How to Install and Configure Observium on Debian 9

In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to install Observium on a Debian 9 server.

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What is Observium

Observium is a network monitoring software which was made in PHP. It is a cross-platform application and supports every common operating system. This guide, however, has been made specifically for Debian 9 OS. During the time of writing this tutorial, the latest stable version of Observium was 17.9 and it needed:

1. PHP 5.6 or higher (preferably PHP 7.0), with mbstring, pear, mcrypt, JSON, mysqli, and GD PHP extensions enabled. PHP 7.1 is not supported on the current community edition release.
2. MySQL 5, MariaDB 5, or later

Apache web server 2.2 or higher compiled with mod_rewrite module and AllowOverride set to ‘All’ (please note, the default setting for AllowOverride in Apache 2.3.9 and higher is ‘None’).

Step 1: Updating the system packages

It is important to ensure that your Debian 9 OS packages are up-to-date.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 2: Installing the needed Packages

The command below will allow you to install every package required for Observium.

apt-get install php7.0-cli php7.0-mysql php7.0-mysqli php7.0-gd php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-json php-pear imagemagick snmp fping python-mysqldb subversion whois mtr-tiny ipmitool graphviz rrdtool

Step 3: Enabling Apache Rewrite Module

Enable Apache rewrite module if it is not already enabled.

a2enmod rewrite

Step 4: Restarting Apache

For the changes to take effect, you will need to restart the Apache service

service apache2 restart

Step 5: Installing Observium on Debian 9

Download the latest community version of Observium in the /opt/directory on the server. This is available at https://www.observium.org.

cd /opt/
wget http://www.observium.org/observium-community-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf observium-community-latest.tar.gz
mv observium /var/www/html/observium
mkdir -p /var/www/html/observium/rrd

Step 6: Setting the Proper Ownership of Observium Files

Every file has to be readable by the web server, for this to occur we must set a proper ownership.

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/observium

Step 7: Create Database and User

Create a new MySQL database and user.

mysql -u root -p
mysql> SET GLOBAL sql_mode='';
mysql> CREATE DATABASE observiumdb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'observiumuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'y0uR-pa5sW0rd';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observiumdb.* TO 'observiumuser'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Remember to replace ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’ with a stronger password of your own.

Step 8: Creating a New Virtual Host

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. In our example, we will create a new Apache configuration file called ‘observium.conf’ in the VPS.

touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/observium.conf

vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf

Next, append the following lines into it:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/observium/html
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
 <FilesMatch \.php$>
 SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
 </FilesMatch>
 <Directory />
 Options FollowSymLinks
 AllowOverride None
 </Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/observium/html>
DirectoryIndex index.php
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Finally, delete the ‘000-default.conf’ file.

rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

Step 9: Restarting the Apache Web server

you need to restart The Apache web server for one more time so that the changes take effect.

service apache2 restart

Step 10: Create a config.php file

vi /var/www/html/observium/config.php

Append the following lines to the above.

<?php
$config[‘db_extension’] = ‘mysqli’;
 $config[‘db_host’] = ‘localhost’;
 $config[‘db_user’] = ‘observiumuser’;
 $config[‘db_pass’] = ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’;
 $config[‘db_name’] = ‘observiumdb’;
$config[‘snmp’][‘community’] = array(“public”);
 $config[‘auth_mechanism’] = “mysql”;

Then, execute the commands below to insert the default schema.

cd /var/www/html/observium/
php ./discovery.php -u

Step 11: Create a user account

Create a user account for admin using a level of 10.

./adduser.php admin <password> 10

Step 12: Proceed with the Observium installation in a Web Browser

Open the web browser of your choice, go to ‘http://your-domain.com’, then login with your newly created admin account.

./adduser.php admin <password> 10

Conclusion

I hope you have sucessfully installed Observium on your server.
Also, here we have a few hand-picked guides that you  must read next:

1. How to install NextCloud 13 on Debian package 9
2. How to Install Buildbot on Debian 9