Comments on: Install and Configure Cacti Monitoring tool in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Server

By: Brad Hafichuk

Brad Hafichuk — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 20:10:55 +0000

@patel run `sudo apt-get install cacti-spine`

By: Patel

Patel — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:15:25 +0000

hello fellow networkers,
wondering if someone can help me with an issue i ran in to …

just followed your instruction to install cacti..
but when i check the spine path
it says

ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND

the spine file does not exist in /usr/sbin folder

how do i get around this problem?

do i need to install or reinstall spine or other package?

Thanks in advance,
Patel

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:00:29 +0000

When using the instruction “apt-get install cacti-cactid” to install Cacti in an Ubuntu 9.04 (or earlier) environment you will find that the distribution actually downloads Cacti version 0.8.7b, it places the application and data files in Ubuntu specific directories, and requires Unbuntu/Debian specific patches for config.php, debian.php, global.php, and global-settings.php (not a complete list)

We have updated our tutorial on how to work through this, in particular upgrading from the 0.8.7b distribution Ubuntu provides, now to 0.8.7e, and applying the Debian/Ubuntu specific patches for 0.8.7e

01_config.php.patch
05_no-adodb.patch
06_config_settings.php_cactid_path.patch
cli-include-path.patch

http://patch-tracking.debian.net/package/cacti/0.8.7e-1

The full tutorial is here: http://www.open4energy.com/tutorials/virtualbox/cacti

PS - We are not a support business, we use Cacti for data center energy management - we use Ubuntu and Virtual machines to get a standard quick build, and have worked through these issues for our needs - We hope that our experience might help others using cacti with Ubuntu or Debian, particularly those new to Cacti

By: Johan

Johan — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:09:44 +0000

Hi Alex!
I did it! but when i tried to patch, some errors destroyed my cacti installation , i has to roll back to save the installation…

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:33:02 +0000

Johan

What version of Cacti are you installing?

If you look at this page: http://www.open4energy.com/tutorials/virtualbox/cacti_patch

You will find the link to the Debian patches required for using Debian and Ubuntu

I have not tested that they do work for the plugin architecture, but I have read that they are what is needed.

I did all my work starting with a Virtualbox VM, and working from there. All documented here: http://www.open4energy.com/tutorials

By: Johan

Johan — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:35:40 +0000

Greetings, anyone have a clue to patch cacti to install the plugin architecture?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:32:28 +0000

I did what Bruno suggested and it fixed the problem for me.

apt-get install cacti-spine
dpkg-reconfigure cacti

I suspect that anything that causes a reconfigure of cacti fixes the 9.04 problem.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:24:37 +0000

Guys it works!
the problem is that i was using ubuntu 9.04 wich make this problem now after installing ubuntu 8.10 cacti is working properly.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:15:34 +0000

Not sure i would suggest try to post the same question in cacti forums before that i would suggest make sure you have selected the correct poller in your cacti settings

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:47:32 +0000

thank you for your response but still the same problem i think the problem is with spine. i tried to re-install many time cacti and on a new fresh OS ubuntu but the problem persist. is there any extra configuration to use spine?

By: admin

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:37:39 +0000

@Mark try ‘sudo dpkg-reconfigure php5-mysql’
and selecting the ‘Yes’ (the default) to all install questions.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:37:05 +0000

Exact same problem as Mark above. (Alex was typo)

RRDTool Says:

ERROR: opening ‘/var/lib/cacti/rra/my_switch_traffic_in_9.rrd’: No such file or directory

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:43:49 +0000

First of all great guide and very simple.
My Problem is with devices other than localhost.
When i add a device such as Cisco Router i can read all info and interfaces of this device but i can’t generate graphs for this device.
if i turn on graph debug mode i can see:

RRDTool Command:

/usr/bin/rrdtool graph - \
--imgformat=PNG \
--start=-86400 \
--end=-300 \
--title=”abraj Router - Traffic - Gi0/2.56″ \
--rigid \
--base=1000 \
--height=120 \
--width=500 \
--alt-autoscale-max \
--lower-limit=0 \
--vertical-label=”bytes per second” \
--slope-mode \
--font TITLE:12: \
--font AXIS:8: \
--font LEGEND:10: \
--font UNIT:8: \
DEF:a=”/var/lib/cacti/rra/abraj_router_traffic_in_9.rrd”:traffic_in:AVERAGE \
DEF:b=”/var/lib/cacti/rra/abraj_router_traffic_in_9.rrd”:traffic_out:AVERAGE \
AREA:a#00CF00FF:”Inbound” \
GPRINT:a:LAST:” Current\:%8.2lf %s” \
GPRINT:a:AVERAGE:”Average\:%8.2lf %s” \
GPRINT:a:MAX:”Maximum\:%8.2lf %s\n” \
LINE1:b#002A97FF:”Outbound” \
GPRINT:b:LAST:”Current\:%8.2lf %s” \
GPRINT:b:AVERAGE:”Average\:%8.2lf %s” \
GPRINT:b:MAX:”Maximum\:%8.2lf %s”

RRDTool Says:

ERROR: opening ‘/var/lib/cacti/rra/abraj_router_traffic_in_9.rrd’: No such file or directory

as my server created the rrd files for localhost info so i don’t have permissions problems, and note that i can snmpwalk on my router device from my server’s terminal.

can someone help me?
Regards,
Mark

By: Bruno Oliveira

Bruno Oliveira — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:09:48 +0000

Great guide!
On a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 9.04 Jaunty Whateverlope it installed just fine!

Just need to:

apt-get install cacti-spine
dpkg-reconfigure cacti

Because the first install don’t ask to use mysql or set it’s configurations (very strange)!

But still a great guide!
^^

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:50:10 +0000

The .dist for Debian and Ubuntu is installing Cacti 0.8.7b.

The current version is 0.8.7d

If you are doing an upgrade, after using the .dist for your initial install, the download file from cacti does not include some essential patches. They are to support the way Ubuntu implements, in particular config.php and others in the cacti/site/include directory.

The patches can be found at: http://patch-tracking.debian.net/package/cacti/0.8.7d-1

There is also a tutorial at: http://open4energy.com/tutorials/virtualbox/cacti

THE WORLD ISN’T OURS TO MESS UP! PSALM 21:1

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:31:46 +0000

Just tried following this, and the daemon has changed from spine to cactid. So, rather than putting in /usr/sbin/spine, put in /usr/sbin/cactid.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:33:29 +0000

Hit an interesting snag.

I can’t go any further than the login screen.
after I put in “admin”/”admin”, I just get the login screen again.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:30:21 +0000

I cannot seem to generate graphs from anything other than the localhost. I have created the devices and SNMP is reporting back all sorts of attributes like disk space, proc, system info etc. But when I create graphs based on these data, only the Zoom, CSV Export and Top of Page icons are displayed, plus the text for the attributes, e.g. :

Server 4
CPU Utilization
CPU0
Daily (5 Minute Average)

By: JoeUser

JoeUser — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:18:08 +0000

Personally, I would avoid installing from the .deb, and install from source.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:14:58 +0000

Very interesting article ! I do use cacti at work and never tried to install it on an Ubuntu server. I’ll definitly give it a try !