Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By : Thomas Urban
Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By: Thomas Urban

Overview of this book

Cacti is a performance measurement tool that provides easy methods and functions for gathering and graphing system data. You can use Cacti to develop a robust event management system that can alert on just about anything you would like it to. But to do that, you need to gain a solid understanding of the basics of Cacti, its plugin architecture, and automation concepts. Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide will introduce you to the wide variety of features of Cacti and will guide you on how to use them for maximum effectiveness. Advanced topics like the plugin architecture and Cacti automation using the command-line interface will help you build a professional performance measurement system.Designed as a beginner's guide, the book starts off with the basics of installing and using Cacti, and also covers the advanced topics that will show you how to customize and extend the core Cacti functionalities. The book offers essential tutorials for creating advanced graphs and using plugins to create enterprise-class reports to show your customers and colleagues. From data templates to input methods and plugin installation to creating your own customized plugins, this book provides you with a rich selection of step-by-step instructions to reach your goals. It covers all you need to know to implement professional performance measurement techniques with Cacti and ways to fully customize Cacti to fit your needs. By the end of the book, you will be able to implement and extend Cacti to monitor, display, and report the performance of your network exactly the way you want.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Pop Quiz Answers
Index

Time for action – upgrading Cacti


  1. Create a backup of the database:

    mysqldump –u root -p --lock-tables --add-drop-table cacti > /root/cacti_backup.sql
    
  2. This will back up the Cacti database to a file called cacti_backup.sql. You will be asked for the MySQL root password.

  3. Change to the /var/www/html directory. From http://www.cacti.net download the source of the version to which you want to upgrade.

  4. Extract the file:

    tar –xzvf cacti-0.8.7g.tar.gz
    
  5. You will have a new directory named cacti-0.8.7g.

  6. Change to the newly created directory and edit include/config.php. Change the database entries in there to match your installation.

  7. Before copying the files, you should stop the poller using the web interface. Go to the Configuration | Settings and change to the Poller tab. Disable the poller by unchecking it.

  8. Copy the files from your existing installation to the new one. Execute the following commands, replacing 0.8.x with the new version:

    cp /var/www/html/cacti/rra/* /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.x/rra/
    cp –u /var/www/html/cacti/scripts/* /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.x/scripts/
    cp –u –R /var/www/html/cacti/resource/* /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.x/resource/
    
  9. Set the permissions on the log and rra folders:

    cd /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.7g/
    chown –R cactiuser log/ rra/
    
  10. Change the symbolic link so that it points to the new directory:

    cd /var/www/html/
    ln –fs cacti-0.8.x cacti
    
  11. The final upgrade process is done using the web interface. Point your browser to http://<yourserver>/cacti/install and follow the steps. Make sure you select Upgrade on the second page.

  12. You can now enable the poller again using the Cacti web interface.

  13. Once you have made sure that everything is working fine, you can remove or archive the original Cacti directory.

What just happened?

You upgraded Cacti to a newer version. As a safety net, you created a backup of the database so you can revert back to the old version in case of an error. You copied the RRD files and other resources to the new installation and switched over by changing the symbolic link to point to the new location. You finished the upgrade process by going to the install URL which provided the final web-based upgrade process.