Cacti Network Grapher Virtual Appliance

cactiThis virtual appliance is based on CentOS 7 and is designed to be lightweight, and stable. It has only a minimum of tools installed to make Cacti work.

The OS is set to DHCP, and Cacti is installed.

The username at the console, and passwords set for everything should be ‘cacti’ this will include root and mysql. **With the exception of the Cacti web ui “admin” user, which has the password “Cactipw1!” (no quotes)

The web UI username and password are “admin” and “Cactipw1!” (no quotes)

Cacti is all configured up and includes some plugins, which are not installed by default. It also has some additional host templates for Palo Alto firewalls, Cisco ASA Firewalls, F5 BIG-IP load balancers, and a few other things I have found useful over the years.

There is not a ton of documentation, as I simply have not had time.  If you are already familiar with Cacti it should be a breeze.  If there are any questions, please use GitHub Issues, and I can assist and update as needed.




[Update 10/30/2020]

  • Upgraded to new Cacti and Spine v1.2.14 released 8/02/2020
  • Updated all plugins
  • Upgraded PHP to v7.3
  • Upgraded MariaDB to v10.5
  • Various other fixes and tweaks

CentOS7 Appliance with v1.2.14 Cacti, OVA is ~2.6g

[Update 12/10/2019]

  • Upgraded to new Cacti and Spine v1.2.8 released 12/08/2019
  • Updated all plugins
  • Various other fixes and tweaks

LEGACY – CentOS7 Appliance with v1.2.8 Cacti, OVA is ~2.4g

[Update 7/17/2019]

  • Upgraded to new Cacti and Spine v1.2.5 released 7/15/2019
  • Updated all plugins
  • Various other fixes and tweaks
  • Now can upgrade the virtual disk in VMWare

LEGACY – CentOS7 Appliance with v1.2.5 Cacti, OVA is ~2.3g

[Update 1/23/2019]

  • Upgraded to new Cacti and Spine v1.2.1 released 1/20/2019
  • Updated all plugins
  • Various other fixes and tweaks
  • ./cacti-upgrade.sh now installed by default at root of cacti user directory

LEGACY – CentOS7 Appliance with v1.2.1 Cacti, OVA is ~2.3g

[Update 1/4/2019]

New Cacti v1.2.0 is released! TONS of new features and fixes. You can run my update script to automatically update the template. https://github.com/KnoAll/cacti-template this will also offer to update the Smokeping to newly released v2.7.3 as well. There is also a new prompt to disable the Smokeping service if you do not use Smokeping.

 [Update 12/4/2018]

It turns out there has been some development in Smokeping after almost 4 years of quiet! New v2.7.2 is available, so I created a new Smokeping update routine and added it to the script. This will check if you have Smokeping installed, and offer to upgrade if you wish. This can be run via the same routine as the Cacti upgrade from Github below.

[Update 11/28/2018]

I have a first working version of an automated update routine for the cacti-template you can get here. You can get the instructions on how to run it here…

https://github.com/KnoAll/cacti-template

[Update 11/16/2018]

Hello anyone who is listening! the Cacti team is working on the new v1.2 of Cacti which is now in it’s 2nd beta release. I am working on updating the template along with this and there are a lot of changes! I’m also building an upgrade script that can be used to upgrade the appliance with little effort. (Sorry, for now it will only work on the new v1.2.x appliance) More to follow as things progress.

[Update 4/2/2018]

  • Upgraded to new Cacti and Spine v1.1.37 released 3/25/2018
  • Updated all plugins

LEGACY – CentOS7 Appliance with v1.1.37 Cacti, OVA is ~2.2g


275 thoughts on “Cacti Network Grapher Virtual Appliance”

  1. Hello,

    The update script is not working for me! Because it is searching for centOS 7.5.1804 but this repository is emtpy.

    kind regards
    Uwe

  2. USERNAME AND PASSWORD WHEN SETTING UP THE SERVER ARE: cacti / cacti . Buddy, I love your project but this should have been put at the top.

  3. New Cacti v1.2.1 was released! I have updated the OVA for the first time since v1.1.37 so there are a lot of fixes and updates. The new ./cacti-upgrade.sh is setup in the Cacti home directory for future upgrades.
    I may not post any farther .ova appliances unless something major changes, but rather keep the upgrade script current.

