CactiEZ CD v0.2 Beta

[cigamit]

Today I have released a new beta version of CactiEZ. This version offers many improvements over the current CD. The CD now currently weighs in at 282 MB in size (down from 355), and currently contains only 249 Packages (down from 305). It auto installs CentOS 4.4, Cacti, Cactid, Ntop, Netflow, and a whole slew of other useful items (see the Documentation for more info).

There have been a whole slew of changes since the last CD. A few of the important Changes are listed below.

* Now based off the Server CD as it contains more drivers for Raid Hardware Solutions
* Removed lots of unnecessary packages
* Dropped MSyslog in favor of Syslog-NG
* Added Nagios and "preconfigured" it. Its a base install of it, I haven't actually found a use for it, so its up to you to configure it, let me know if anything should be changed.
* NTop is now no longer started by default. Not many people use it, and it takes up a lot of memory. It is still installed, all that is required is for the service to be started and the plugin to be loaded.
* Shows the IP on the Console Login screen so you don't have to login to find it
* Much prettier Webmin theme
* Dropped support for old 486 through P2 systems
* Major changes to Netflow collection (including dropped the MySQL database as it would get HUGE)
* Lots and lots and lots of minor changes

There is not, and will not be an upgrade script to this version, there are just way too many changes to make it feasible, and to make it work on all systems (especially customized ones). Please let me know if you find any issues with this beta by posting in this topic.

Some Documentation

• Introduction
  Installation
  Login Information
  Tips and Tricks

Download Location

• CactiEZ CD v0.2b - MD5

[cigamit]

As for the reason for switching to Syslog-NG from MSyslog, it has been requested by many, many people, as it is what most people already are familar with. I also happened to have a Webmin module for it, which makes it eaier for non-linux people to configure it.

I have done some testing, and the switch itself should pose no issues performance wise. I have had my MSyslog boxes hold up under torrential bombardments of syslog messages without much of an issue (500 / second). To ensure that Syslog-NG could also hold its own, I put it through some tests last night.

I wrote a script to send syslog messages from one of my machines to a "Virtual" CactiEZ box running on my laptop. My laptop isn't necessarily slow, but its also not a beast of a server either. Its a Centrino 1.6Ghz processor. It running Mandriva, with the CactiEZ box loaded under VMWare and given 256MB of RAM (out of 1.5G total).

The script was set to send 100 syslog messages, and then pause for 1 second, and repeat this for 30 minutes. It then switched to sending 300 syslog messages then pausing for 1 second. Surprising to say, the box itself keep up without too much of an issue. Load times themselves were around .20 while receiving the syslog messages, and would go up to near 1.0 when it came time to process them. I ran it all night this way. This turned out to be about 100 message a second (since we were pausing).

Attached are the graphs of the test, I didn't happen to save the memory or bandwidth graphs, but they weren't showing anything useful anyways. The syslog graph isn't in messages per second, its basically a representation of the number of messages received in the last 5 minutes.

After the end of the testing, I had over 9 Million syslog messages in the database. Granted the Syslog tab certinaly took forever to come up after this! You can draw your own conclusion, but I think it happened to do fairly well! Also, if you are filtering out alot of the messages (Removal Rules), the load average is much, much better.

I would ofcourse recommend not running your Cacti server on a laptop under VMWare if you expect to receive these many alerts, but at least now we know it can handle them.

[shakey_1]

Is this still based on 0.8.6h as the documentation shows or has it been updated to 0.8.6i?

[TheWitness]

No, cigamit has only so many hours in the day. I'm pretty sure it's 0.8.6i.

TheWitness

[cigamit]

No, cigamit has only so many hours in the day. I'm pretty sure it's 0.8.6i.

TheWitness

Correct, I also haven't updated the Documentation yet, since v0.1 is still the current Stable version and the documentation is technically for it.

Most of the info on that page is "out of date" for this beta, newer versions of just about everything.

[shakey_1]

No, cigamit has only so many hours in the day. I'm pretty sure it's 0.8.6i.

