RHEL/CentOS Install
Introduction
This guide will show you how to perform an Observium installation on an CentOS/RHEL or derivative system.
Compatible Versions
This guide works with RHEL and CentOS releases 7, 8 and 9. We strongly recommend using release 9 or above.
Remote SSH
If you need to install SSH to install remotely, this can be installed via YUM:
yum install openssh
Then you can start the SSH server and add it to system startup
systemctl enable sshd
systemctl start sshd
Repositories and Packages
Repositories
Add CRB, EPEL and REMI repositories and switch to REMI's PHP8.3 packages.
dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb
dnf install \
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm \
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-next-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm -y
dnf install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-9.rpm -y
dnf module enable php:remi-8.3 -y
Packages
Install the packages required for Observium
dnf install wget httpd php php-opcache php-mysqlnd php-gd php-posix php-pear cronie net-snmp \
net-snmp-utils fping mariadb-server mariadb rrdtool subversion whois ipmitool graphviz \
ImageMagick php-sodium python3 python3-PyMySQL -y
If you want to monitor libvirt virtual machines, install libvirt
dnf install libvirt
Repositories
Add EPEL, OpenNMS and REMI repositories, and switch to REMI's PHP 8.3 packages.
yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
yum install http://yum.opennms.org/repofiles/opennms-repo-stable-rhel8.noarch.rpm
yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm
yum install yum-utils
dnf module enable php:remi-8.3
Packages
Install the packages required for Observium
yum install wget httpd php php-opcache php-mysqlnd php-gd php-posix php-pear cronie net-snmp \
net-snmp-utils fping mariadb-server mariadb rrdtool subversion whois ipmitool graphviz \
ImageMagick php-sodium python3 python3-mysql python3-PyMySQL
Set Python3 to be the default Python version
alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3
If you want to monitor libvirt virtual machines, install libvirt
yum install libvirt
Recommended Version
We strongly recommend using CentOS 9
Repositories
For more extended packagelist, we first install the REMI, OpenNMS and EPEL repositories:
yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum install http://yum.opennms.org/repofiles/opennms-repo-stable-rhel7.noarch.rpm
yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
Packages
Install yum-utils and switch to REMI's PHP 8.3 packages
yum install yum-utils yum-config-manager --enable remi-php8.3
Update all installed packages
yum update
Now let's install the needed packages for Observium:
yum install wget.x86_64 httpd.x86_64 php.x86_64 php-opcache.x86_64 php-mysql.x86_64 php-gd.x86_64 \
php-posix php-pear.noarch cronie.x86_64 net-snmp.x86_64 net-snmp-utils.x86_64 \
fping.x86_64 mariadb-server.x86_64 mariadb.x86_64 MySQL-python.x86_64 rrdtool.x86_64 \
subversion.x86_64 jwhois.x86_64 ipmitool.x86_64 graphviz.x86_64 ImageMagick.x86_64 \
php-sodium.x86_64
If you want to be able to monitor libvirt virtual machines, install libvirt:
yum install libvirt.x86_64
Download Observium
First, create a directory for Observium to live in:
mkdir -p /opt/observium && cd /opt
Observium Editions
Observium comes in two editions, an Open Source Community Edition released on a biannual cycle, and a Subscription Edition with additional features, rapid bug fixes and feature improvements on a daily basis and an easy to use SVN-based update mechanism.
Observium Community Edition
If you would like to install the Community Edition, please install using the most recent .tar.gz release.
Download the latest .tar.gz of Observium and unpack:
wget http://www.observium.org/observium-community-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf observium-community-latest.tar.gz
Observium Subscription Edition
If you have a valid Observium subscription, please use one of the automated SVN release repositories.
We recommend the stable train for people who intend to use automated updates to keep their Observium installation up to date.
