How to Install Cacti Monitoring tool on Ubuntu 14.04/14.10 Linux

Cacti are web-based open source system and network monitoring tool as the front-end application for RRDtool (Round-Robin database tool). Cacti used to get a graph data for the CPU and network bandwidth utilization, it monitors the network traffic by polling a router or switch via snmp.
In this guide I will show you how to install Cacti on Ubuntu 14.04/14.10/15.x Linux.

Cacti features

The primary cacti include:

• unlimited graph items
• auto-padding support for graphs
• graph data manipulation
• flexible data sources
• data gathering on a non-standard timespan
• custom data-gathering scripts
• built-in SNMP support
• graph templates
• data source templates
• host templates
• tree, list, and preview views of graph data
• user-based management and security

Install Cati required packages on Ubuntu 14.04/14.10 linux

Before installing Cacti on your Ubuntu Linux machine need to install apache, mysql server and php.

$ sudo apt-get -y install apache2 mysql-server php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Install SNMP and SNMP and RRDtools

$ sudo apt-get -y install snmp snmpd rrdtool

Now, after installing all dependencies we start the installation of cacti.

Install Cacti on Ubuntu 14.04/14/10

Install the cacti package using the following command, follow the onscreen instruction to setup the cacti.

$ sudo apt-get -y install cacti cacti-spine

Just give OK on the next screen to configure php.ini:

Update php.ini

Now, select web server for which cacti should be automatically configured.

Select web server for cacti

Next it will ask to configure the Cacti database, select Yes:

Automatic database configuration

Enter the root password of MySQL

Enter mysql root password

Now, create a password for cacti user for cacti database:

Create cacti password for cacti database

Before we start the web configuration part, we need to start the snmpd service.

$ sudo etc/init.d/snmpd start

Go to following url to start the web configuration on cacti. http://your-ip-address/cacti. Click on Next to continue.

Cacti installation guide screen

On the next screen, select “New install” and click next:

Cacti new install

If everything is green, which it should be if you followed all the steps, click Next.

Now you need to type the login and password, the default account and password are “admin”.
Upon first login you will be forced to change the default password.