my-guides.net - How to install MRTG under Linux

Fedora
Ubuntu
ConvertXtoDVD
DVDFab

Fedora 10 Installation Guide
Fedora 10, codenamed Cambridge, has been released! Fedora is an RPM based Linux Distribution, an Operating System in other words, developed by the community supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. Officially it contains only free and Open Source software. Some of the new features it has come with are Gnome 2.24, KDE 4.1, RPM 4.6, a Faster Startup (Plimouth), Kernel Modes Setting for Graphics, First Aid Kit, better Webcam Support and many other.
Fedora 10 Installation Guide Fedora 10 Installation Guide (in Chinese)

Ubuntu guides
Ubuntu is a free Operating System based on Debian GNU/Linux. It has been rated as the most popular Linux distribution amongst Linux users according to Distrowatch. As it happens every six months a new version of Ubuntu has been released. Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is here! Below you can find some helpful tutorials for old and new users!
Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Installation Guide How to install Ubuntu Linux on Windows using VirtualBox How to install KDE 4 on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

How to create a custom DVD using ConvertXtoDVD
VSO ConvertXtoDVD is considered to be one of the best Video converters. It combines high speeds, high quality and many options for your personalized DVD menus. In this guide we are going to focus on the menu functions of the program.
Read more...

How to copy, split or customize a DVD-9 using DVDFab
This guide describes how to copy, split or customize your legally purchased DVD-9 disks in order to have a back-up of them using DVDFab Platinum ! DVDFab is able to remove almost any copy protection from the dvd disk such as CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs, ARccOS, RipGuard, FluxDVD, CORE X2, etc. Now let’s continue with the tutorial!
Read more...

How to install MRTG under Linux

Written by axel

1. Introduction

MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is an application that allows us to observe the traffic of a network. It generates html pages with graphs which are refreshed according to our network’s current state. Its source is written in Perl and C which means that it can be installed in every Operating System we like. We will also need SNMP daemon (Simple Network Management Protocol) which gives us information for a network. The following installation was accomplished under Linux and specifically Fedora Core 6. With some little changes it can be used and under other distros.

2. SNMP server

2.1 Installation

Initially we install the packets needed for SNMP. Yum makes this job a lot easier.

Next we make snmpd service to start automatically for the runlevels we want.

# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp

And we start the server.

# chkconfig --level 345 snmpd

We can see that it is running in port 199.

# service snmpd start

# netstat -natv | grep ':199'

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:199 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

2.2 Configuration

We run ‘snmpwalk’ which creates a “tree” of information for our network.

If you see an output like this one you may proceed with the MRTG installation. Else you should make some configuration first.

# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public localhost IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex

ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = 1

ip.ipAddrTable.ipAddrEntry.ipAdEntIfIndex.192.168.0.3 = 2

We keep a backup of snmpd.conf just in case anything goes wrong

# cp /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf.original

We open it

# nano /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

And do the follow changes:

we change this line

com2sec notConfigUser default public

with those

com2sec local localhost public

com2sec mynetwork 10.0.0.0/8 public

where 10.0.0.0/8 we put what our network is

we change those lines

group notConfigGroup v1 notConfigUser

group notConfigGroup v2c notConfigUser

with those

group MyRWGroup v1 local

group MyRWGroup v2c local

group MyRWGroup usm local

group MyROGroup v1 mynetwork

group MyROGroup v2c mynetwork

group MyROGroup usm mynetwork

we change those lines

view systemview included .1.3.6.1.2.1.1

view systemview included .1.3.6.1.2.1.25.1.1

with this one

view all included .1 80

we change this line

access notConfigGroup "" any noauth exact systemview none none

with those

access MyROGroup "" any noauth exact all none none

access MyRWGroup "" any noauth exact all all none

and finally we change those lines

syslocation Unknown (edit /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf)

syscontact Root (configure /etc/snmp/snmp.local.conf)

with something like this

syslocation Linux, Fedora Core 6

syscontact Root root@localhost

2.3 Check

We restart the server to take affect of the notices

# service snmpd restart

And we run again

# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public localhost IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex

Now we should see something like that

IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex.10.103.0.33 = INTEGER: 2

IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex.127.0.0.1 = INTEGER: 1

Where 10.103.0.33 is your ip address.

3. MRTG

3.1 Installation

We again use yum

# yum install mrtg

3.2 Configuration

We create the folder in which our graphs and html pages will be kept

# mkdir /var/www/html/mrtg/

And we run ‘cfgmaker’ for the configuration file to be created.

