One last bit of unfinished business from yesterday's switch installation [1]—setting up Cacti [2] to monitor the network usage.
But I should know better than to use a package manager [3] to install required packages, but hey, I was a bit frazzled [4] at this point.
I know that Cacti requires the use of RRDTool [5], and knowing that just doing the straightforward yum install rrd would never work, I did the next best thing:
[root@netmon ~]# yum search rrd Searching Packages: Setting up repositories update 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 addons 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 Reading repository metadata in from local files gpg-pubkey.None 443e1821-421f218f installed Matched from: —–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—– Version: rpm-4.3.3 (beecrypt-3.0.0) mQGiBEIfIY8RBACIjFavOQNbs4bjTtOblq4X5/oxuTJtv41nfqSFNeUAQke0qoxxAUlBesWx DsOXp5VppgNEA07hGjPvzoxabLAsTccQplvHMNzmRezyukYrSTVR/F7gywpvlhaAFkL9jZxo dXzWKk2cmBLVWvuyzlLEUBeijm2amyEHcIGAczxPawCgmVcM9WpA6SOKivd9qTXK2XP+9BUD /2xV4OR4L7q8CSiaDMwPLo6P6D6VDc9LpVy16WmuiYPFJIcIpp309biKZhGZgd+gHDhld9EJ cZ3A2v43GY/xCdJqZ7Uh5QIGDafnil872AbMIBYpcOpvAshTM10S3Qj06pIQE47oONZT5A80 O/hn+Yd8ySCEswpbWCmtAxnciNw3A/0Qk/bKrhT6J9Um2JhMfxx/nB80mM+Jlsn58B8i4sjr IVdzc3b45Y2wbXN3uVGuvvAFolAco3cpVy3oY1wMVuh8UlJFNESmxZL/Z7BXyKhiKUZrNxEv Qt9OtD1Fd36ur8Ky8zFE5GL903Nx/dEVBvIDq2/2K3Wy9Yq3YIC0PW7fkrQlQ2VudE9TLTQg a2V5IDxjZW50b3MtNGtleUBjZW50b3Mub3JnPohfBBMRAgAfBQJCHyGPBQkSzAMABAsHAwID FQIDAxYCAQIeAQIXgAAKCRClPQurRD4YISH0AJ9zmx2JPGt8ELKo3aE0YoGg6EYipwCdH3kR VJHQtDeRs/5v5Ghn92XZS4KITAQTEQIADAUCQh8hxAWDEswCywAKCRA4whYWOWygpCumAJwO seF0mAV+j/0kGrKXf/FKboFScgCdEITVqtB1CCyn+q+IqnCmgEF8rYy5Ag0EQh8hqhAIAKwN u60J+AnfVjNk0eN26sKBQOHFVQX9M3bdNBVWruocb7dro6DG4daPVB66ZI9RqBusll0jz5nU hBO3GZ3rn/KLVhMO2uCtvdcwWYtY6188lO6lOm3aYadIqafcPPiiLnF3zm/E8hI/trbPpaoW 1dFBOiSlOY4bSpSCnTuHYd5fjYu77wQhnSsl19XfqwuvHQKW1vhXCaM2GrsLA5tgjLOlJhYJ 4yPY2LToyxoWC/JMMM0Vwi7BaVoa/G2uamC6sL5f6KXei5QftemUvw1uM/2fkLbuHtwETq6Z yUZlsL1H5K5G4h+GDVByBF6Y2P1csi7oXK13sdzhkewLaMjmah8ABAsH/3zhD0Gy1jlMs9dG KSi9kq3jcUE/4o3vvjOPbxqT9psJu0jMEAfUVCWX9BWgZXyE2u+nBxcYAnNyqdmQzs6wTgJW GeGKpyC1jIKtO888RpPShvXtt/aNF4LaoielWZY9xu5oYEhnmBoww3VTbVxFNaPjglZOWnTx WfysHwG0H/dnXMp1sJjfdNsiB7zNniRRurlIiy0xhQSkDLe4tUr9Q9u4ztZKbwVX/fBzJC/u 4Smi4VYx+HfOAP3OqzcGKNcb68GpIVo31RUQq1JqpPSM5U41kW8u+S5n+zhjZsb/Ix3ks18g I8wz5u5yzfGacqp65NLisqVeOKEf/MQ1xWytG4SITAQYEQIADAUCQh8hqgUJEswDAAAKCRCl PQurRD4YIXC1AKCF3t5xKJnEXJfgvhvldOzDIFjajwCgkX/MZI0O0SxYQAc2hEQJqCI/LJV= =Qsai —–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—– [root@netmon ~]#
What the—
Okay, try a more focused search:
[root@netmon ~]# yum search rrdtool Searching Packages: Setting up repositories Reading repository metadata in from local files No Matches found [root@netmon ~]#
Why did I even bother with the package manager?
So it's off to manually track down dependencies.
About an hour later, I finally get around to installing Cacti 0.8.6h (yes yes, I know they're up to 0.8.6i but I had the 0.8.6h tarball handy). It goes pretty smoothly, except that it's not generating any graphs. I run the cron job by hand, and yes, it's polling data from the network devices. Everything else is running smoothly.
Just no pretty pictures of network usage.
A few hours of pointless activity go by (I even inlist the help of Wlofie [6] to see if I may have overlooked something) when I check the instance of Cacti we're running at The Office against the one I installed. We're running 0.8.6g. I happen to have the tarball of that handy.
I install that.
It works. I get pretty pictures.
A blood vessel in my brain explodes.
I'm found lying in a pool of my own blood, dead.
Oh wait! This isn't for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) [7] …