Debian - installed cacti on two servers - none will graph

[Grimnar]

Hi

So I installed Cacti on two servers, one of them are production and one is a fresh one to allow me to fool around with.

Anyways, I started off on the prodserver using aptitude install cacti and that one worked like a charm. But cacti on debian came without PIA so
I decided to install using the tarballs.

Fixed me a cacti.domain.tld in /var/www/cacti and installed from there. Fixed the mysql stuff as well using phpmyadmin to setup the cacti user and to import the sql-file. No problems so far.

Did the install with green lights all over. And I use www-data to run the crontab since since it's the apache user and stuff.

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*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

See attached image for what I mean about not graphing:


But after I added a device, no graph was showing up. I have read many pages on this forum but still nothing. I have read gandalfs signature over and over but still have no cluet to what can be wrong.

There is no error reporting going on either when I turn on debuggin in the cacti system. Only this as far as I can tell from syslog:

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 suhosin[23276]: ALERT - script tried to disable memory_limit by setting it to a negative value -1 bytes which is not allowed (attacker 'REMOTE_ADDR not set', file 'unknown')

So after beginning to loose some serious hair, I decided to install a fresh debian system. So doing everything above -except installing the debian cacti package. And I did it to be sure there was no problems with snmp/snmpd.

Eventually after installing rrdtool,mysql, php5-gd, snmp/snmpd I still see no graphs on none of the servers.

By the way, this is from the syslog on the "toy-around-server"

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Mar 31 19:05:01 debianmac /USR/SBIN/CRON[2893]: (www-data) CMD (www-data php /www/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 31 19:05:01 debianmac /USR/SBIN/CRON[2891]: (CRON) error (grandchild #2893 failed with exit status 127)

So can the problem be with the user www-data?
What have I overlooked?!

There has to be some simple stuff...
Let me know if I should post some stuff from the servers. Lets use the toy server since I can do whatever without being afraid of breaking some production stuff

[Grimnar]

This is from the debug version of the logfile:

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03/31/2012 08:00:49 PM - WEBLOG: Poller[0] CACTI2RRD: /usr/bin/rrdtool graph - --imgformat=PNG --start=1333130448 --end=1333216848 --title='Localhost - Memory Usage' --rigid --base=1000 --height=120 --width=500 --alt-autoscale-max --lower-limit=0 COMMENT:"From 2012/03/30 20\:00\:48 To 2012/03/31 20\:00\:48\c" COMMENT:" \n" --vertical-label='kilobytes' --slope-mode --font TITLE:10: --font AXIS:7: --font LEGEND:8: --font UNIT:7: DEF:a="/var/www/cacti/rra/localhost_mem_buffers_3.rrd":mem_buffers:AVERAGE DEF:b="/var/www/cacti/rra/localhost_mem_swap_4.rrd":mem_swap:AVERAGE AREA:a#FF4105FF:"Free" GPRINT:a:LAST:"Current\:%8.2lf %s" GPRINT:a:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s" GPRINT:a:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s\n" AREA:b#FFC73BFF:"Swap":STACK GPRINT:b:LAST:"Current\:%8.2lf %s" GPRINT:b:AVERAGE:"Average\:%8.2lf %s" GPRINT:b:MAX:"Maximum\:%8.2lf %s\n"

[gandalf]

And I use www-data to run the crontab since since it's the apache user and stuff.

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*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Please route output to /tmp/some/file and see what you get there
R.

[Grimnar]

Thank you for the reply

Here is the output so far:

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*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/cacti/poller.php > /tmp/cacti

After a few minutes..

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Sun Apr  1 21:56:24 CEST 2012
www-data@domain.tld:/tmp/cacti$ ls
www-data@domain.tld:/tmp/cacti$ 

[lmouly]

this

/var/www/cacti/poller.php > /tmp/cacti

redirects to a file, but you created the "/tmp/cacti" directory.

Delete your "/tmp/cacti" directory, the file "cacti" will be created in the "/tmp/" directory

[Grimnar]

Yeah, I noticed when I got about 300 mails from Cron that there was something wrong today when I came home from work

Anyways.

I noticed in my earlier crontabs (as the user www-data) that I had */5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/cacti/poller.php and cron was not happy about this. "www-data could not be opened) So I removed the www-data and are now running:

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*/5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/poller.php > /tmp/cacti 

So I think Im going somewhere at least. But then this mail shows up from cron:

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To: www-data@debianmac
Subject: Cron <www-data@debianmac> /usr/bin/php5 /www/cacti/poller.php > /tmp/cacti (failed)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/var/www>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=www-data>

Could not open input file: /www/cacti/poller.php

I even tried to chmod 777 and chmod +x the poller.php and chown it to www-data but still the same result.

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-rwxrwxrwx 1 www-data www-data 17938 Dec 12 03:09 /var/www/cacti/poller.php

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www-data@debianmac:/tmp$ cat cacti 
www-data@debianmac:/tmp$ 

[Grimnar]

Latest update:

On the production server I now get this from cat /tmp/cacti

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04/02/2012 03:50:02 PM - POLLER: Poller[0] NOTE: Poller Int: '300', Cron Int: '300', Time Since Last: '301', Max Runtime '298', Poller Runs: '1'
04/02/2012 03:50:02 PM - POLLER: Poller[0] DEBUG: About to Spawn a Remote Process [CMD: /usr/bin/php, ARGS: -q "/var/www/cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1/cmd.php" 0 17]
04/02/2012 03:50:02 PM - POLLER: Poller[0] DEBUG: About to Spawn a Remote Process [CMD: /usr/bin/php, ARGS: -q "/var/www/cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1/cmd.php" 18 18]
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
Waiting on 1 of 2 pollers.
OK u:0.00 s:0.00 r:0.01
OK u:0.00 s:0.00 r:0.02
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.02
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.02
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.02
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.03
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.03
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.03
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.03
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.04
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.04
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.04
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.04
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.04
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.05
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.06
04/02/2012 03:50:02 PM - SYSTEM STATS: Time:0.3231 Method:cmd.php Processes:5 Threads:N/A Hosts:3 HostsPerProcess:1 DataSources:31 RRDsProcessed:20
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.08
OK u:0.01 s:0.00 r:0.08
OK u:0.01 s:0.01 r:0.08
OK u:0.01 s:0.01 r:0.08
Loop  Time is: 0.33
Sleep Time is: 299.67
Total Time is: 0.33 

Using this crontab :

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*/5 * * * * php /var/www/cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1/poller.php > /tmp/cacti

And from the test server I get this:

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www-data@debianmac:/tmp$ cat cacti 
www-data@debianmac:/tmp$ 

And using this crontab:

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*/5 * * * * php /www/cacti/poller.php > /tmp/cacti

[Grimnar]

Final update I guess:

It is now working!

My production server running Debian 6.0 is now graphing again!

So for future Debian users who are using the official tarballs from this site:

Version: cacti-0.8.7i-PIA-3.1.tar.gz
My cactiuser = www-data
And I`m running everything from /var/www/cacti/ so chmod/chown that folder so www-data can use it properly.
This is the correct crontab syntax to make it work:

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*/5 * * * * php /var/www/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

as the user www-data


And remember, Im using the tarballs since the debian version is not supporting the plugin archive as of early April 2012.

Thanks for the help everybody