http://www.cahilig.org/how-install-cacti-debian-etch
Cacti has a nice user interface. It is easy to install and easy to setup, don't need too much customization.
Downloading Cacti
You can download the newest version of Cacti from its website http://cacti.net/.
wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-0.8.7b.tar.gz
Installing Cacti
Install apache webserver with php support, mysql database server, snmp, some php modules and rrdtool.
apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-cli php5-mysql php5-gd php5-snmp mysql-client mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev snmp snmpd rrdtool
Add a user account for cacti.
groupadd cacti
useradd -g cacti cacti
Untar the cacti source file and move to /var/www.
tar -zxvf cacti-0.8.7b.tar.gz
mv cacti-0.8.7b /var/www
Login to your mysql database
mysql -u root
Create a password for your mysql root account and create cacti database and user.
SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost = PASSWORD ('your_password_here');
CREATE DATABASE cacti;
GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti_user@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
quit
and import the database tables
cd /var/www/cacti-0.8.7b/
mysql -u root -p cacti < cacti.sql
Change the owner of rra and log directory to your cacti account.
chown -R cacti rra/ log/
Edit the config.php file located in include directory.
vi include/config.php
Enter your mysql host, user, password and database name.
/* make sure these values refect your actual database/host/user/password */
$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cacti";
$database_password = "your_password";
$database_port = "3306";
As a cacti user
su - cacti
crontab -e
add this line to your crontab
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/cacti-0.8.7b/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1
Open up your web browser and point to http://localhost/cacti-0.8.7b/, this will start cacti installation. Click Next then select NEW INSTALL and accept the default installation value. If you don't see any errors, click Finish to install.
Login to cacti, the default username and password is admin. After login, it will prompt you change your password for security reasons.
Checking
Check your syslog if the cacti's poller is running every 5 minutes.
If you will see something like this in your syslog, your cacti should work perfectly.
Jul 5 06:50:01 server1 /USR/SBIN/CRON[6543]: (cacti) CMD (/usr/bin/php /var/www/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1)
You can start monitoring your servers, routers and other networking devices with cacti