For the current train:
svn co https://svn.observium.org/svn/observium/trunk observium
For the stable train:
svn co https://svn.observium.org/svn/observium/branches/stable observium
MySQL Database
Start MySQL/MariaDB and configure it to be run at startup.
systemctl enable mariadb
systemctl start mariadb
Set the MySQL root password:
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password '<mysql root password>'
Create the MySQL database:
mysql -u root -p
<mysql root password>
mysql> CREATE DATABASE observium DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observium.* TO 'observium'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<observium db password>';
mysql> exit;
Observium Configuration
Change into the new install directory:
cd observium
Copy the default configuration file and edit it for your system:
cp config.php.default config.php
Edit config.php. Change the options to reflect your installation.
MySQL Credentials
You must change the MySQL username and password contained in db_user and db_pass to those set in the previous step. Most other settings can be left as default.
Insert MySQL Schema
Run the discovery.php script with the upgrade switch -u in order to insert the initial MySQL schema
./discovery.php -u
It is OK to have some errors in the SQL revisions
Fping
Since Fping is in a different location, add a line to config.php to tell Observium.
[root@observium-centos observium]# which fping
/usr/sbin/fping
Add the following
$config['fping'] = "/usr/sbin/fping";
SELinux
Explaining SELinux and how to make Observium work within it is beyond the scope of this guide, so we will disable it. If you are competent enough to maintain SELinux, then that is possible too, but is an even more unsupported configuration than RHEL/CentOS themselves.
Firstly, disable SELinux. You can do this temporarily with the following command:
setenforce 0
We need to disable SELinux permanently, so you also need to change /etc/selinux/config so that the SELINUX option is set to permissive
SELINUX=permissive
System
Create the rrd directory to store RRDs in:
mkdir rrd
chown apache:apache rrd
If the server will be running only Observium, create /etc/httpd/conf.d/observium.conf with these contents :
<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot /opt/observium/html/
ServerName observium.domain.com
CustomLog /opt/observium/logs/access_log combined
ErrorLog /opt/observium/logs/error_log
<Directory "/opt/observium/html/">
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Create logs directory for apache
mkdir /opt/observium/logs
chown apache:apache /opt/observium/logs
Add a first user, use level of 10 for admin:
cd /opt/observium
./adduser.php <username> <password> <level>
Add a first device to monitor:
./add_device.php <hostname> <community> v2c
Do an initial discovery and polling run to populate the data for the new device:
./discovery.php -h all
./poller.php -h all
Cron
Add cron jobs, create a new file /etc/cron.d/observium with the following contents:
Cron Usage
The below example includes a username, so will only work in /etc/crontab or /etc/cron.d/observium. It will NOT work in a user crontab edited with crontab -e without removing the username.
# Run a complete discovery of all devices once every 6 hours
33 */6 * * * root /opt/observium/observium-wrapper discovery >> /dev/null 2>&1
# Run automated discovery of newly added devices every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * * root /opt/observium/observium-wrapper discovery --host new >> /dev/null 2>&1
# Run multithreaded poller wrapper every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * * root /opt/observium/observium-wrapper poller >> /dev/null 2>&1
# Run housekeeping script daily for syslog, eventlog and alert log
13 5 * * * root /opt/observium/housekeeping.php -ysel >> /dev/null 2>&1
# Run housekeeping script daily for rrds, ports, orphaned entries in the database and performance data
47 4 * * * root /opt/observium/housekeeping.php -yrptb >> /dev/null 2>&1
And reload the cron process:
systemctl reload crond
Final Points
Let's set the httpd to startup when we reboot the server:
systemctl enable httpd
systemctl start httpd
Permit HTTP through the server's default firewall
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --reload
You should now be able to see http://<server ip>
Updating
Updating Observium has been designed to be as quick and painless as possible. Using our SVN delivery mechanism, it can even be automated. Because we have a rapid development and model, we recommend that you update frequently, at least once per month, though once or twice per week is better and many users update daily via an automated CRON job.
See Updating the Subscription Edition for a short explanation on how to update the Subscription Edition of Observium.
Problems
When running eg. poller.php or discovery.php a lot of notices regarding undefined indexes, variables and offsets. To hide these notices you can do the following:
nano /etc/php.ini
Find the line containing:
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED
Change this to:
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE
If there are problems with this installation tutorial, please make sure you've followed the install guide closely, check the FAQs, then join our IRC channel or Mailing Lists and ask for help.