librenms-librenms/doc/Installation/Installation-(RHEL-CentOS).md

NOTE: What follows is a very rough list of commands. This works on a fresh install of CentOS 6.4 and CentOS 7.

NOTE: These instructions assume you are the root user. If you are not, prepend sudo to all shell commands (the ones that aren't at mysql> prompts) or temporarily become a user with root privileges with sudo -s.

On the DB Server

This host is where the MySQL database runs. It could be the same machine as your network management server (this is the most common initial deployment scenario).

** Whilst we are working on ensuring LibreNMS is compatible with MySQL strict mode, for now, please disable this after mysql is installed.

CentOS 6: You are free to choose between using MySQL or MariaDB:

MySQL

yum install net-snmp mysql-server mysql-client
chkconfig mysqld on
service mysqld start

MariaDB

yum install net-snmp mariadb-server mariadb-client
chkconfig mariadb on
service mariadb start

CentOS 7

(NOTE: In CentOS 7 there is only mariadb in official repo) MariaDB

yum install net-snmp mariadb-server mariadb-client
systemctl enable mariadb
systemctl start mariadb

Now continue with the installation:

CentOS 6

chkconfig snmpd on
service snmpd start
mysql_secure_installation
mysql -uroot -p

CentOS 7

systemctl enable snmpd
systemctl start snmpd
mysql_secure_installation
mysql -uroot -p

Enter the MySQL/MariaDB root password to enter the command-line interface.

Create database.

CREATE DATABASE librenms;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON librenms.*
  TO 'librenms'@'<ip>'
  IDENTIFIED BY '<password>'
;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Replace <ip> above with the IP of the server running LibreNMS. If your database is on the same server as LibreNMS, you can just use localhost as the IP address.

If you are deploying a separate database server, you need to change the bind-address. If your MySQL database resides on the same server as LibreNMS, you should skip this step.

vim /etc/my.cnf

Add the following line:

bind-address = <ip>

Change <ip> to the IP address that your MySQL server should listen on. Restart MySQL:

If you see a line that starts sql-mode then change this to sql-mode="".

service mysqld restart

On the NMS

Install necessary software. The packages listed below are an all-inclusive list of packages that were necessary on a clean install of CentOS 6.4. It also requires the EPEL repository.

Note if not using HTTPd (Apache): RHEL requires httpd to be installed regardless of of nginx's (or any other web-server's) presence.

CentOS 6

    yum install epel-release
    yum install php php-cli php-gd php-mysql php-snmp php-pear php-curl httpd net-snmp graphviz graphviz-php mysql ImageMagick jwhois nmap mtr rrdtool MySQL-python net-snmp-utils vixie-cron php-mcrypt fping git
    pear install Net_IPv4-1.3.4
    pear install Net_IPv6-1.2.2b2

CentOS 7

    yum install epel-release
    yum install php php-cli php-gd php-mysql php-snmp php-pear php-curl httpd net-snmp graphviz graphviz-php mariadb ImageMagick jwhois nmap mtr rrdtool MySQL-python net-snmp-utils cronie php-mcrypt fping git
    pear install Net_IPv4-1.3.4
    pear install Net_IPv6-1.2.2b2

Adding the librenms-user for Apache

    useradd librenms -d /opt/librenms -M -r
    usermod -a -G librenms apache

Adding the librenms-user for Nginx

    useradd librenms -d /opt/librenms -M -r
    usermod -a -G librenms nginx

Using HTTPd (Apache2)

Set httpd to start on system boot.

CentOS 6 chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

CentOS 7 systemctl enable httpd

You need to configure snmpd appropriately if you have not already done so. An absolute minimal config for snmpd is:

rocommunity public 127.0.0.1

Adding the above line to /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf and running service snmpd restart will activate this config.

In /etc/php.ini, ensure date.timezone is set to your preferred time zone. See http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php for a list of supported timezones. Valid examples are: "America/New York", "Australia/Brisbane", "Etc/UTC". Please also ensure that allow_url_fopen is enabled.

Next, add the following to /etc/httpd/conf.d/librenms.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /opt/librenms/html/
  ServerName  librenms.example.com
  CustomLog /opt/librenms/logs/access_log combined
  ErrorLog /opt/librenms/logs/error_log
  AllowEncodedSlashes On
  <Directory "/opt/librenms/html/">
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Notes:
If you are running Apache 2.2.18 or higher then change AllowEncodedSlashes to NoDecode and append Require all granted underneath Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews.
If the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf exists, you might want to remove that as well unless you're familiar with Name-based Virtual Hosts

Using Nginx and PHP-FPM

Install necessary extra software and let it start on system boot.

