    TITLE=Installation DESCRIPTION=installing remstats KEYWORDS=installation
    DOCTOP=index DOCPREV=required DOCNEXT=install-user SECTION=Installation

How to install remstats
    READ THE RELEASE NOTES FIRST. This page is generic and does NOT include
    version-specific instructions.

    I know that this is not simple. I do plan to make it simpler, but it'll
    never be ""./configure; make; make install"" because I don't know what
    you want to monitor.

    The two C programs (multiping and traceroute) now use autoconf, and the
    main configure script works (from the outside) simlarly to an
    autoconf-generated configure. I haven't seen a need to convert it to
    autoconf yet. It's mostly perl scripts and if you have the right version
    of perl properly installed, it shouldn't need anything special. The
    "unix-status-server" is a slight exception to this, but the only
    configuration needed so far is done dynamically and is only the location
    of the various required utilities.

    1 Unpack the distribution tarball:
                gunzip -dc remstats.tar.gz | tar xf -

    2 Create the remstats user and group, if you haven't already, (by
    default "remstats" and "remstats" respectively.) (See also the remstats
    user.) Unless you plan to run a separate instance of the webserver for
    remstats, you'll also want to create the webgroup group.
    3 Build and install the software. If you're upgrading, you might want to
    take a copy of fixup.config from the old version:
                sh configure

        If you want to override the defaults, then run

                sh configure --help

        for a list of what can be overridden.

        [Check fixup.config to make sure it is properly setup.]

                make all
                make upgrade
                make install
                su - 'make install-suid'

        Note: this step also customizes the programs and documentation with
        your choice of directories, owner, ... so this documentation should
        refer to your setup after you've done the install.

        The "make install-suid" simply makes traceroute and multiping suid
        root. They won't work most places unless run as root, one way or
        another. Since I don't like to run all of remstats as root, this was
        the best compromise I could come up with.

    4 Fix the config-base for site-specific things. Edit the following files
    in /home/remstats/etc/config-base, looking the the string "FIXME",
    without the "quotes".
                alerts general html scripts/http-proxy

        I'll try to keep this list up to date, but you can make sure by
        doing:

                grep -l FIXME /home/remstats/etc/config-base/* /home/remstats/etc/config-base/*/*

    5 Make a config-dir to describe what you want to monitor. You can do
    this by hand, or using the configuration building tools. To use the
    tools, you'll have to make a few files listing various kinds of hosts:
                cd /home/remstats/etc
                /home/remstats/bin/new-config config
                /home/remstats/bin/new-ping-hosts groupname1 group1-hosts-file
                /home/remstats/bin/new-ping-hosts groupname2 group2-hosts-file
                ...
                /home/remstats/bin/new-port-hosts groupname3 port-hosts-file
                /home/remstats/bin/new-snmp-hosts groupname4 SNMP-community-string snmp-hosts-file

        After you've installed the unix-status-server on some hosts, you can
        also use:

                /home/remstats/bin/new-unix-hosts groupname5 unix-hosts-file

        If you have any Windows NT hosts that you want to monitor, after you
        have installed the nt-status-server, you can run nt-discover to find
        and add the NT hosts for a given NT domain.

        If you're going to use the log-collector, you'll have to build the
        rrd entries for each by hand. There doesn't seem to be much standard
        in where log-files go, let alone what's in them.

    6 Arrange for cron to run run-remstats2 at an appropriate interval. For
    a five-minute interval, something like the following will do:
                0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * /home/remstats/bin/run-remstats2

        This checks the configuration, collects the new data, updates the
        rrds, runs the monitors to compute statuses and updates the
        web-pages. Note: it does not re-write the web-pages for every
        iteration; it only does so when configuration files have changed, as
        the web-pages will show new data by themselves. This and more are in
        the sample "crontab.new" file under "/home/remstats/etc".

    7 [optional] Arrange for cron to run "do-traceroutes" at an appropriate
    interval. You could run it in the wee hours of each morning like:
                5 3 * * * /home/remstats/bin/do-traceroutes

        This information isn't currently used, but I'm planning to make use
        of it.

    8 [optional] Arrange for cron to run snmpif-description-updater
    periodically, if you have any snmpif-* RRDs, which you're likely to
    change the descriptions on. Say every day, like:
                0 3 * * * /home/remstats/bin/snmpif-description-updater

    9 Arrange for cron to run remstats-cleanup every now and then to remove
    old un-needed files, like:
                0 3 * * * /home/remstats/bin/remstats-cleanup

        This removes no-longer-needed files, like old host graphs,
        traceroute results, log-files, ... It does not remove rrd and status
        files, on the principle that you might want them and they can't be
        re-created.

    10 You'll need to set up your web-server to allow CGI scripts in the
    remstats html tree and make sure that you're not allowing everyone in.
    11 Make a symlink in the html directory from whichever index you prefer
    to index.cgi.
    12 You'll want to look at the server installation docs if you're going
    to be running any of the remote servers ( log-server, nt-status-server,
    remoteping-server, and unix-status-server).

    Enjoy your pretty pictures and I hope that you find them usefull.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last updated Wed Nov 13 13:54:11 EST 2002 by <terskine@users.sourceforge.net>.

