Low Cost Network Monitoring Server - Cacti on Raspberry Pi

SBCs (Single Board Computers) are a good way to reduce your infrastructure cost easily. It is more reliable because it is a dedicated hardware and doe not need expensive licenses like when you deal with Hyper-visors. Also it is a good and cheap environment for learners and lab testers of these tools on Linux servers. In this post we will see how Cacti will be installed on a Raspbary Pi.

About Cacti, It is an open source web-based network monitoring tool which can do lot of things if you configured it well.
Go to the Pi's terminal and enter the following command to install Cacti
sudo apt-get install cacti

During the installation, your 1st stop will be to give a root password for the MySQL server.

Because I didn't install a database server this will popup.

(click on images to view in full)

Next, it will ask to install a web server..

I chose the default Apache2..


Now it will go again with a long installation procedure..

Again it will stop to ask whether you like to configure database for Cacti..

Hit Yes and enter the password you entered previously as the database admin password..

Next it will ask for MySQL application password for Cacti..






Now the installation is done..

Now open a web browser from a PC which can reach the Pi and type the "ip address of the Pi with a following /cacti" on url space..

Ex:- 192.168.1.7/cacti

Hit Next and it will ask whether this is a new installation or an upgrade..

Go for new and you will have the following page.

After hitting Finish, you will be asked for the Cacti login. Default login is un:admin pw:admin
So the installation is complete.. Let's configure some devices using SNMP on a later post..