How to install SmokePing on CentOS 7
This tutorial explains how to install Tobias Oetiker’s Smokeping into /opt/smokeping on a CentOS 7 box.
Features of Smokeping:
– Best of breed latency visualisation.
– Interactive graph explorer.
– Wide range of latency measurement plugins.
– Master/Slave System for distributed measurement.
– Highly configurable alerting system.
– Live Latency Charts with the most ‘interesting’ graphs.
– Free and open-source Software written in Perl written by Tobi Oetiker, the creator of MRTG and RRDtool
Install Development Tools
Load the development tools needed to compile smokeping.
# yum groupinstall "Development tools"
Following applications are available with the CentOS Development tools yum group:
bison
byacc
cscope
ctags
cvs
diffstat
doxygen
flex
gcc
gcc-c++
gcc-gfortran
gettext
git
indent
intltool
libtool
patch
patchutils
rcs
redhat-rpm-config
rpm-build
subversion
swig
systemtap
There are also dependencies that will install with these tools.
Enable Epel repo
You can install EPEL by running yum install epel-release. The package is included in the CentOS extras repository, enabled by default.
# yum install epel-release
Install packages
Then install the following packages
perl
httpd
httpd-devel
rrdtool-perl
mod_fcgid
rrdtool
perl-CGI-SpeedyCGI
fping
perl-Sys-Syslog
# yum install perl httpd httpd-devel mod_fcgid rrdtool perl-CGI-SpeedyCGI fping rrdtool-perl perl-Sys-Syslog
Add a few of the pre packaged CPAN modules
# yum install perl-CPAN perl-local-lib perl-Time-HiRes
Install smokeping
Now download the latest smokeping package available at http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/pub/
The current version at the time of the writing is 2.6.11
# cd /root
# wget http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/pub/smokeping-2.6.11.tar.gz
then extract it
# tar xfz smokeping-2.6.11.tar.gz
Install perl modules needed by smokeping
# mkdir /opt/smokeping
# cd smokeping-2.6.11/setup
# ./build-perl-modules.sh
# cd ..
# cp -r thirdparty /opt/smokeping/
# ./configure --prefix=/opt/smokeping
# make install
Configure smokeping
Then you will need to configure smokeping. Find below our sample config in form of a screenshot or download a sample config here.
# vi /opt/smokeping/etc/config
Hint: 10.0.1.251 is the IP of the smokeping host himself.
Create your config from the default config delivered with smokeping and/or use our sample config.
# cd /opt/smokeping/etc
# cp config.dist config
# cp /opt/smokeping/etc/basepage.html.dist /opt/smokeping/etc/basepage.html
Create directories used by smokeping, copy some required files into the public web-directory and set rights for apache user if required.
# mkdir /opt/smokeping/data
# mkdir /opt/smokeping/var
# mkdir /var/www/smokeping
# mkdir /var/www/smokeping/cache
# cp -R /opt/smokeping/htdocs/* /var/www/smokeping
# mv /var/www/smokeping/smokeping.fcgi.dist /var/www/smokeping/smokeping.fcgi
# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/smokeping
Add a virtual apache directory by creating a file on /etc/httpd/conf.d/ with the name smokeping.conf. Add following content to it
Alias /smokeping "/var/www/smokeping"
<Directory /var/www/smokeping>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
DirectoryIndex smokeping.fcgi
</Directory>
Restart Apache
# service httpd restart
SELinux
This guide expects SELinux has to be disabled, read following article about disabling SELinux. In case you change your SELinux settings: Make sure you have rebooted your machine to apply the changes.
https://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Deployment_Guide/sec-sel-enable-disable.html
Hint: There are untested notes about SELinux within the comments section below.
Run smokeping
To test the installation, execute following command.
# cd /opt/smokeping
# ./bin/smokeping --config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config --debug
To daemonize smokeping, execute following command:
# cd /opt/smokeping
# ./bin/smokeping --config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config --logfile=smoke.log
Browse to: http://<your_ipaddress>/smokeping
For additional resources have a visit at the authors website:
– http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/
Special Hint:
In case your graphics for the last 3 hours didnt get updated but all the other timeframes are updated normaly, you may experience an error from the compiler. In this case please try to execute smokeping like this:
# perl /opt/smokeping/bin/smokeping --config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config --logfile=smoke.log
27 thoughts on “How to install SmokePing on CentOS 7”
Hi, great guide but getting a few issues. At the point of testing smokeping and running in debug i get following error:-
./bin/smokeping –config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config –debug
ERROR: /opt/smokeping/etc/config, line 10: Directory ‘/opt/smokeping/cache’ does not exist
I created the folder “mkdir /opt/smokeping/cache”
ran debug again and now get
./bin/smokeping –config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config –debug
ERROR: /opt/smokeping/etc/config, line 111: File ‘/opt/smokeping/etc/smokeping_secrets.dist’ is world-readable or writable, refusing it
Any help you can offer?
