.org> 
Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:07:46 +0100
----------------

* viewing graphs causing zombie mysql processes?

  If this happens, take a look at the solutions given in
  http://bugs.debian.org/344519.

* ERROR: Garbage ':33:09 To 2005/10/27 08:33:09\c' after command:

  If you get this, it's probably because you just upgraded rrdtool,
  which changed its output format between versions and cacti is still
  trying to parse it using the old versions' output.  If you go into
  your cacti settings, you will see an option to change the version
  of rrdtool you have installed, which should solve your problem.

* installation

  note that cacti now uses automatic configuration via dbconfig-common.
  however, if you've chosen to go the manual route, the following
  information may be helpful.

  using the username and password you provided in debconf (and stored
  in the cacti config file /etc/cacti/debian.php), create a database
  and load up the cacti skeleton.  assuming you chose a database and
  user both named 'cacti':

  mysql -u root -p -e "create database cacti"
  mysql -u root -p -e "grant all privileges on cacti.* to cacti@localhost identified by 'yourpasswordhere'; flush privileges"
  zcat /usr/share/doc/cacti/cacti.sql.gz | mysql -u cacti -p cacti 

  next, go to http://$yourhost/cacti/, and follow the on-screen directions.
  the default login is admin/admin.  once automagical configuration is
  brought back into cacti, this will probably change to something better.

* Upgrading from recent versions of cacti (>= 0.8.x)

  There is a special directory install/ available, which contains some
  basic php scripts to upgrade your current database to the new version
  of cacti.

  Normally, this should happen automatically. If not, simply point your
  browser to your cacti installation:

    http://$yourhost/cacti/install

  At some point the automatic upgrade feature will return, but not now.

* Upgrading from old cacti versions (<= 0.6.x)

  The database structure has changed between version 0.6.x and 0.8.x. To make
  cacti working again, you must create a new database, and import the cacti
  database configuration. You can do this with the following commands. Please
  replace "cacti" with your database name. Maybe you must also specify an
  host name (-h host).

	# backup the old database
  	$ mysqldump -u root -p cacti | gzip -9 - >/tmp/cacti-old.gz

	# delete and create the database again
	$ mysqladmin -u root -p drop cacti
	$ mysqladmin -u root -p create cacti

	# import the database structure
	$ zcat /usr/share/doc/cacti/cacti.sql.gz | mysql -u root -p cacti

  optionally, if you have lots and lots of data and it's critically important
  to keep it, you can try the following, which i've had work on smaller test
  installations:

  	- downgrade to the previous 0.6.x version of cacti in woody.
	- download version 0.6.8a from the old cacti repository:
		http://www.cacti.net/downloads/archive/
	- extract the tarball in /usr/local/cacti, configure config.php.
	- change your Alias to point /cacti/ at this directory
	- go to http://$yourhost/cacti/install/ and do the 0.6.7->0.6.8a upgrade
	- turn off cron (or at least the cronjob for cacti)
	- back up your current database, load a copy into a database
	  called cacti-old.  truncate the old database.
	- repeat the described upgrade process to go from 0.6.8a to 0.8.
	  you'll be asked for an "old database" and a "new database".  this
	  is where things will either work or not work.
	- remove these two cacti directories in /usr/local
	- install the latest version of cacti from sarge/sid
	- point your apache config back where it should
	- go to http://$yourhost/cacti/install/ and cacti should take you
	  the rest of the way to the current version.
	- turn the cronjob back on

  note that i haven't tried this on a large scale, it takes quite a bit
  of effort, and i can't guarantee it will work.  sorry :/

  i would like at some point to offer some automated (or at least cmdline)
  programs to help automate this, but my first priority is to get the next
  upstream release out the door.  i've already done some work on this, if
  you're interested in helping out, send me an email.

* PHP command line scripts:

  If you install the php4-{cli,cgi} package _after_ the php4-mysql package,
  there will be no entry for the mysql extension in this file.
  To fix this, you can run the following command and select the cgi
  interface also:
  	# dpkg-reconfigure php4-mysql

  You need to enable mysql support for apache, cli and/or cgi. Depending
  on your configuration.

* Apache2 support

  If you would like to use cacti with apache2 you need to install the php4
  package for apache2: libapache2-mod-php4. After this you need to enable
  the mysql and snmp extension for php4.

	# cd /etc/php4/apache2/
    # grep -q mysql.so php.ini || echo "extension=mysql.so">>php.ini
    # grep -q snmp.so php.ini || echo "extension=snmp.so">>php.ini

  (Please note the two ">>" signs)

* PHP short tags problem in /etc/cacti/debian.php

  Previous versions of cacti create the debian.php file with short php
  tags '<?'. This can make problems on systems which only allows the login
  php tags. (This should be the default IMHO). This version should fix
  the debian.php automatically during install.  The relevant PHP option
  is: short_open_tag

  If the automatic update doesn't work or you have moved/replaced the
  file please make sure you are using only long php4 tags in this file.

  Long tags are: <?php

* Custom local scripts

  if you've written your own scripts for monitoring various things in cacti,
  i strongly recommend that you not place them under /usr, as package
  maintainers like myself will sometimes wrongly assume that we have
  total control over the filespace there.  instead, you should consider using
  an alternate location, such as somewhere under /usr/local/share/cacti,
  which should be already created for you when you install this package.

* Cacti doesn't gather any data???

  here's a collection of tips observations that might help if you can't
  figure out why cacti isn't gathering any data (assuming you're using
  the standard poller and not cacti-cactid).

  cacti's poller is a pure php script located at

  	/usr/share/cacti/site/poller.php

  because it's normally a rather noisy script, the stderr is redirected
  to an error logfile in

  	/var/log/cacti/poller-error.log

  it's also possible something may be in

  	/var/log/cacti/cacti.log

  cacti depends on a couple different php libraries/modules, which can
  be satisfied by packages from either php4 or php5 (to which i will
  ambiguously refer as phpN).  thus, it's possible that some of the
  installed php packages come from one version of phpN and others from
  the other.  if cacti isn't gathering any data, take a look to see if
  this is the case, and then install the missing modules for one of the
  versions of phpN and ensure that cacti is configured to exclusively
  use that version.

  also, it's possible that the phpN-mysql library isn't configured
  for the cmdline phpN program.  check the contents of /etc/phpN/cli/php.ini
  for the lines:

    extension=snmp.so
    extension=mysql.so

  it's also been reported that phpN-cli requires safe mode to be turned off.
  if you get errors like:

  	sh: line 1: /php: No such file or directory
  	sh: line 1: /rrdtool: No such file or directory

  then try disabling safe mode for your phpN-cli in /etc/phpN/cli/php.ini.
 
* Default initial username/password

  is admin/admin.  probably not the most secure, so please change it
  as soon as you're done reading this sentence.  did it?  good, thanks :)
  at some point i'll make this part of the installation process, but
  in the meantime at least we have this note.