TheWitness

I understand completely how that goes. Thank you both for the clarification.

Please let me know if you find any issues with this beta by posting in this topic.

When I get into the office tomorrow, I will load it onto one of my test machines and if I come across any issues, I will be sure to let you know. Thanks for your work on this.

[shakey_1]

Just as a follow up, I have been running this for about four days now with no problems. I currently have it monitoring about 12 servers, 10 routers and approximately 25 or so switches. If I can offer any feedback or other info, just let me know.

[streaker69]

I'm installing this new one on a different machine now. Wish me luck.

[shakey_1]

I have been running it now for nearly two weeks with no problems (that I didn't cause myself). Beyond Cacti, I have also configured the included Nagios which is running very well (and a nice inclusion, since I had built it up myself on my current Cacti system). That just saves me the trouble if I decide to move to this version full time, which I am considering.

[DavidLott]

Any chance we can have the CactiEZ 0.2 in a xxxx.tar.gz format?

[cigamit]

Any chance we can have the CactiEZ 0.2 in a xxxx.tar.gz format?

I don't see an issue with that, it will shave off 18 megs from the download.

[DavidLott]

Just checking before I do something dumb....
First, why I'm doing this... I have an x86_64 machine and want Cacti to be "native" as possible.

Ok, so I downloaded the iso image file and mounted it under Linux.
# mount -o loop -t iso9660 CactiEZ-v0.2b.iso /mnt/iso/

I then cd over to the / directory of the iso image. There I find the file /CentOS/cactiez.tar.gz I also find a list of RPMs in the /RPMS directory.
So, now I have a CentOS 4.4 install. I did a list of the yum files and compare that list against the RPMs listed in the iso. That tells me what RPM packages I'm missing.

I'm thinking that if :
1) I install the missing RPMS then
2) untar the CactiEZ tar file while in the / directory

I should have a basic install....right?????

[streaker69]

Just checking before I do something dumb....
First, why I'm doing this... I have an x86_64 machine and want Cacti to be "native" as possible.

Ok, so I downloaded the iso image file and mounted it under Linux.
# mount -o loop -t iso9660 CactiEZ-v0.2b.iso /mnt/iso/

I then cd over to the / directory of the iso image. There I find the file /CentOS/cactiez.tar.gz I also find a list of RPMs in the /RPMS directory.
So, now I have a CentOS 4.4 install. I did a list of the yum files and compare that list against the RPMs listed in the iso. That tells me what RPM packages I'm missing.

I'm thinking that if :
1) I install the missing RPMS then
2) untar the CactiEZ tar file while in the / directory

I should have a basic install....right?????

All I did was write the ISO to CD and then booted up with it. It installs CentOS and everything you need in about 10 minutes. Then it's just a matter of configuring your devices.

[DavidLott]

Yes, I've used the ISO install of CactiEZ before and have peformed it a number of times. But that does not meet my current requirements. Namely, I require an x86_64 install that I can use as a template for multiple servers in a virualized environment.

Thus, I need a base system plus the CactiEZ install from which I will need to construct the template file.

[DavidLott]

Follow up,

In my attempt to load all the dependancies, I was able to use YUM to install all of the packages except the following:

flowtools - http://cng.ateneo.edu/cng/wyu/software/flow-tools.php
fping - http://www.fping.com/
graphviz - http://www.graphviz.org/
libmcrypt - http://mcrypt.sourceforge.net/
nagios - http://nagios.org/
ntop - http://www.ntop.org/download.html
syslog-ng - http://www.balabit.com/products/syslog_ng/
Perl-Crypt - http://dag.wieers.com/packages/perl-Crypt-DES/
Perl-Net - http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/searc ... tem=&arch=
Perl-rrdtool - http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/searc ... rl-rrdtool
Perl-Socket6 - http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/searc ... tem=&arch=
RRDtool - http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
Webmin - http://www.webmin.com/download.html

Likely I will need to download and install these packages individually. I will provide an update as I get these installed.