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.
cd /usr/src
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-3.2.1.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 /usr/src
tar xzf nagios-3.2.1.tar.gz
cd nagios-3.2.1
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 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 /usr/src
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
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.
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://server_IP/nagios/
Configure nagios.
The main conf file for nagios is /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
When you take nagios in the browser after this freshinstall, you can see localhost added. The conf fle for this is /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/localhost.cfg
This has been added to the file usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg as follows.
[root@localhost objects]# grep localhost.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/localhost.cfg
If you need to add another host copy this file in the another name and change the IP, hostname accordingly.
cp
/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/localhost.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/newserver.cfg
Include this cfg file to the nagios.cfg as follows.
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/newserver.cfg
Check nagios for errors.
/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
If no error restart nagios
service nagios restart
Check in browser, if you can see the new server.
