How To Install Munin on Ubuntu 17.04

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Munin on your Ubuntu 17.04. For those of you who didn’t know, Munin is a free and open-source networked resource monitoring tool. It offers to monitor and alerting services for servers, switches, applications, and services. Munin uses the RRDtool to create graphs that are accessible over a web browser. Also, Munin can be configured to send alerts when some service/application, etc. is not working and Munin will automatically send an additional email alert once the problem has been resolved.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation Munin monitoring tool on Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Munin on Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Apache webserver.

Munin will generate graphs that are viewed via a web application. So the first thing we need is an Apache webserver:

apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils libcgi-fast-perl libapache2-mod-fcgid

Once the installation process is complete, we must ensure that the fcgid the module is enabled. Check using the following command:

a2enmod fcgid

Step 3. Installing Munin.

Install Munin and extra plugins using the following command:

apt-get install munin munin-node munin-plugins-extra

Step 4. Configure Munin Master.

Munin puts all its configuration files in /etc/munin. We can start with editing the Munin configuration file /etc/munin/munin.conf:

nano /etc/munin/munin.conf

Edit the Munin configuration file and add/modify the following lines:

dbdir /var/lib/munin
htmldir /var/cache/munin/www
logdir /var/log/munin
rundir /var/run/munin
tmpldir /etc/munin/templates

[localhost]
    address 127.0.0.1
    use_node_name yes

Step 5. Configuring Apache webserver.

Next, you will be editing Munin’s apache configuration file to point apache in the right direction when you request the monitoring information:

mv /etc/munin/apache.conf /etc/munin/apache.conf.bak

Edit the ‘/etc/munin/apache.conf’ configuration file and add the following lines:

#nano /etc/munin/apache.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName munin.your-domain.com
   ServerAlias www.munin.your-domain.com
   ServerAdmin yours@email.com
      DocumentRoot "/var/cache/munin/www"
      DirectoryIndex index.html

   <Directory "/var/cache/munin/www">
      Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
      AllowOverride AuthConfig
      AuthUserFile /etc/munin/htpasswd
      AuthName "munin"
      AuthType Basic
      Require valid-user
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
   </Directory>

   CustomLog /var/log/apache2/munin.your-domain.com-access.log combined
   ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/munin.your-domain.com-error.log

   <Directory "/etc/munin/static">
      Require all granted
   </Directory>

   <Directory "/usr/lib/munin/cgi">
      Options +ExecCGI
      Require all granted
   <IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
      SetHandler fcgid-script
   </IfModule>
   <IfModule !mod_fcgid.c>
      SetHandler cgi-script
   </IfModule>
   </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache and Munin:

systemctl restart apache2
systemctl restart munin-node

Step 6. Accessing Munin.

Munin will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/munin or http://server-ip/munin. Using ‘admin’ as username and the previously generated Munin password as password and you will be able to access Munin graphs and data.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Munin. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Munin monitoring tool on Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Munin website.

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