  4. Amazing work Kevin! Thanks very much.

    For those having timezone problems these are the steps I had to do so that everything matched up(remove “” from all commands). Some of these were already mentioned, thanks to everyone as I wouldnt have known where to start.

    1. Determine the timezone available by running “ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/” and navigating the folder structure. In my case I used America/Winnipeg.
    2. Edit /var/www/html/cacti/graph_image.php and add “putenv(‘TZ=America/Winnipeg’);” after the first uncommented line.
    3. run command “timedatectl set-timezone America/Winnipeg”
    4. Edit /etc/php.ini line that has timezone information to “date.timezone = America/Winnipeg”
    5. run date to make sure time appears correctly there, if not check your host date/time
    6. Reboot.

    Like Kevin Noall mentioned, I would perform all these steps before adding any devices as it limits the chances that timestamps in the database are incorrect. In my case it seems to have worked after the devices were created and just had to refresh the web interface.

    Hope this helps someone.

  5. Your latest VM CentOS7 Appliance with v1.1.37 Cacti is NOT working on Windows server / Hyper-V.
    could not boot
    /dev/centos_cactitemplate/root does not exist
    then falls back to dracut shell.

  6. This script will only work for upgrading the virtual appliance listed on this website. If you are using my appliance you need to be logged in as the cacti user for it to work. If you are not using my appliance to run cacti you will not be able to use this script. You will need to upgrade manually for which I direct you to https://cacti.net

  7. I hadnt thought about it. I do love rpi and have several at my house. I might consider it if creating an image inst too complicated. I haven’t played around with that too much yet but am willing!

  8. After some new development on Smokeping to v2.7.2 I created a Smokeping upgrade script for the template and added it to the cacti routine. You can check it out at the Github link.

  9. Hi Kevin,
    Great job, did you plan also to make a img for raspbarry pi? It’s a perfect cheap low power machine to running cacti

    Thank you in advance
    Dario

  10. I am not a smokeping expert, and I installed it into the template as an aside, the main point is Cacti. That said we can try a couple of things. To get the status of the smokeping service try
    systemctl status smokeping.service (to restart or stop the serive change the ‘status’ to whatever you need)
    This should give you some info regarding what is happening with the service. If the service is running ok, then try pasting the relevant part of the config you changed and I can do a stare and compare.
    T

  11. i deployed your last ova (CentOS7 Appliance with v1.1.37 Cacti) from here: http://www.kevinnoall.com/blog/2015/03/06/cacti-virtual-appliance/centos7_cacti-v1-1-37/, your version(?) is “UPDATE 11-27-2018”.

    it started without a hassle, than i changed the smokeping hosts and i got no graphs anymore.
    i copied myhost3 and changed only ip.
    it had only smokeping_cgi running from perl, and looked hardly saw how smokeping had to be started or debugged.
    i checked my changes and added space befor and after the ‘=’ for the host and title. than i started smokeping from /etc/init and i run.
    i am still wondering if there is a strict identitation on the smokeping config, or if the spaces are strictly needed.
    some help on quick debugging of restarting the services cacti and smokeping would be appreciated, so i can go on configuring more hosts for my needs

  12. if installed Update 11/16/2018,
    but smokepings graphs are still empty.
    do you know if this is buggy?

  13. Hello anyone who is listening! the Cacti team is working on the new v1.2 of Cacti which is now in it’s 2nd beta release. I am working on updating the template along with this and there are a lot of changes! I’m also building an upgrade script that can be used to upgrade the appliance with little effort. (Sorry, for now it will only work on the new v1.2.x appliance)

  14. It looks good but gui works so slow. is there any way to make it normal? It takes almost 2 minutes to go on menus and graps. 🙁 could not figure out why it happens..