>ERROR: /opt/smokeping/etc/config, line 10: Directory ‘/opt/smokeping/cache’ does not exist
>I created the folder “mkdir /opt/smokeping/cache”
The creation of the cache directory should be covered by the guide, see: # mkdir /var/www/smokeping/cache
additionally you have to change the imgcache path within the config file.
>ERROR: /opt/smokeping/etc/config, line 111: File ‘/opt/smokeping/etc/smokeping_secrets.dist’ is world-readable or writable, refusing it
On our installation, the ACL of the /opt/smokeping/etc (and all files in this folder) look like this (user root, group root): drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 172 Jun 21 15:42 etc, probably you have different ACL settings if the file is world-readable or writable.
Ive changed perms to this
chmod o-rwx /opt/smokeping/etc/smokeping_secrets.dist
and seems to start but doesnt want to work on http://ip/smokeping or http://ip/smokeping.cgi
# chmod 600 /opt/smokeping/etc/smokeping_secrets.dist
Outstanding guide, Tom! Any advice on properly configuring SELinux for SmokePing?
Phil, for me disabling SELinux did the trick. I know that is not a good solution, but SELinux does appear to be interfering.
Thank you Austin
I’ve updated the article with a note to SELinux. I did not implement any SELinux policy, i’ve disabled SELinux as well because my system is installed internally in a protected environment. However, may you want to give following information a try, would be great if someone can leave a note if this works.
# wget http://blog.network-outsourcing.de/wp-content/uploads/smokeping_selinux.zip
# unzip smokeping_selinux.zip
# semodule -i smokeping.pp
Did as the article, but i even cant access the smokeping page. Can anyone please help?
Sorted out the previous issue, now it have some issues on the latency page.
ERROR: opening ‘/opt/smokeping/data/Local/Latency/LocalESX.rrd’: No such file or directory
‘DEF:median1=/opt/smokeping/data/Local/Latency/LocalESX.rrd:median:AVERAGE’
‘DEF:loss1=/opt/smokeping/data/Local/Latency/LocalESX.rrd:loss:AVERAGE’
‘CDEF:ploss1=loss1,20,/,100,*’
‘CDEF:dm1=median1,0,100000,LIMIT’
Everything working fine, Thanks for the share of knowledge.
God bless Tom.
rrd is created but graph is not generated i changed the file ownership of RRd to apache as well still no graph anywhere to look.
I have configured Smokeping, but while entering IP-Address/smokeping/ am getting guest user only. Can you please help me to fix this case
Do you want to protect your smokeping directory? What is your goal?
No, actually i have installed smokeping , but i am unable to get admin portal for adding the Hosts , please check this URL://103.199.160.109/smokeping. How can i create admin user and add hosts
Please read the section of “Configure smokeping” carefully once again.
Great tutorial, very concise and easy to follow.
I was just wondering if it was possible to run smokeping as a service? In case the machine loses power it should be able to run the service on boot and continue the daemon.
Thanks!
Add the command to launch smokeping to your /etc/rc.local:
# echo "cd /opt/smokeping; ./bin/smokeping --config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config --logfile=smoke.log" >> /etc/rc.localAfterwards make /etc/rc.local executable:
# chmod +x /etc/rc.localWorked like a charm. Thanks for the help Tom!
I am getting bellow error,please help to resolve it.
ERROR: alert startloss (/opt/smokeping/data/Local/LocalMachine) is not defined
Information from here:
https://github.com/oetiker/SmokePing/issues/77
Can you try to launch smokeping this way?
# perl /opt/smokeping/bin/smokeping --config=/opt/smokeping/etc/config --logfile=/opt/smokeping/smoke.log --debugEverything seemed to work fine for me (with the additional steps in the comments) however, when I use my servername.com/smokeping.cgi it just loads the home page of my server.
I am also trying to integrate this into LibreNMS, has anyone done this before?
chmod 600 smokeping_secrets.dist
How can i add other hosts.
just enable epel repo and:
yum install smokeping
you missed “yum install perl-core”
ERROR: /opt/smokeping/etc/config, line 2: no variables are allowed
Centos 7 – I’ve followed the guide to a T, multiple times. Each time when I get to the end and run the smokeping script I get that error. Any suggestions?
Hi master,
Do you know why into directory of 2.7.3 version dont have setup directory with the script: build-perl-modules.sh and sdbs.inc file after selfextract ?
Hi thanks your tutorial, it seems i’ve same issued as above, but different matter.
here is the error:
Alert “someloss”: no match for target /var/www/html/smokeping/data/Local/Latency/Gateway1
thanks,
BR.
Amri