How to Install and Configure Observium on Debian 9

We’ll show you how to install Observium on a Debian 9 server. Observium is a network monitoring software written in PHP. It is a cross-platform application and supports all popular operating systems, but this tutorial was written for Debian 9 OS. At the time of writing this tutorial, the latest stable version of Observium is 17.9, and it requires:

• PHP 5.6 or higher (preferably PHP 7.0), with mbstring, pear, mcrypt, JSON, mysqli and GD PHP extensions enabled. PHP 7.1 is not supported on the current community edition release.
• MySQL 5, MariaDB 5 or later
• Apache web server 2.2 or higher compiled with mod_rewrite module and AllowOverride set to ‘All’ (please note, the default setting for AllowOverride in Apache 2.3.9 and higher is ‘None’).

This install guide assumes that Apache and MySQL/MariaDB are already installed and configured on your virtual server.

Let’s start with the installation procedure.

1. Update the System Packages

Make sure your server Debian 9 OS packages are fully up-to-date:

apt-get update 
apt-get upgrade

2. Install the Required Packages

Install the required packages for Observium:

apt-get install php7.0-cli php7.0-mysql php7.0-mysqli php7.0-gd php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-json php-pear imagemagick snmp fping python-mysqldb subversion whois mtr-tiny ipmitool graphviz rrdtool

3. Enable Apache Rewrite Module

Enable Apache rewrite module if it is not already done so:

a2enmod rewrite

4. Restart Apache

Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart

5. Install Observium on Debian 9

Download the latest community version of Observium available at http://www.observium.org in the /opt/ directory on the server:

cd /opt/
wget http://www.observium.org/observium-community-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf observium-community-latest.tar.gz
mv observium /var/www/html/observium
mkdir -p /var/www/html/observium/rrd
        

6. Set Proper Ownership of Observium Files

All files have to be readable by the web server, so set a proper ownership:

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/observium

7. Create Database and User

Create a new MySQL database and user:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> SET GLOBAL sql_mode='';
mysql> CREATE DATABASE observiumdb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'observiumuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'y0uR-pa5sW0rd';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observiumdb.* TO 'observiumuser'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Do not forget to replace ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’ with a strong password.

8. Create a New Virtual Host

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘observium.conf’ on your virtual server:

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

Then, add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/observium/html
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
 <FilesMatch \.php$>
 SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
 </FilesMatch>
 <Directory />
 Options FollowSymLinks
 AllowOverride None
 </Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/observium/html>
DirectoryIndex index.php
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Remove the 000-default.conf file:

rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

9. Restart Apache Web Server

Restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart

10. Create a config.php File

vi /var/www/html/observium/config.php

Add the following lines:

<?php

$config[‘db_extension’] = ‘mysqli’;
$config[‘db_host’] = ‘localhost’;
$config[‘db_user’] = ‘observiumuser’;
$config[‘db_pass’] = ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’;
$config[‘db_name’] = ‘observiumdb’;

$config[‘snmp’][‘community’] = array(“public”);
$config[‘auth_mechanism’] = “mysql”;

Then, run the following commands to insert the default schema:

cd /var/www/html/observium/
php ./discovery.php -u

11. Create a user account

Create a user account, use level of 10 for admin .e.g.:

./adduser.php admin <password> 10

12. Continue Observium Installation in a Web Browser

Open http://your-domain.com in your favorite web browser and log in using the newly created admin account:

That is it. Observium has been installed on your server.

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Of course you don’t have to install Observium on Debian,  if you use one of our Outsourced Hosting Support services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Observium on a Debian 9 server, for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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