Trying to install Munin CentOS? Here’s how we do it.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several such CentOS related queries as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today we’ll see how to install phpIPAM on CentOS.

What is Munin

Munin is a free and open-source network monitoring application that is written in Perl.

It mainly shows the network usage of servers and services in graphical form using RRDtool.

Moreover, using it you can find “what’s different today” when a performance problem arises. You can see the capacity and utilization of resources.

How to install Munin in CentOS

Now let’s take a look at how our Support Engineers install Munnin in CentOS.

Before proceeding with the installation process, make sure that you have Munin Server: munin.domain.com and Munin Client: munin-node.domain.com along with its respective IP address.

1. Install EPEL Repository

You can easily install Munin using Fedora‘s EPEL repository under RHEL 7.x/6.x/5.x and CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x.

Run the below command as the root user to install and enable Epel repository using wget depending on your OS.

RHEL/CentOS 7

—————— RHEL/CentOS 7 – 64-Bit ——————
# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm

CentOS 6/RHEL

—————— RHEL/CentOS 6 – 32-Bit ——————
# wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

—————— RHEL/CentOS 6 – 64-Bit ——————
# http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

RHEL/CentOS 5

—————— RHEL/CentOS 5 – 32-Bit ——————
# wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

—————— RHEL/CentOS 5 – 64-Bit ——————
# wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

However, Fedora users needn’t install the EPEL repository as it is included in the Fedora by default and also it can be installed using the yum or DNF package manager.

After that, make sure that you update the system so that the EPEL package database is loaded before we install Munin.

—————— On RHEL and CentOS Only ——————
# yum -y update

2. Install Apache Web Server

For the working of Munin, you need a web server such as Aoache or Nginx in order to display its statistics files. Here we are installing an Apache webserver to display serve Munin graphs.

—————— On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora ——————
# yum install httpd

—————— On Fedora 22+ Releases ——————
# dnf install httpd

After the installation completes, start, and enable the service to automatically start at system boot time.

—————— On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora ——————
# service httpd start
# chkconfig –level 35 httpd on

—————— On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 22+ ——————
# systemctl enable httpd
# systemctl start httpd

3. Install Munin and Munin-Node

Run the below command to install Munin and Munin-Node depending on your OS.

—————— On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora ——————
# yum -y install munin munin-node

—————— On Fedora 22+ Releases ——————
# dnf -y install munin munin-node

Here are the directories that will get created after the above installation.

/etc/munin/munin.conf : Munin master configuration file
/etc/cron.d/munin : Munin cron file
/etc/httpd/conf.d/munin.conf : Munin Apache configuration file
/var/log/munin : Munin log directory
/var/www/html/munin : Munin web directory
/etc/munin/munin-node.conf : Munin Node master configuration file
/etc/munin/plugins.conf : Munin plugins configuration file

4. Configure Munin and Password Protect Munin

Note: This is an optional step. You can follow this if you would like to use munin.domain.com instead of localhost in HTML output.

Now open /etc/munin/munin.conf configuration file and make the changes as suggested. Also, don’t forget to replace munin.domain.com with your server name.

# a simple host tree
[munin.domain.com]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes
[…]

After that, password protect Munin statistics with username and password using Apache basic auth module by running the command.

# htpasswd /etc/munin/munin-htpasswd admin

Finally, restart Munin and enable it to start at boot time automatically.

------------------ On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora ------------------
# service munin-node start
# chkconfig --level 35 munin-node on

------------------ On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 22+ ------------------
# systemctl enable munin-node
# systemctl start munin-node

5. Accessing Munin Web Interface

Now, wait for 30 minutes so that Munin will generate graphs and display it. In order to see the output of graphs, open the browser and navigate to the link: http://munin.domain.com/munin and then enter the login credentials.

In case, if you are not prompted with the username and password then open the configuration file /etc/httpd/conf.d/munin.conf and change the username from Munin to admin and restart Apache.

AuthUserFile /etc/munin/munin-htpasswd
AuthName “admin”
AuthType Basic
require valid-user

6. Add Linux Client to Munin Server

Now log in to the Linux client machine and install only the Munin-node package by running the below commands.

# yum install munin-node
# dnf install munin-node [On Fedora 22+ versions]
# apt-get install munin-node [On Debian based systems]

After that, open the /etc/munin/munin-node.conf configuration file and add the Munin server IP address to enable data fetching from the client.

# vi /etc/munin/munin-node.conf

Now add the IP address of Munin Server in the below format.

# A list of addresses that are allowed to connect.

allow ^127\.0\.0\.1$
allow ^::1$
allow ^192\.168\.0\.103$

Finally, restart the Munin client by running the below command.

—————— On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora ——————
# service munin-node start
# chkconfig –level 35 munin-node on

—————— On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 22+ ——————
# systemctl enable munin-node
# systemctl start munin-node

7. Configure Munin Server to Connect Client Node

In order to configure the Munin Server so that it connects to the Client Node, open the /etc/munin/munin.conf configuration file. Then add the below new section of the remote Linux client node with the server name and IP address.

# a simple host tree
[munin.domain.com]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes

[munin-node.domain.com]
address 192.168.0.15
use_node_name yes

Finally, restart the Munin server and navigate to the link http://munin.domain.com/munin to see the new client node graphs in action.

[Need any further assistance with CentOS queries? – We are here to help you.]

Conclusion

In today’s writeup, we saw how our Support Engineers install Munin on CentOS.