LibreNMS

Shutdown the NetMon VM by following command as root

shutdown -now

start the libreNMS VM as you will install LibreNMS in a seperate VM as recomended.

Installation

NOTE: These instructions assume you are the root user. If you are not, prepend sudo to the shell commands

Installing LibreNMS

First install required packages.

apt-get install apache2 composer fping git graphviz imagemagick libapache2-mod-php7.0 mariadb-client mariadb-server mtr-tiny nmap php7.0-cli php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-snmp php7.0-xml php7.0-zip python-memcache python-mysqldb rrdtool snmp snmpd whois

give <class password> as databse root password.

Add librenms user and user's home directory

useradd librenms -d /opt/librenms -M -r
usermod -a -G librenms www-data

Install LibreNMS

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/librenms/librenms.git librenms

Database Configuration

Configure MySQL

systemctl restart mysql
mysql -u root -p

Create librenms database and librenms database user. grant all privileges to the created user.

CREATE DATABASE librenms CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'librenms'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<class password>';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON librenms.* TO 'librenms'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

exit mysql

exit

We need to change some mysql server settings. To do that edit 50-server.cnf file

vi /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

Add the following llines within the [mysqld] section

innodb_file_per_table=1
sql-mode=""
lower_case_table_names=0

Restart the mysql server

systemctl restart mysql

Web server Configuration

Configure PHP

To set the correct time zone edit php.ini

vi /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

Find the line ;date.timezone and change the line as follows

date.timezone = Asia/Colombo

Do the same to the vi /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini

Enable php modules in apache

a2enmod php7.0
a2dismod mpm_event
a2enmod mpm_prefork
phpenmod mcrypt

Configure Apache

Create librenms.conf to enable the site

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

Add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /opt/librenms/html/
  CustomLog /opt/librenms/logs/access_log combined
  ErrorLog /opt/librenms/logs/error_log
  AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
  <Directory "/opt/librenms/html/">
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Enable the librenms site and restart apache server

a2ensite librenms
a2enmod rewrite
a2dissite 000-default
systemctl restart apache2

Configure snmpd

Create the snmpd configuration file

cp /opt/librenms/snmpd.conf.example /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Edit the text which says RANDOMSTRINGGOESHERE and set your own community string.

Install the libreNMS agent and restart snmpd

curl -o /usr/bin/distro https://raw.githubusercontent.com/librenms/librenms-agent/master/snmp/distro
chmod +x /usr/bin/distro
systemctl restart snmpd

Cron job

cp /opt/librenms/librenms.nonroot.cron /etc/cron.d/librenms

Copy logrotate config

LibreNMS keeps logs in /opt/librenms/logs. Over time these can become large and be rotated out. To rotate out the old logs you can use the provided logrotate config file:

cp /opt/librenms/misc/librenms.logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/librenms

Set permissions

chown -R librenms:librenms /opt/librenms
setfacl -d -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs
setfacl -R -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs

Web Installer

You can choose either a web configuration or manual configuration at the command line. We're going to use the Web installer, which is by far the easiest, but we'll include the manual configuration as a reference at the end of this document.

At this stage you can launch the web installer by going to ​http://<your ip address>/install.php

Follow the onscreen instructions.

Stage 0 is a summary of the PHP modules installed, normally you should just click on Next Stage

Stage 1 prompts you for the database settings. Enter

• DB Host: localhost

• DB User: librenms

• DB Pass: <CLASS_PASSWORD>

• DB Name: librenms

Stage 2 is the DB creating itself - it should finish correctly, and you simply click on Goto Add User at the bottom

Stage 3: enter following username, Password and e-mail address. This will become the login you use to access the web interface.

• Username : admin
• Password : < class password >
• e-mail address : <your e-mailaddress>

Stage 4 should show you the successful user creation, click on Generate Config. It will show you the config file. Copy all the content and create the config.php file and paste the content in the file.

vi /opt/librenms/config.php 

Click Next

Stage 5: the interface should show, at this point:

The config file has been created

You can now click 'Finish install'.

Configuring LibreNMS

Setting the SNMP community

Let's change the SNMP community that LibreNMS will try when discovering and adding new devices.

First edit the file /opt/librenms/config.php,

# vi /opt/librenms/config.php

and find the line:

$config['snmp']['community'] = array("public");

And change it to:

$config['snmp']['community'] = array("<class password>");

Allowed Subnets

Tell LibreNMS which subnets it's allowed to scan automatically

By default, LibreNMS will try ask for the list of “neighbors” that network devices "see" on the network. This is done using the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) or Cisco's CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol).

But to be on the safe side, and not scan networks outside your organization, LibreNMS needs to be told which subnets it's allowed to scan for new devices.

Still in the file /opt/librenms/config.php, find the line:

#$config['nets'][] = "10.0.0.0/8";

And replace this with the following to scan our specific subnets in use by our network and the workshop infrastructure.

$config['nets'][] = "192.248.6.0/23";

Avoid Duplicate devices

We need to make one more change...

Tell LibreNMS not to add duplicate devices

To avoid making duplicate devices, add the following line at the bottom of the config.php file:

$config['allow_duplicate_sysName'] = false;

Discovery Method

By default system don't add devices by IP address, we look for a reverse dns name to be found and add with that. If this fails and you would like to still add devices automatically then you will need to set following.

$config['discovery_by_ip'] = true;

Finaly we have to define the discovery method. Here we will use ARP to discover devices. to do that add the following line

$config['discovery_modules']['discovery-arp'] = 1;

After you've added the above setting, save the file and exit - we’re nearly done!

Add a host

Let's add localhost (i.e.: YOUR virtual server), using the following commands. you can do this from the Web interface:

# cd /opt/librenms
# php addhost.php localhost <class password> v2c

You should see:

Added device localhost (1)

Notice we explicitly tell LibreNMS which SNMP community to use. We also assume it's SNMP v2c. If you're using v3, there are additional steps which aren't provided here.

Final Configuration

Discover and Poll newly added hosts

LibreNMS first “discovers” each host that has been added. This means that it methodically examines each host you added and figures out what it should monitor. The discover.php script does not automatically scan your network to find new devices. To run this script do:

# cd /opt/librenms
# sudo -u librenms php discovery.php -h all

NOTE: This could take some time. If you try to add devices that do not yet have an snmp service configured, then the discovery script takes a while to time out.

Once this has finished you can now "poll" the hosts. This means LibreNMS now knows what it wishes to monitor for each host, but it has yet to populate its database with initial values for each item. To do this we do:

# sudo -u librenms php poller.php -h all

As you can see the poller.php script does quite a bit with just a few devices. When we add it to a cronjob below this helps explain why LibreNMS is a resource intensive tool.

Create cronjob

Create the cronjob which will run periodic tasks required by LibreNMS:

# cd /opt/librenms
# cp librenms.nonroot.cron /etc/cron.d/librenms

One last thing: edit the file /etc/cron.d/librenms ...

# editor /etc/cron.d/librenms

...and find the line:

*/5  * * * *  librenms  /opt/librenms/cronic /opt/librenms/poller-wrapper.py 16

And change the 16 at the end to 4 (we have a single processor, and 4 threads is plenty)

*/5  * * * *  librenms  /opt/librenms/cronic /opt/librenms/poller-wrapper.py 4

Save, and exit.