  15. Hi Kevin, any instructions on how to enable or configure the flowview I new to linux but I can follow a well written procedures

  16. You would have to mv the cacti folder form /var/www/http/cacti to your new mount location, and then re-point apache to that new path

  17. Hi,
    after change TimeZone all graph are empty.
    I also change timezone in PHP.ini fie but graph still empty.
    What can I do ?
    Change in the sql has destroyed me the cacti

  18. hello i use your system and it works great. what my prob. is that I can not change the time. do I change the system time and the time zone are no current info in graphs displayed? Can you tell me where exactly I have to make the change.
    Kind regards

  19. hello I have a problem as soon as I change my time zone is no more graphing displayed?
    timedatectl set-timezone Europe / Berlin

  20. Hello Back to Kevin’s comment on adding a virtual drive instead of extending it. How do I transfer the Cacti installation to the new drive? Please advise.

  21. Great appliance! loving it and the pre canned settings are awesome. But any reason why sea15s01-in-f14.1e100.net keeps trying to hit it’s internal IP every second?

  22. Hi,
    after change TimeZone all graph are empty.
    I also change timezone in PHP.ini fie but graph still empty.

  23. Okay, so the final solution is issue following command.

    xfs_growfs /dev/mapper/centos_cactitemplate-root

    Looks like XFS is the default filesystem in CentOS.

    Now df -h shows new size.

  24. Hi Kevin,

    I thought I was able to extend the existing logical partition with details as below, to about 40GB. Any one with little experience with Linux, has to be ultra careful to not lose any data. So they should better snapshot the VM and / or take DB backup etc.., if they will try to follow my process.

    1. Shut down the Cacti VM.
    2. Under edit settings of VM, I then changed hard drive size from 8GB to 40GB , selecting hard disk, change provisioned size to 40GB thick. I also increased CPU to 2 vCPUs and RAM to 2GB.
    3. Power on the Cacti VM and SSH into it using root.
    4. lsblk
    5. vgdisplay to check existing filesystem size allocation.
    6. fdisk /dev/sda
    Press p to print the existing partition table details and note it,
    Press d and then 2 to delete existing second partition.
    Press n and then p and then 2 to create new second partition. Enter to accept default for first sector and then again Enter to accept default for last sector.
    Press t then 2 then 8e to change system partition 2 , Linux LVM, and then w to write / save.
    7. Now physical drive has been expanded.
    8. to add this extra available size to the logical drive,
    lvextend -L39G /dev/mapper/centos_cactitemplate-root
    9. vgdisplay and lvdisplay to verify. This shows new expanded partition size, but somehow df -h still showed me the same.

    I am not sure if I simply add the second drive to the OS, it can be used by Cacti.

    Thanks

  25. In my experience it is easier to simply add another virtual disk rather than expanding the original. I am not an expert at that part so I would suggest a search for adding disks in centos7

  26. Hi Kevin, when I installed the OVA, it created a 8GB disk. is there a way to increase disk space for OVA installed VMs? I am not using it in commercial setup, just installed to learn it, and I tried to increase disk space under VM settings, it takes it there, but doing a df -H at Cacti shell still shows the same 7.2G disk etc..

    Thanks much,

  27. Hi Alvaro Arbuet ,

    With virtual machines, on CentOS7, you will not see ifcfg-eth0 file. Instead you will see ifcfg-esp0s3 and ifcfg-lo0. And if you will do ifconfig, you may not find esp0s3, instead there may be ens160 etc. To do static IP, you will create a file under /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts named ifcfg-ens160. If you will do vi ifcfg-ens160 from within network-scripts directory, it will auto create this file, which will be blank. Then press i and you will see at the bottom –insert–, so now you can type following (the Hwaddr is the mac address as you will see under cacti VM settings for the NIC, this is virtual mac assigned by ESXi or KVM etc..
    TYPE=Ethernet
    HWADDR=00:0c:29:ec:12:34
    BOOTPROTO=”static”
    IPADDR=172.16.30.200
    PREFIX=24
    DNS1=8.8.8.8
    GATEWAY=172.16.30.1
    NM_CONTROLLED=no
    ONBOOT=yes

    Now press Esc and then press :wq! to save and exist.

    Technically now you are supposed to restart the service via “system restart network” but I get error. So I just did a reboot at the command line and when it restarts, you will be pinging the new static IP.

    Hope this helps,

  28. hi kevin, how can I change dhcp to static ip? I try change config on ifcfg-ens*** but dont do any

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