How to install Cacti 0.7.8D plugin architecture on Ubuntu 9.10

Original Problem: My ISP is fast but they limit my monthly bandwidth.

Original Solution: Cacti is an excellent network monitoring tool, so I decided to use it along with its Threshold plugin to monitor my home network via my hacked WRT-54GL router (DD-WRT firmware) using SNMP and send me an e-mail alert if I overused bandwidth in the past 24 hours.

New Problem: The Cacti install went well on my VMWare Ubuntu 9.10 box, but getting the Plugin Architecture running to support the Threshold plugin was an 8-hour, red-eyed nightmare because of terrible documentation on how to do this on my particular setup.

New Solution: I ended up manually hacking the source code and tediously editing, testing, and repeating until it started working. I’m posting this mostly for my own reference because this was such a pain to set up, but I hope that it’s useful for you. If it doesn’t work on your setup, leave a comment below and I’ll help out as best as I’m able!

Note–I’m presuming your setup is the same as mine, which is:

Ubuntu 9.10 Apache2 PHP5 MySQL Cacti 0.7.8d If you haven’t installed Cacti yet, follow this step-by-step Cacti guide on UbuntuGeek.com.

Let’s get down to business:

1. Backup Cacti settings and database, just in case:

# cd /usr/share/cacti
# cp -R site site_backup
# mkdir database_backup
# mysqldump -u root -p cacti > database_backup/cacti.sql

Back it up again to your home folder (I mis-typed a command and deleted all my files accidentally at one point):

# exit
$ mkdir ~/cacti_backup
$ sudo cp -R ./* ~/cacti_backup

2. Patch the Plugin Architecture onto your Cacti install with this guide. Instead of downloading the version that he specifies, however, download this one, rename it to “patch.zip”, unzip it, and continue with the instructions in the guide.

3. From around line 201-205, comment out these lines like so:

//include_once($config["library_path"] . "/functions.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_constants.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_arrays.php");
//include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_settings.php");

4. From around lines 213-222, paste in the lines between “Start New Stuff” and “End New Stuff”:

/* include additional modules */
include_once($config["library_path"] . "/functions.php");
//Start New Stuff
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_constants.php");
include_once($config["library_path"] . "/plugins.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/plugins.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_arrays.php");
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_settings.php");
//End New Stuff
include_once($config["include_path"] . "/global_form.php");

And you should be good to go! I hope it helps, and if not, please post a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

PS: If you are still having problems with your install, try this older (but still relevant) guide.