Cacti is a network monitoring device that creates personalized graphs of server efficiency. Webmasters can easily install and configure Cacti with a series of steps.

As a part of our Server Management Services, we help our Customers with software installations regularly.

Let us today discuss the steps to install and configure Cacti.

How to install and configure Cacti?

Like in the case of all major installations, the initial step in installing Cacti is to update the system. To make the system up to date, use the command:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Now that the system is updated, we can proceed with the installation.

Install Cacti

Cacti installation requires LAMP, SNMP, SNMPD, and RRDtools, etc to be present in the system. Thus if they are not already installed, we may need to perform this task initially.

To install LAMP, use the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server-5.6 php libapache2-mod-php

As this involves the install of MySQL, it will ask to set up the MySQL server root password.

Next, to install SNMP, SNMPD, and RRDtools, use the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install snmp snmpd rrdtool

Now that the prerequisites are met, let us proceed to install Cacti. We can use the command below for this:

$ sudo apt-get snmpd cacti cacti-spine

It then asks to set up the webserver. Select apache2 from the list as we already installed it in the previous step. Finally, click on OK.

Next, it asks to configure database configuration. By clicking on the Yes button, it will ask for the database password. Here we need to enter the password that we set earlier during the LAMP installation.

Configure Cacti

The next phase in the installation process is to complete the Cacti setup. To access the interface, enter the URL below on a web browser:

http://<server name or IP address here>/cacti/install.

Read the information displayed and click on next. Then select the installation type. As this is a  new installation, we will go with “New Install“.

In the next step, it contains information about file paths. It displays as green if everything is Okay. Then, Click on “Finish”.

Now we are ready to log in. The default username and password is admin/admin

After a successful login, it asks us to change the default password. Choose a good strong password.

Now we are logged in and the system is all ready to go.

[Need any further assistance to install and configure Cacti? – We’re available 24*7]

Conclusion

In short, Cacti is a network monitoring device that creates personalized graphs of server efficiency. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers install and configure Cacti.