This article covers how to add a #Linux host to #Cacti.

Basically, Cacti is a network #monitoring device that creates personalized graphs of server efficiency.

SNMP, short for Simple Network Management Protocol is a protocol used for gathering information about devices in a network. Using SNMP, you can poll metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, disk utilization, network bandwidth, and so on. 

To install snmp agent on Ubuntu, run the command:

$ sudo apt install snmp snmpd -y

To install #snmp agent On CentOS 8, run the command:

$ sudo dnf install net-snmp net-snmp-utils -y

SNMP starts automatically upon installation.

To confirm this, confirm the status by running:

$ sudo systemctl status snmpd

If the service is not running yet, start and enable it on boot as shown:

$ sudo systemctl start snmpd

To Add Remote Linux Host to Cacti for Monitoring:

1. Install SNMP service on Linux hosts. SNMP, short for Simple Network Management Protocol is a protocol used for gathering information about devices in a network.

2. Configuring SNMP service.

3. Configure the firewall rules for snmp.

4. Adding remote Linux host to Cacti.

To Install and Configure Cacti:

1. Cacti require few more dependencies, run the following command to install them:

yum -y install net-snmp rrdtool net-snmp-utils

2. As we have all the dependencies ready, we can now download the install package from Cacti website.

cd /var/www/html

wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-1.1.10.tar.gz

3. You can always find the link to the latest version of the application on Cacti download page. Extract the archive using the following command.

tar xzvf cacti*.tar.gz

4. Rename your Cacti folder using:

mv cacti-1*/ cacti/

5. Now import the Cacti database by running the following command.

cd /var/www/html/cacti

mysql cacti_data < cacti.sql -u root -p

6. The above command will import the cacti.sql database into cacti_data using the user root. 

It will also ask you the password of root user before importing the database.

7. Now edit Cacti configuration by running the following command.

nano /var/www/html/cacti/include/config.php

8. Now find the following lines and edit them according to your MySQL database credentials.

/* make sure these values reflect your actual database/host/user/password */

$database_type     = 'mysql';

$database_default  = 'cacti_data';

$database_hostname = 'localhost';

$database_username = 'cacti_user';

$database_password = 'StrongPassword';

$database_port     = '3306';

$database_ssl      = false;

Icinga 2  helps in the monitoring of core resources on a server thereby serving as a resort of comfort for webmasters and website owners from panic and fear of unnoticed critical service changes within the server environment.