MyGeekProject

I worked on a new install of cacti and the customer had a slew of HP Proliant servers. Here are the templates for the Proliant Servers to monitor everything.

HP-Windows-Server

There are tons of other templates on the cacti site so check them out. Cacti Plugin’s page.

Just recently I downloaded the ISO from torrent and setup a new Cacti server. This is one of my favorite monitoring systems which is free. If you recently set one up you notice a bit of frustration in that it did not work right out the gate. Here is what I had to change in order to get the poller running and a few tip and tricks.

First the poller. Log into the console or from ssh as “root”. Once you have logged into the server then do the following TWO command.

cd /var/www/html/poller.php
vi poller.php

If you’re not use to the VI console then read on otherwise skip to this section..

VI QuickTips

Navigating the code: Use the arrows to skim through the code.
Typing: Once you found your place to start typing just start typing, escape to navigate using arrows.
Exiting and Saving: press escape key if you have been typing, then :wq

Ok about a page or two into the code you will find the line that look like this..

$force = FALSE

Change it to TRUE and then save the code. You will need to run the poller manually in the web interface and then come back and follow the steps after running it manually back to FALSE. This should kick the poller to start to collect stats for you.

NOTE:

Couple of other things you might want to get running on the machine. Run these command as root from the terminal window.

Changing the network options

netconfig

Synching the Time

ntpdate -u 0.pool.ntp.org

Nightly updates – if you run into a lot of log problems with the server shut off updates.

service yum stop
chkconfig yum off

Changing the timezone

yum install system-config-date
system-config-date

That should about do it. I love working with this software and it will certainly help you figure out where most of your problems reside.

I was working on implementing an OpenVPN server. I looked for the root password to access some of the features and couldn’t find it readily available. Once I found it I thought I should post it on the Web.

Username: root
Password: openvpnas

A couple of reason why I chose the OpenVPN is because it works with just about all operating system including Windows, Mac and Linux. Also from what I was reading it is very secure. The price is very good as well and administrating the server is pretty easy. I recommend people try it out for themselves.

http://www.openvpn.net

Signup for a free account and get 2 access codes for testing free.