Installing Cacti 1.x in Ubuntu/Debian LAMP stack

Installing the required packages needed for the LAMP stack

apt-get update
apt-get install -y apache2 rrdtool mariadb-server snmp snmpd php7.0 php-mysql php7.0-snmp php7.0-xml php7.0-mbstring php7.0-json php7.0-gd php7.0-gmp php7.0-zip php7.0-ldap php7.0-mc

Downloading the Cacti software

Once the OS packages are installed, you will need to download the Cacti files you can do this by using the git command

git clone -b 1.2.x  https://github.com/Cacti/cacti.git
Cloning into 'cacti'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 81, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (81/81), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (55/55), done.
remote: Total 59936 (delta 40), reused 51 (delta 26), pack-reused 59855&
Receiving objects: 100% (59936/59936), 76.33 MiB | 1.81 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (43598/43598), done.

After cloning the Cacti repository, move the files into the /var/www/html directory

mv cacti /var/www/html

Database Creation

Next we will create a database for the cacti installation to use

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE cacti DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci ;
CREATE USER 'cactiuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'cactiuser';
GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO 'cactiuser'@'localhost';
GRANT SELECT ON mysql.time_zone_name TO 'cactiuser'@'localhost';
ALTER DATABASE cacti CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

You will now need to pre-populate the database used by cacti

mysql -u root cacti < /var/www/html/cacti/cacti.sql

Next, you will need to create the config.php file in /var/www/html/cacti/include

cd /var/www/html/cacti/include
cp config.php.dist config.php

Now, edit the config.php file and make sure to change the database settings as needed to match the below entries (though it is highly recommended to use a customised username/password combination for security)

$database_type     = 'mysql';
$database_default  = 'cacti';
$database_hostname = 'localhost';
$database_username = 'cactiuser';
$database_password = 'cactiuser';
$database_port     = '3306';
$database_retries  = 5;
$database_ssl      = false;
$database_ssl_key  = '';

Create your cron task file or systemd units file

Starting with Cacti 1.2.16, you have the option to use either the legacy Crontab entry, or an optional cactid units file and server to run your Cacti pollers.

For Crontab use, follow the instructions below:

Create and edit /etc/cron.d/cacti file. Make sure to setup the correct path to poller.php

*/5 * * * * apache php /var/www/html/cacti/poller.php &>/dev/null

For systemd unit's file install, you will need to modify the included units file to following your install location and desired user and group's to run the Cacti poller as. To complete the task, follow the procedure below:

vim /var/www/html/cacti/service/cactid.service (edit the path)
touch /etc/sysconfig/cactid
cp -p /var/www/html/cacti/service/cactid.service /etc/systemd/system
systemctl enable cactid
systemctl start cactid
systemctl status cactid

The systemd units file makes managing a highly available Cacti setup a bit more convenient.

The system is now ready to finialise the steps by browsing to http://serverip/cacti to start the cacti initialization wizard.

Considerations when using Proxys in front of Cacti (Cacti 1.2.23+)

For optimal security, only specify the HTTP headers that are set by your proxy software to prevent unauthorized access. These can be set by editing the following section of config.php

 * Allow the use of Proxy IPs when searching for client
 * IP to be used
 *
 * This can be set to one of the following:
 *   - false: to use only REMOTE_ADDR
 *   - true: to use all allowed headers (not advised)
 *   - array of one or more the following:
 *      'X-Forwarded-For',
 *      'X-Client-IP',
 *      'X-Real-IP',
 *      'X-ProxyUser-Ip',
 *      'CF-Connecting-IP',
 *      'True-Client-IP',
 *      'HTTP_X_FORWARDED',
 *      'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR',
 *      'HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP',
 *      'HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR',
 *      'HTTP_FORWARDED',
 *      'HTTP_CLIENT_IP',
 *
 * NOTE: The following will always be checked:
 *      'REMOTE_ADDR',
 */
$proxy_headers = null;