How to fully install Cacti on Ubuntu/Debian in a script way

February 24, 2016 cdeneux Uncategorized, 0

Cacti is one of better monitoring tools to graph metrics based on RRDTool‘s data storage. So, I want to use it to monitor Petals ESB deployed in the cloud with Roboconf.

It can be easily installed on Ubuntu or Debian system through the package cacti. But few information is asked during installation (password of the DB administrator user, password of the DB user for Cacti, the web-server to use, …). And a post-installation procedure is automatically launched at the first access to the web-application Cacti. This last point prohibits a full automatized installation of Cacti.

To be able to monitor a Petals ESB instance deployed in the cloud with Roboconf, Cacti must be fully installed in a script way. In this post, I’ll expose how I have get round the post-installation procedure using curl to have a fully automatized installation of Cacti.

First, to install the package cacti without to be prompted to enter asked information, I use the command debconf-set-selections to set my default values that will be used during installation. Caution, in this example, the Cacti’s database will not be created during installation.
echo "cacti cacti/webserver select apache2" | debconf-set-selections echo "cacti cacti/mysql/admin-pass password ${MySQL_0_MySQLRootPwd}" | debconf-set-selections echo "cacti cacti/db/app-user string ${Cacti_DB_0_MySQLCactiUser}" | debconf-set-selections echo "cacti cacti/mysql/app-pass password ${Cacti_DB_0_MySQLCactiPwd}" | debconf-set-selections echo "cacti cacti/dbconfig-install boolean true" | debconf-set-selections apt-get -y install cacti service apache2 reload

Now, if you go to http://localhost/cacti, you are redirected to the post-installation procedure, that can be executed in a script way using curl as following:
COOKIE_FILE="/tmp/cacti-post-install-settings.cookie" CSRF_MAGIC=curl -L --request GET "http://${ip}/cacti" -c ${COOKIE_FILE} | sed -n 's/.*name=.__csrf_magic.\s\+value="$sid:[^"]*$.*/\1/p' curl -L "http://${ip}/cacti/install/index.php" --referer "http://${ip}/cacti/install/" -b ${COOKIE_FILE} -c ${COOKIE_FILE} \ --data "__csrf_magic=${CSRF_MAGIC}" \ --data "step=1" curl -L "http://${ip}/cacti/install/index.php" --referer "http://${ip}/cacti/install/index.php" -b ${COOKIE_FILE} -c ${COOKIE_FILE} \ --data "__csrf_magic=${CSRF_MAGIC}" \ --data "step=2" \ --data "install_type=1" CSRF_MAGIC=curl -L "http://${ip}/cacti/install/index.php" --referer "http://${ip}/cacti/install/index.php" -b ${COOKIE_FILE} -c ${COOKIE_FILE} \ --data "__csrf_magic=${CSRF_MAGIC}" \ --data "step=3" \ --data-urlencode "path_rrdtool=/usr/bin/rrdtool" \ --data-urlencode "path_php_binary=/usr/bin/php" \ --data-urlencode "path_snmpwalk=/usr/bin/snmpwalk" \ --data-urlencode "path_snmpget=/usr/bin/snmpget" \ --data-urlencode "path_snmpbulkwalk=/usr/bin/snmpbulkwalk" \ --data-urlencode "path_snmpgetnext=/usr/bin/snmpgetnext" \ --data-urlencode "path_cactilog=/var/log/cacti/cacti.log" \ --data-urlencode "snmp_version=net-snmp" \ --data-urlencode "rrdtool_version=rrd-1.4.x" | sed -n 's/.*name=.__csrf_magic.\s\+value="$sid:[^"]*$.*/\1/p' curl -L "http://${ip}/cacti/index.php" --referer "http://${ip}/cacti/index.php" -b ${COOKIE_FILE} -c ${COOKIE_FILE} \ --data "__csrf_magic=${CSRF_MAGIC}" \ --data "action=login" \ --data "login_username=admin" \ --data "login_password=admin" curl -L "http://${ip}/cacti/auth_changepassword.php" --referer "http://${ip}/cacti/auth_changepassword.php?ref=http://${ip}/cacti/index.php" -b ${COOKIE_FILE} -c ${COOKIE_FILE} \ --data "__csrf_magic=${CSRF_MAGIC}" \ --data "action=changepassword" \ --data-urlencode "password=${AdminPwd}" \ --data-urlencode "confirm=${AdminPwd}" \ --data-urlencode "ref=http://${ip}/cacti/index.php"
where ${ip} is the host where Cacti is hosted, and ${AdminPwd} is the password to set to the Cacti user admin.