Let's get right on with setting up Cacti. Take a look at what we will do next.
In this chapter, we are going to:
- Install Cacti's prerequisites
- Install Cacti on both a CentOS and a Windows system
- Compile and install the spine poller
- Upgrade an existing Cacti installation
- Run Cacti for the first time
- Provide a quick overview on the Cacti web frontend
Here we go….
In order to install and run Cacti, we need to make sure that all system prerequisites are met. Here we'll give an overview of the different components needed.
As most of Cacti is built as a web interface, a web server is needed. This can be Apache's httpd or Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) if installing on Windows, but in fact, any PHP-capable web server can be used to run the web interface. For optimal support, the use of Apache or IIS is suggested.
Cacti is built with the PHP programming language and therefore needs PHP to be installed on the system. Most Linux distributions already have a base PHP environment installed, but some might need additional packages for Cacti to function properly. In particular, the LDAP, SNMP, and MySQL extensions should be installed.