Monitor Network Bandwidth Utilization with Cacti

We tell you how to setup this popular tool on Ubuntu 14.04 and Linux Mint 17 to monitor your network bandwidth usage.

Cacti is an open source web based network monitoring tool designed as the front end application for the RRD tool (Round-Robin database tool). It provides a fast Poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. It is generally used to get a graph data for the CPU and network bandwidth utilization and monitors the network traffic by polling a router or switch via SNMP.

Here we show you how to install Cacti on Ubuntu 14.04 / Linux Mint 17 in a few simple steps.
Install the following packages for setting up Cacti

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-mysql php5-snmp mysql-client mysql-server snmpd rrdtool

You will be asked to setup root password for MySQL, which will be required to setup cacti.

Installing Cacti
Install the Cacti package using the following command and follow the instructions given below:

  sudo apt-get install cacti

Step 1: When you run the above command, it will ask you to configure php.ini. Just press Enter.

Step 2: Select web server for which Cacti should be configured.

Step 3: On the next screen click yes to configure the database for Cacti, otherwise click No.
Enter the root password for MySQL and then enter the password for cacti user for Cacti database.
Setup Cacti
Step 1: Once you have performed the above installation then it’s time to setup Cacti. For doing this just point your browser to http://your-ip-address/cacti. Click on Next to continue.
Step 2: After the above step, you will see a Cacti Installation webpage where you have to scroll down for the options. Please select New Install for new installation and then click on Next.

Step 3: At this step, it will show you, if there is any package missing that is mandatory for Cacti.
Enter User Name and Password (default admin / admin).
The following screenshot shows the dashboard of Cacti.

Now, you can start configuring Cacti to monitor your devices. In our next issue will discuss how to configure Cacti to monitor devices.