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INTRODUCTION

Monitorix is a lightweight system monitoring tool that includes monitoring from the CPU load and temperatures to the users using the system. Network device activity, network services demand and even the devices interrupt activity are too monitorized. It uses the Apache web server to show the graphs.

This tool was designed primarily to be used on Linux servers, but of course you can use it on your laptop or even on your own Linux box at home.

Since March 2006, Monitorix can run too on FreeBSD systems. My special thanks to twenty4help Knowledge Service (http://www.twenty4help.com) and to Roger "Rocky" Vetterberg for their support, help and for to be a good friends during all the portability process.

I use Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core distributions, so this project has made it keeping in mind these distributions. It is possible you have some problems with other distributions. If so, contact with me. But since the 0.8.0 version, it should be easier to port Monitorix to other *NIX systems and/or to other Linux distributions.

For people coming from other distributions you can read into the file "monitorix.spec" in order to have an idea of where is needed to be installed each file. Some people may find this file useful.

Monitorix have a configuration file located in "/etc/monitorix.conf" to adapt your server to it. Every configuration option is commented in the same file, although for a complete description you can read the file "Configuration.help" included in the package.

NOTE

The configuration file is a Perl file where you set the value directly to the variables that Monitorix will use during its normal operation. So you must take special attention to not break some Perl basic syntax. I mean, every variable need to terminate with a semicolon ";".

Please, see the "Configuration.help" file.

From time to time I release new versions of Monitorix to fix bugs, support new HP/Compaq servers and to make enhancements. You can always find information about the latest version in the Monitorix Project web page:

http://www.monitorix.org

In case of bugs please contact to Jordi Sanfeliu <jordi@fibranet.cat>.

REQUIREMENTS

This package requires some others packages to be installed that maybe your Linux distribution does not comes with them:

rrdtool and perl-rrdtool

You can download it from lot of places:

        http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/packages.php
        http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/
        http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/

metamail

To be removed in near future, but needed right now only for monthly reports: You can search for it on http://www.rpmfind.net.

INSTALLATION UNDER REDHAT/FEDORA CORE LINUX

Once downloaded the RPM file, you can install it using:

rpm -ivh monitorix-n.n.n.noarch.rpm (where n.n.n is the current version)

This will install Monitorix on your system in this way:

/etc/cron.d/monitorix                   (is the shell-script based daemon,
                                         created on the fly)
/etc/init.d/monitorix                   (to start and stop monitorix)
/etc/httpd/conf.d/monitorix.conf        (for special httpd configurations)
/etc/monitorix.conf                     (configuration file)
/usr/sbin/monitorix.pl                  (main program called by daemon)
/usr/share/doc/monitorix-n.n.n          (documentation)
/var/lib/monitorix/reports/             (language reports)
/var/www/cgi-bin/monitorix.cgi          (first stage monitorix cgi)
/var/www/cgi.bin/monitorix/localhost.cgi        (second stage monitorix cgi)
/var/www/html/monitorix/                (html and images stuff of monitorix)

Once succesfully installed, you need to take some adaptations in the configuration file.

Once you finalize these modifications, you'll be able to start the Monitorix shell-script based daemon with:

service monitorix start

At this point, Monitorix will start to collect the system information, and you'll be able to see it from your favorite browser using:

http://localhost/monitorix

INSTALLATION UNDER A GENERIC UNIX/LINUX SYSTEM

Once downloaded the tar.gz file, you can install it using:

cd monitorix-n.n.n
./install.sh

NOTES AFTER INSTALLATION

If you are monitoring your system and you are redirecting output to /var/log/syslog, you may want to add the "cron.none" directive in /etc/syslog.conf, in order to avoid anoying messages from cron about Monitorix.
If your system is a Fedora Core 3 or subsequent, so you have probably SELinux enabled by default, it is possible your Monitorix graphs are not visible and you get lot of messages in dmesg and in /var/log/messages about access denied to the RRD database files. I dont know enough SELinux to adapt Monitorix to it, so in that case my only recommendation is to disable SELinux, adding the line "SELINUX=disabled" in /etc/selinux/config or with the kernel parameter "selinux=0".
If you stops the Monitorix service and after long time you restarts it, you may notice that your network graphs shows a simple line representing a subted very high load (an spike). This is because, although the cron has been stopped, the iptables chains continues processing the counting, and then when the cron restarts, Monitorix finds a value much greater than when it had stopped.
Check that the /var/log/httpd directory have enough read permissions for the user running the Apache server. In the newer Fedora Core versions this directory have the permissions restricted to only the root user.

AUTHORS

Monitorix is currently maintained by Jordi Sanfeliu <jordi@fibranet.cat>.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Monitorix is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See the include file "COPYING".