Cactiusers.org

I have recently been playing around with the concept of a Cacti CD. I have created an auto-installing CD based on CentOS 4.1. This CD completely installs and configured the OS, Net-SNMP, RRDTool 1.2, Cacti, CactiD, the Plugin Architecture, and several plugins. Everything is all preconfigured and completely working after initial install. This all requires ZERO input from the user except inserting the CD. This should make it very easy for anyone to test out Cacti.

The disk is a completely remastered CD (from the 4 CD version, not the Server CD) and stripped down to the bare essentials (no GUI). The CD weighs in at roughly 345 Meg, and installed is roughly 700 Megs. At only 284 packages, it still includes a preconfigured firewall (only allowing http, ssh, and remote Syslog).

I will be releasing a simple beta version of this CD in a few days. At this point, I am wanting some input to see if there is any real interest for this.

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EDIT- You can now grab a beta copy here.
[b]Link removed[b]

Its hosted via a different server / domain in which I have a heck of alot more bandwidth to spare than the current one. Maybe eventually I will throw up a torrent or something.

Hi

This sounds so great. After about 2 weeks hard work, I got cacti running only the syslog part makes still some trouble. I hope you also implemented this... .-)

I hope you will release it soon...

Michael

Yes, the syslog while be included and working by default. I am using MSyslog to get the job done, it has worked very well in my setup so far. The current beta has it installed, but I need to do some small tweaking to get it working perfectly. The first actual release should have everything working just fine.

I plan on later (its in the works now) including a complete backup plugin, which will allow you to schedule backups, and FTP these backups off the server. If your Cacti server, ever dies, just insert the CD into another server, and you can restore the last backup from FTP, and you are right back where you last left off.

Jimmy,

just wondering if you have any time for real life

In general this is very interessting.
I have started playing with Linux and Cacti with last year with a distribution called Sentinix (no longer supported) which had Cacti included.

Today I use Cacti on SuSE Enterprise Server butI like to install your Cacti CD on my test system.

P.S. Can you include Webmin ?

I have thought about this before, I don't have it installed yet, but I will before the actual first official release. Sendmail, etc... will all have to be setup before Thresholds will work, so this is the easiest way to get it done that I can see. Plus it will make it easy to configure anything else you want to put on the server.

Just thought you would like to know that webmin is now installed by defualt and allowed through the firewall.

jimmy,

Great news. That is what I have been waiting for.

I recently installed Ubuntu and Cacti, but I will step back in the queue and wait for a Cacti/CentOS.

That may give for a Windows man a rocket startup using Cacti/Linux.

Best regards,

\xphu

Jimmy,

thanks for adding Webmin.This application is very helpful for all necessary tasks especially for persons like me coming from the M$ world

Great work and thanks in advance !!!

I have now ironed out the last problem with Msyslog and now have it working correctly. I will see about uploading the current version to my site for you all to test out. This isn't an official release or anything, but it should be working perfectly fine for you to test out (VMWare is your friend for these types of things).

I will post a link here when it is finished uploading.

[quote="jimmy"]
I will be releasing a simple beta version of this CD in a few days. At this point, I am wanting some input to see if there is any real interest for this.[/quote]

Your idea makes perfect sence! Keep going!
I am considering migrating from CA/Unicenter to Cacti because of it's flexibility and ease of use. Problem being how to do this in a large org. With a plug-and-play CD installation and an ftp-backup/restore option, just about any of our (windows-oriented) system engineers should be able use Cacti

Mees

I have now posted a link (see first post) that contains a beta ISO of the CD. Everything seems to work so far.

Things of note.

Msyslog booting up before Mysql seems to have issues, but rebooting yet again (or restarting the service) after the install seems to fix the issue (only did it once to me, but I will see if I can provide a work around if it does it to others too). Let me know if this happens to you, after 5 - 10 minutes, you should have some syslog stuff in your syslog tab.

You will want to issue the command "ntpdate -u 0.pool.ntp.org" a few times are initially booting up to syncronize your time, I have ntp running, but it will not do it properly if your hardware clock is way off.

You will want to use webmin to properly setup sendmail, I can't do this for you since everyone requirements are different.

Some useful info you will need.
To login to the OS (you will want to change this)
user: root
pass: CactiEZ

To login to cacti (it prompts to change this)
user: admin
pass: admin

Get to webmin at (requires the root user / pass)
https://serverip:10000

It runs off of DHCP, so if that isn't going to work in your setup, you will have to modify it yourself.

Let me know what issues you have, and also, don't even think of running this on your production system yet or putting it in a system that you want the data off of, since it completely blows away everything on the HD (no prompts!!!!)

I'll give it a try - thanks !!

P.s. I hope functions like SSH access, HTTPs, IPTables/Firewall, FTP acesss are also included ?

jimmy,

I got the following stop (error) when starting to install?
....
Probing for mouse type: Generic - 3 Button Mouse (PS/2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 1122, in ?
instClass.setInstallData(id)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/kickstart.py" , line 1440, in setInstallData
raice KickstartError, e
kickstart.KickstartValueError: specified disk sda in partition command which
s not exist
install exited abnormally
sending termination signalls...done
sending kill signals...done
.....
I got the same result with three different PCs.

\Xphu :(

What types of hard drives are you using? SCSI? PATA? SATA? I may have to leave the ability to partition your own disks.

SSH, Yes

HTTPS, not by default, I could add this, but it could be difficult with the certificate signing

IPTables, yep on by default blocking everything but the services that are needed

FTP, nope, too insecure, but I do have FTPS, and you can instead use a program like WinSCP to transfer files using SSH.