CentOS 6

    yum install nginx php-fpm
    chkconfig nginx on
    chkconfig php-fpm on

CentOS 7

    yum install nginx php-fpm
    systemctl enable nginx
    systemctl enable php-fpm

Modify permissions and configuration for php-fpm to use nginx credentials.

mkdir /var/lib/php/session
chown root:nginx /var/lib/php -R
vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf      # At line #12: Change `listen` to `/var/run/php5-fpm.sock`
                                # At line #39-41: Change the `user` and `group` to `nginx`

Add configuration for nginx at /etc/nginx/conf.d/librenms.conf with the following content:

server {
 listen      80;
 server_name librenms.example.com;
 root        /opt/librenms/html;
 index       index.php;
 access_log  /opt/librenms/logs/access_log;
 error_log   /opt/librenms/logs/error_log;
 location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ @librenms;
 }
 location ~ \.php {
  fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
  include fastcgi.conf;
  fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
  fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
 }
 location ~ /\.ht {
  deny all;
 }
 location @librenms {
  rewrite api/v0(.*)$ /api_v0.php/$1 last;
  rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.php/$1 last;
 }
}

Cloning

You can clone the repository via HTTPS or SSH. In either case, you need to ensure the appropriate port (443 for HTTPS, 22 for SSH) is open in the outbound direction for your server.

    cd /opt
    git clone https://github.com/librenms/librenms.git librenms
    cd /opt/librenms

At this stage you can either launch the web installer by going to http://IP/install.php, follow the on-screen instructions then skip to the 'Web Interface' section further down. Alternatively if you want to continue the setup manually then just keep following these instructions.

    cp config.php.default config.php
    vim config.php

NOTE: The recommended method of cloning a git repository is HTTPS. If you would like to clone via SSH instead, use the command git clone git@github.com:librenms/librenms.git librenms instead.

Change the values to the right of the equal sign for lines beginning with $config[db_] to match your database information as setup above.

Change the value of $config['snmp']['community'] from public to whatever your read-only SNMP community is. If you have multiple communities, set it to the most common.

Add the following line to the end of config.php:

$config['fping'] = "/usr/sbin/fping";

** Be sure you have no characters (including whitespace like: newlines, spaces, tabs, etc) outside of the <?php?> blocks. Your graphs will break otherwise. **

Initialise the database

Initiate the follow database with the following command:

php build-base.php

Create admin user

Create the admin user - priv should be 10

php adduser.php <name> <pass> 10 <email>

Substitute your desired username, password and email address--and leave the angled brackets off.

Web Interface

To prepare the web interface (and adding devices shortly), you'll need to create and chown a directory as well as create an Apache vhost.

First, create and chown the rrd directory and create the logs directory

    mkdir rrd logs
    chown -R librenms:librenms /opt/librenms
    chmod 775 rrd

    # For HTTPd (Apache):
    chown apache:apache logs

    # For Nginx:
    chown nginx:nginx logs

If you're planing on running rrdcached, make sure that the path is also chmod'ed to 775 and chown'ed to librenms:librenms.

SELinux

if you're using SELinux you need to allow web server user to write into logs directory. semanage tool is a part of policycoreutils-python, so if don't have it, you can install it Please note that running LibreNMS with SELinux is still experimental and we cannot guarantee that everything will be working fine for now.

    yum install policycoreutils-python

    semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t '/opt/librenms/logs(/.*)?'
    semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/opt/librenms/logs(/.*)?'
    restorecon -RFvv /opt/librenms/logs/

Start the web-server:

CentOS 6

# For HTTPd (Apache):
service httpd restart

# For Nginx:
service nginx restart

CentOS 7

# For HTTPd (Apache):
systemctl restart httpd

# For Nginx:
systemctl restart nginx

Add localhost

php addhost.php localhost public v2c

This assumes you haven't made community changes--if you have, replace public with your community. It also assumes SNMP v2c. If you're using v3, there are additional steps (NOTE: instructions for SNMPv3 to come).

Discover localhost:

php discovery.php -h all

Create cronjob

The polling method used by LibreNMS is poller-wrapper.py, which was placed in the public domain by its author. By default, the LibreNMS cronjob runs poller-wrapper.py with 16 threads. The current LibreNMS recommendation is to use 4 threads per core. The default if no thread count is 16 threads.

If the thread count needs to be changed, you can do so by editing the cron file (/etc/cron.d/librenms). Just add a number after poller-wrapper.py, as in the below example:

/opt/librenms/poller-wrapper.py 12 >> /dev/null 2>&1

Create the cronjob

cp librenms.nonroot.cron /etc/cron.d/librenms

Daily Updates

LibreNMS performs daily updates by default. At 00:15 system time every day, a git pull --no-edit --quiet is performed. You can override this default by edit ing your config.php file. Remove the comment (the # mark) on the line:

#$config['update'] = 0;

so that it looks like this:

$config['update'] = 0;

Install complete

Please allow for 2-3 runs of the poller-wrapper for data to start appearing in the WebUI. If you don't see data after this, please refer to the FAQ for assistance.

That's it! You now should be able to log in to http://librenms.example.com/. Please note that we have not covered HTTPS setup in this example, so your LibreNMS install is not secure by default. Please do not expose it to the public Internet unless you have configured HTTPS and taken appropriate web server hardening steps.

It would be great if you would consider opting into the stats system we have, please see this page on what it is and how to enable it.