How to Install Observium on Ubuntu 20.04

In this article, we’ll explain how to install Observium on Ubuntu 20.04.

Observium is an auto-discovering network monitoring platform supporting a wide range of hardware platforms and operating systems including Cisco, Windows, Linux, HP, Juniper, Dell, FreeBSD, F5, Brocade, Citrix Netscaler, NetApp and many more. Being a PHP-based platform, it offers an easy-to-use web interface to allow you to monitor the network devices.

Prerequisites

• Installed Ubuntu 20.04 dedicated server or KVM VPS.
• A root user access or normal user with administrative privileges.

Install Observium on Ubuntu

1. Keep the server updated

# apt update -y

2. Install PHP and Dependencies

# apt install libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-mysql php7.4-gd php7.4-json php7.4-bcmath php7.4-mbstring php7.4-opcache php7.4-curl php-apcu php-pear snmp fping rrdtool whois mysql-server mysql-client subversion mtr-tiny ipmitool graphviz imagemagick apache2 python3-mysqldb python3-pymysql python-is-python3 -y

3. Create the MySQL database and user

Run following commands to create database and user also grant privileges to the user.

# mysql -u root -p

 

CREATE DATABASE observium DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observium.* TO ‘observium’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘’;

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

exit

4. Download, Install, and Configure Observium

Download Observium

First, create a directory for Observium to live in:

# mkdir -p /opt/observium && cd /opt

Change the permissions of the directory.

# chown -R observium:observium /opt/observium/

# chmod -R 775 /opt/observium/

Here we are installing Observium community edition.

# wget http://www.observium.org/observium-community-latest.tar.gz

Extract it using following command:

# tar zxvf observium-community-latest.tar.gz

Configure Observium

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 the file for your system.

# vim config.php

Modify the file as shown bellow:

$config[‘db_user’] = ‘observium’;
$config[‘db_pass’] = ‘’;

Save and exit.

Create required directories

Create the directory Observium will store its logs in:

# mkdir /opt/observium/{rrd,logs}

Insert the default MySQL database schema.

# ./discovery.php -u

5. Configure Apache

Remove the default Apache configuration file.

# rm -rf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf && rm -rf /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Create new Apache configuration file for Observium

# vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf

Add following content:

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /opt/observium/html

    
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
    

    
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    

    
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    

    ErrorLog  ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog  ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
    ServerSignature On

Save and exit.

Create symbolic link to enable the configuration file using following command:

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

Restart the Apache service

# systemctl restart apache2

Disable mpm_event module.

# a2dismod mpm_event

Enable mpm_prefork module.

# a2enmod mpm_prefork

Enable mod_rewrite.

# a2enmod rewrite

Restart the Apache service.

# apache2ctl restart

6. Create Admin Account

Add and initial user with level of 10 for admin. Modify the AdminPassword value with your own secure password.

# ./adduser.php admin Admin@Pass 10

Create a new file /etc/cron.d/observium to add cron jobs.

# nano /etc/cron.d/observium

Add the following contents:

# Run a complete discovery of all devices once every 6 hours
33  */6   * * *   root    /opt/observium/discovery.php -h all >> /dev/null 2>&1

# Run automated discovery of newly added devices every 5 minutes
*/5 *     * * *   root    /opt/observium/discovery.php -h new >> /dev/null 2>&1

# Run multithreaded poller wrapper every 5 minutes
*/5 *     * * *   root    /opt/observium/poller-wrapper.py >> /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

That’s it we have successfully installed and configured Observium on Ubuntu 20.04

Now, navigate to your browser and access Observium web interface using server IP. http://192.1.1.15/ and login with the admin user and password we have created earlier.

In this article, we have explained how to install Observium on Ubuntu 20.04.