You said on first line:
and thenmap tab shows
So did you have a MAP tab or not ?It's like it's all working, but I don't have any MAP TAB on the main page, nothing shows anywhere ??????????
Did you have the directory 'images' under plugin->map directory ?
if you don't have it will cause some trouble since you won't have the icon nor the map tab image.
I know I still have 1 problem, when you click on the tab MAP the map won't show up the first time, and it's look blank. you have to click F5 (refresh the page) to show up.
I still didn't figure out why it's reacting like that, and that piss me off. But it's the only thing not working.
Otherwise you should have everything.
No you can't access it directly outside cacti, since it use the cacti config to get all the information (DB most of it).
And I can assure you cacti is using in entrepise wide and production all over the world.