## Pre-Flight

I'm using CentOS-Testing to install PHP 5.2.10.

    yum install \
    mysql-server \
    mysql \
    php-mysql \
    php-pear \
    php-common \
    php-gd \
    php-devel \
    php \
    php-mbstring \
    php-cli \
    php-snmp \
    php-pear-Net-SMTP \
    php-mysql \
    httpd \
    net-snmp-utils \
    php-snmp \
    net-snmp-libs \
    rrdtool \
    --enablerepo=c5-testing

Here's what I have in `/etc/snmp/snmp/conf`:

    rocommunity HOME
    syslocation "The University of Iowa"
    syscontact mail@nikhil.io

I also made sure that the SNMP daemon was running by running:

    snmpwalk -v 1 -c CLCG localhost IP-MIB::ipAdEntIfIndex

Set up the MySQL database:

```sql
grant all on cacti.* to 'cactiuser'@'localhost' identified by 'Lua77hQhdnB';
```

## Install Cacti

Make sure that [the EPEL repository](http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm) is installed.

    yum -y install cacti --enablerepo=epel

Look for an SQL install file and install it:

    rpm -ql cacti | grep cacti.sql
    /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.7f/cacti.sql
    mysql -ucactiuser -p cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.7f/cacti.sql

Now edit the config file (`/etc/cacti/db.php`) to add database information.

* The Cacti RPM also installs a configuration directive,
    `/etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf`. Change it to `Allow from all`
* You'll also find stuff in `/etc/cron.d/cacti`. Add that to your crontab.
* The installer should create a `cacti` user and `cacti` group.

Change some permissions:

    chmod -R 755 /usr/share/cacti
    chown -R cacti:cacti /usr/share/cacti

Make sure that the `rra/` and `log/` are owned by `cacti`.

Now restart the `httpd` service and navigate to `http://site/*cacti*` (or whatever you edited to be the `Alias` directive.) The username/password config for the first time login is `admin/admin`.

## Problems

* **The most important thing**: The poller must run as the `cacti` user!

### You get a "Forbidden" when loading the page for the first time

* Make sure that you have `Allow from all` in `/etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf`
* Make sure that the user:group permissions are good for `/usr/share/cacti`

### No freakin' graphs

Tailing the `httpd` error log produces something like:

    ERROR: opening '/usr/share/cacti/rra/localhost_mem_buffers_3.rrd': No such file or directory

There's also nothing in `/var/log/cacti/cacti.log`. In this case, do this:

    chown cacti:apache /var/lib/cacti/rra
    chmod 775 cacti:apache /var/lib/cacti/rra

This is [a bug](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=250348) that others have encountered. I changed the permissions like above, ran the poller and the graphs were displayed. I'm fine with this.