Skip to main content

Start the NAGIOS on fedora machine only in 20 minute

Introduction
This guide is intended to provide you with simple instructions on how to install Nagios from source (code) on Fedora and have it monitoring your local machine inside of 20 minutes. No advanced installation options are discussed here - just the basics that will work for 95% of users who want to get started.
These instructions were written based on a standard Fedora Core 6--17 Linux distribution.
What You'll End Up With
If you follow these instructions, here's what you'll end up with:
  • Nagios and the plugins will be installed underneath /usr/local/nagios
  • Nagios will be configured to monitor a few aspects of your local system (CPU load, disk usage, etc.)
  • The Nagios web interface will be accessible at http://localhost/nagios/
Prerequisites
During portions of the installation you'll need to have root access to your machine.
Make sure you've installed the following packages on your Fedora installation before continuing.
  • Apache
  • PHP
  • GCC compiler
  • GD development libraries
You can use yum to install these packages by running the following commands (as root): 
yum install httpd php

yum install gcc glibc glibc-common

yum install gd gd-devel
1) Create Account Information
Become the root user. 
su -l
Create a new nagios user account and give it a password. 
/usr/sbin/useradd -m nagios

passwd nagios
Create a new nagcmd group for allowing external commands to be submitted through the web interface. Add both the nagios user and the apache user to the group. 
/usr/sbin/groupadd nagcmd

/usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagcmd nagios

/usr/sbin/usermod -a -G nagcmd apache
2) Download Nagios and the Plugins
Create a directory for storing the downloads. 
mkdir ~/downloads

cd ~/downloads
Download the source code tarballs of both Nagios and the Nagios plugins (visit http://www.nagios.org/download/ for links to the latest versions). These directions were tested with Nagios 3.1.1 and Nagios Plugins 1.4.11. 
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-3.2.3.tar.gz

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz
3) Compile and Install Nagios
Extract the Nagios source code tarball. 
cd ~/downloads

tar xzf nagios-3.2.3.tar.gz

cd nagios-3.2.3
Run the Nagios configure script, passing the name of the group you created earlier like so: 
./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd
Compile the Nagios source code. 
make all
Install binaries, init script, sample config files and set permissions on the external command directory. 
make install

make install-init

make install-config

make install-commandmode
Don't start Nagios yet - there's still more that needs to be done...
4) Customize Configuration
Sample configuration files have now been installed in the /usr/local/nagios/etc directory. These sample files should work fine for getting started with Nagios. You'll need to make just one change before you proceed...
Edit the /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg config file with your favorite editor and change the email address associated with the nagiosadmin contact definition to the address you'd like to use for receiving alerts. 
vi /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg
5) Configure the Web Interface
Install the Nagios web config file in the Apache conf.d directory. 
make install-webconf
Create a nagiosadmin account for logging into the Nagios web interface. Remember the password you assign to this account - you'll need it later. 
htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin
Restart Apache to make the new settings take effect. 
service httpd restart
Note: Consider implementing the ehanced CGI security measures described here to ensure that your web authentication credentials are not compromised.
6) Compile and Install the Nagios Plugins
Extract the Nagios plugins source code tarball. 
cd ~/downloads

tar xzf nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz

cd nagios-plugins-1.4.11
Compile and install the plugins. 
./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios

make

make install
7) Start Nagios
Add Nagios to the list of system services and have it automatically start when the system boots. 
chkconfig --add nagios

chkconfig nagios on
Verify the sample Nagios configuration files. 
/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
If there are no errors, start Nagios. 
service nagios start
8) Modify SELinux Settings
Fedora ships with SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) installed and in Enforcing mode by default. This can result in "Internal Server Error" messages when you attempt to access the Nagios CGIs.
See if SELinux is in Enforcing mode. 
getenforce
Put SELinux into Permissive mode. 
setenforce 0
To make this change permanent, you'll have to modify the settings in /etc/selinux/config and reboot.
Instead of disabling SELinux or setting it to permissive mode, you can use the following command to run the CGIs under SELinux enforcing/targeted mode: 
chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /usr/local/nagios/sbin/

chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /usr/local/nagios/share/
For information on running the Nagios CGIs under Enforcing mode with a targeted policy, visit the Nagios Support Portal or Nagios Community Wiki.
9) Login to the Web Interface
You should now be able to access the Nagios web interface at the URL below. You'll be prompted for the username (nagiosadmin) and password you specified earlier. 
http://localhost/nagios/
Click on the "Service Detail" navbar link to see details of what's being monitored on your local machine. It will take a few minutes for Nagios to check all the services associated with your machine, as the checks are spread out over time.
10) Other Modifications
Make sure your machine's firewall rules are configured to allow access to the web server if you want to access the Nagios interface remotely.
Configuring email notifications is out of the scope of this documentation. While Nagios is currently configured to send you email notifications, your system may not yet have a mail program properly installed or configured. Refer to your system documentation, search the web, or look to the Nagios Support Portal or Nagios Community Wiki for specific instructions on configuring your system to send email messages to external addresses.
11) You're Done
Congratulations! You sucessfully installed Nagios. Your journey into monitoring is just beginning. You'll no doubt want to monitor more than just your local machine, 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Docker Container Management from Cockpit

Cockpit can manage containers via docker. This functionality is present in the Cockpit docker package. Cockpit communicates with docker via its API via the /var/run/docker.sock unix socket. The docker API is root equivalent, and on a properly configured system, only root can access the docker API. If the currently logged in user is not root then Cockpit will try to escalate the user’s privileges via Polkit or sudo before connecting to the socket. Alternatively, we can create a docker Unix group. Anyone in that docker group can then access the docker API, and gain root privileges on the system. [root@rhel8 ~] #  yum install cockpit-docker    -y  Once the package installed then "containers" section would be added in the dashboard and we can manage the containers and images from the console. We can search or pull an image from docker hub just by searching with the keyword like nginx centos.   Once the Image downloaded we can start a contai
Post a Comment
Read more

Remote Systems Management With Cockpit

The cockpit is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux web-based interface designed for managing and monitoring your local system, as well as Linux servers located in your network environment. In RHEL 8 Cockpit is the default installation candidate we can just start the service and then can start the management of machines. For RHEL7 or Fedora based machines we can follow steps to install and configure the cockpit.  Following are the few features of cockpit.  Managing services Managing user accounts Managing and monitoring system services Configuring network interfaces and firewall Reviewing system logs Managing virtual machines Creating diagnostic reports Setting kernel dump configuration Configuring SELinux Updating software Managing system subscriptions Installation of cockpit package.  [root@rhel8 ~] #  dnf   install cockpit cockpit-dashboard  -y  We need to enable the socket.  [root@rhel8 ~] #  systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket If firewall is runnin
Post a Comment
Read more

Containers Without Docker on RHEL/Fedora

Docker is perfectly doing well with the containerization. Since docker uses the Server/Client architecture to run the containers. So, even if I am a client or developer who just wants to create a docker image from Dockerfile I need to start the docker daemon which of course generates some extra overhead on the machine.  Also, a daemon that needs to run on your system, and it needs to run with root privileges which might have certain security implications. Here now the solution is available where we do not need to start the daemon to create the containers. We can create the images and push them any of the repositories and images are fully compatible to run on any of the environment.  Podman is an open-source Linux tool for working with containers. That includes containers in registries such as docker.io and quay.io. let's start with the podman to manage the containers.  Install the package  [root@rhel8 ~] # dnf install podman -y  OR [root@rhel8 ~] # yum
1 comment
Read more