new cacti +weathermap install; weathermap "no INFO file"

[44sandyman]

I've used cacti and weathermap extensively before (about 5 years ago) in previous role, with old versions of both. so I'm familiar with how it all works. I have not touched either since then so I'm out of date. Now, I've just installed a new cacti box for a project at a new job. solely for the purpose of running weathermap. cacti installed from packages, just fine, I have a working cacti - latest version 1.1.38. I pulled down weathermap 0.98 zip file, when trying to install this in the plugin management, I get an error "Plugin does not contain an INFO file" from cacti.

after a lot of reading around I gather there has been a lot of changes in versions in the last few years and there may be some incompatibilities between the weathermap plugin and cacti now. so I am suspecting that's what I've hit. But after several hours searching, I can't find anywhere an FAQ for "if you want a working cacti + weathermap, use this version and/or make these config changes" or any information about this info file. I read some references to a weathermap version 1.0 existing, but I can't find that either.
can someone help please? I just want a working setup with minimal hacking, no compiling or whatnot, I'm a network operator not a developer.
thanks in advance

[Howie]

There isn't a working version for Cacti 1.x yet. It's still in development.

I thought I'd clearly marked that on the website though - so that's a documentation failure on me. Where did you download from?

[44sandyman]

downloaded it from the network weathermap site, but I might have got the link to the install zip from somewhere else I can't recall.
however you're absolutely correct it clearly does say that, my bad. I went through the exercise of building the cacti side first (with the latest) and then went to do weathermap , reread the weathermap plugin method install docs, and just quickly went to the page to pull down the latest of that too so I missed the "not compatible with 1.0" pointer. perhaps - due to the 5 year break - I didn't twig that actually meant "not compatible the latest version that you've just installed".

Is there any workaround given that I've just made the effort to get a working cacti 1.x (I thought I'd seen people's sigfiles in this forum indicating they are running cacti 1.x and weathermap 0.98, but I could be wrong). or is the only way to downgrade the cacti? if so, to which version ?

perhaps that only thing you could change in the warning wording would be that "please use cacti version X.Y" with this plugin?

[Howie]

I've just updated the notes on the github Releases page to also mention that it's only for 0.8.8 (there wasn't anything there before).

There isn't a workaround that I'm aware of - if there was, I wouldn't be writing new code

It'd also be cool if the Cacti plugin installer thingy explained what "no INFO file" might mean - that it's not a Cacti 1.x plugin. I might ask them about that.

If you did decide to go the downgrade route - any version of Cacti 0.8.8 will work. If you have PHP 7.x though, you will also want the test-release of Weathermap 0.98a, which is 0.98 modified to use with PHP 7's database functions. You can get that here: http://www.network-weathermap.com/files ... -test4.zip

Weathermap 0.98 (what you already have) works fine with Cacti 0.8.8 (any version) and PHP 5.

I have pointed a few people at it, asking for feedback, but haven't really had any. No news is good news? It works for me, as much as I've tested it.

[netniV]

The message should probably be updated as it's not really that clear. Having no INFO file basically means that it was pre-1.x and therefore very likely to be uncompatible with 1.x without modifications (it was first introduced in 1.0.0). I do agree, message is not very clear on that so I think I'll get that updated in v1.2 since I've just been tampering with the plugin code anyway

[44sandyman]

thanks both. I have a working box now with cacti 0.8.8 and weathermap 0.98. over and out..

[netniV]

Some people are running the dev version of weathermaps with cacti 1.x (including the 1.2.0 - Beta 0 that's so close to release i'll collapse when it goes beta!). 0.8.8 works but it's so old support for it is a lot harder to come by and any fixes have to be done manually.

[Howie]

Speaking of support - if you create issues saying that parts of the dev version don't work, and it's not a specific issue with a specific thing that's actually supposed to work, there's no support there either! It isn't finished. "I can't use it" isn't a bug (yet).

(For release versions, it's totally different - I consider anything that isn't clear from the manual a documentation bug, as well as any actual operational issues. But please accept that the dev version isn't just new stuff, it's half-complete and at your own risk)

[44sandyman]

well, I spoke too soon. on editing any map file, I get this in /var/log/httpd/error_log

Code: Select all

[Wed Sep 19 09:30:40.439406 2018] [:error] [pid 113724] [client 10.133.0.80:56498] PHP Warning:  fopen(configs/simple.conf): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.8h/plugins/weathermap/lib/Weathermap.class.php on line 2908, referer: http://10.3.0.4/cacti/plugins/weathermap/weathermap-cacti-plugin-editor.php?action=nothing&mapname=simple.conf
WARNING: Couldn't open config file configs/simple.conf for writing

seems many others have had this error and its usually down to permissions.

But I've done all the permissions in the configs map directory (unless I missed something obvious) and I even went as far as 666 and it still doesn't work

Code: Select all

[root@EM1-IS-CACT-01 configs]# ls -al
total 16
drwxrwxrwx.  2 apache apache   59 Sep 19 09:32 .
drwxrwxr-x. 11 cacti  apache 4096 Sep 18 15:28 ..
-rwxrwxr-x.  1 cacti  apache   33 May 24  2016 .htaccess
-rw-rw-r--.  1 cacti  apache   59 May 24  2016 index.php
-rw-rw-rw-.  1 cacti  apache 1267 May 29  2016 simple.conf
[root@EM1-IS-CACT-01 configs]#

httpd is running as user apache

Code: Select all

[root@EM1-IS-CACT-01 configs]# ps -ef | grep http
apache    24093 106698  0 08:51 ?        00:00:02 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

weathermap has no problem writing the map itself:

Code: Select all

09/19/2018 09:40:16 AM - WEATHERMAP: Poller[0] STATS: Weathermap 0.98 run complete - Wed, 19 Sep 18 09:40:16 +0000: 1 maps were run in 1 seconds with 0 warnings.
09/19/2018 09:40:16 AM - WEATHERMAP: Poller[0] [Map 3] simple.conf: Wrote map to /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.8h/plugins/weathermap/output/519f159e9b2feef374a1.png and /var/www/html/cacti-0.8.8h/plugins/weathermap/output/519f159e9b2feef374a1.thumb.png

stumped...

[Howie]

smells like maybe selinux? Check /var/log/audit/audit.log

[44sandyman]

yes it was selinux.
I've never really got my head round selinux, my *nix use goes way back before its invention, so it its not something that comes to mind automatically as a thing to check.

thank you.

[Howie]

yes it was selinux.
I've never really got my head round selinux, my *nix use goes way back before its invention, so it its not something that comes to mind automatically as a thing to check.

thank you.

Don't worry, I know how you feel Someday I'll figure out the right extra policy so that you can still run with it enforcing.

It's always selinux, systemd or networkmanager that makes my life hard, lately!

[netniV]

Yeah, SELinux is designed to secure things... anytime anything touches security, things break. Cacti has problems with SELinux enabled especially if httpd_can_network_connect is set to false (I think that was the option). Like Howie, I haven't had time to sit down and work out what would need adding.

[Howie]

Yeah, I assume it at least breaks Realtime, since that's the webserver writing into the web directory.

[netniV]

Or things trying to send SMTP email directly is another one.