# cfgmaker --global "workdir: /var/www/mrtg" -ifref=ip --output /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg --global 'options[_]: growright,bits' public@localhost

Here you should pay notice to --output /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg as long as to public@localhost. With this command we tell MRTG to create a configuration file with the name ‘mrtg.cfg’ for the traffic of our computer (localhost). Instead of localhost you may put the address of any computer you may monitor as long as it runs SNMP.

Next we create our default index page

# indexmaker --output=/var/www/html/mrtg/index.html /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

3.2.1 Apache configuration

Next we have to configure apache for MRTG to work correctly. MRTG creates a file ‘mrtg.cfg’ under /etc/httpd/conf.d we contains all the necessary for Apache. We change it to contain the ips we want to have access to our MRTG graphs. Here I have added all my network.

Alias /mrtg /var/www/mrtg

<Location /mrtg>
Order deny,allow

Deny from all

Allow from 127.0.0.1 10.0.0.0/8

</Location>

3.3 Check

We run the following command

In case you get an error like this

# mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

ERROR: Mrtg will most likely not work properly when the environment

variable LANG is set to UTF-8. Please run mrtg in an environment

where this is not the case. Try the following command to start:

env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

you have to run the above command more than once till it runs without any error. This is normal.

# env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

23-02-2007 17:28:53, Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup Can't remove localhost_2.old updating log file

# env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg

Finally we open our browser and type

http://127.0.0.1/mrtg

You should see something like this

mrtg1

And by clicking on it something like this

mrtg2

There are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs which aren’t shown in the screenshot. By changing the .cfg file we can alter the information displayed to what we just want.

4. Outroduction

With the same way it is possible to add as many computers as we want and therefore have a general overview of our network. Enjoy! ;)

Did you enjoy this article? Please share it!

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email This

Comments (10) add comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Pennada Prabhu Kiran said:

	LANG = en_US.UTF-8 I am not abel to run MRTG Error in Firefox "You don't have permission to access /mrtg/ on this server" can u please help me out
	report abuse vote down vote up

March 29, 2007
Votes: +0

axel said:

	Just in case, have you edited ‘mrtg.cfg’ under /etc/httpd/conf.d and added 127.0.0.1 next to allow? If so, have you restarted apache after making this change?
	report abuse vote down vote up

March 29, 2007
Votes: -1

Joe said:

	I followed these instructions - how can I allow for all to view these pages? I don't need to deny at all. Do I just simply state Allow all?
	report abuse vote down vote up

June 11, 2007
Votes: +0

axel said:

	Hey Joe. Just use this mrtg.cfg and you should be ok. Alias /mrtg /var/www/mrtg Order allow,deny Allow from all
	report abuse vote down vote up

June 14, 2007
Votes: +0

beler said:

	try with this cfgmaker --global "workdir: /var/www/mrtg/html/mrtg" -ifref=ip --output /etc/mrtg/mrtg.cfg --global 'options[_]: growright,bits' public@localhost
	report abuse vote down vote up

March 21, 2008
Votes: +0

Md. Zafar Al Masood said:

	Hi, I have also the problem in Fedora 8 "You don't have permission to access /mrtg/ on this server" I followed the comments.. nothing happens Then Just Change the line in ‘mrtg.cfg’ under /etc/httpd/conf.d as follows: Alias /mrtg /var/www/mrtg Order allow,deny Allow from all Then restart httpd and find all the graphs in Mozilla firefox
	report abuse vote down vote up

September 10, 2008
Votes: +0

Md. Zafar Al Masood said:

	Change the word "location" replace with "Directory" in ‘mrtg.cfg’ under /etc/httpd/conf.d
	report abuse vote down vote up

September 10, 2008
Votes: +0

axel said:

	Hello Md. Zafar Al Massod. When I was writing this guide the mrtg.cfg worked for me. Can you try and use this mrtg.cfg Alias /mrtg /var/www/mrtg Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 and then open Firefox like this: http://127.0.0.1/mrtg ?
	report abuse vote down vote up

September 10, 2008
Votes: +0

Md. Zafar Al Masood said:

	Could you help me how to configure more than two machine in the network mrtg?
	report abuse vote down vote up

October 16, 2008
Votes: +0

axel said:

When using the cfgmaker you must choose different IPs and different .cfg names.

cfgmaker --global "workdir: /var/www/mrtg" -ifref=ip1 --output /etc/mrtg/mrtg1.cfg --global 'options[_]: growright,bits' public@localhost

cfgmaker --global "workdir: /var/www/mrtg" -ifref=ip2 --output /etc/mrtg/mrtg2.cfg --global 'options[_]: growright,bits' public@localhost

Then you could make a master.cfg which will include the above .cfg files to gather data from all the machines in your network.

Include: mrtg1.cfg
Include: mrtg2.cfg

report abuse

vote down

vote up

October 18, 2008
Votes: +0

Write comment