NETDISCO - Network Management Tool Overview Features User Guide Install Upgrade Register

NAME

Netdisco INSTALL -- Instructions for setting up the Netdisco application.

VERSION

Netdisco 1.1

AUTHOR

Developed by team of Open Source authors headed by Eric Miller, Bill Fenner, and Oliver Gorwits, originally created by Max Baker. See list at the end of README of all the contributors.

Netdisco was created at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), Networking and Technology Services (NTS) department. UCSC continues to support the development of Netdisco by providing development servers and beer.

The Netdisco project is hosted by Source Forge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/netdisco and https://sourceforge.net/projects/snmp-info.

SUPPORT

Netdisco is an Open Source project created and maintained by volunteer developers.

Please use the netdisco-users mailing list for all help, problems and comments. Developers, patches, and ideas are always welcome.

In Case of Problems

In case of problems, the first thing you should do is search for answers on the mailing list at http://sourceforge.net/search/.

To ask a Question

To subscribe to the netdisco-users mailing list to ask questions go to http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/netdisco-users.

To report a bug

To report bugs, please use the Bug tracker on the Netdisco Source Forge project page at https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?group_id=80033&atid=558508

To become a developer

If you would like to help develop Netdisco, or have code to contribute, please submit your code to the patches tracker at https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?group_id=80033&atid=558510 and join us on the netdisco-devel mailing list.

To register your install of Netdisco

The developers are now maintaining a registry of Netdisco installs. This is mainly for morale boosting purposes, but also helps us direct feature requests to our target audience. One drawback of the Source Forge system is that we have no idea how many people are using the software compared to the number of downloads. So after you have Netdisco up and running please spend a minute to let us know you're using it at http://netdisco.org/register.html.

INSTALL FLAVORS

There are three general flavors of installs out there for Netdisco:

From Source

The most common way is to install it from source on your machine using an install script (see bin/install and http://www.auburn.edu/~gouldwp/netdisco/), or manually using this document.

From Package

Netdisco is available as a package / port on a few flavors of Linux and BSD. Check your favorite package repository first before going to the trouble of installing it manually.

Virtual Machine / VMWARE Applicance

Charles Goldsmith maintains a VMWARE Appliance version of Netdisco at http://wokka.org/netdisco/. This is by far the easiest way to get up and running w/ Netdisco.

REQUIREMENTS

Netdisco is built using lots of fine Open-Source tools:

See INSTALL below for details on how to retrieve and install each prerequisite.

OS

Netdisco was developed on a FreeBSD system but should work on any system that Postgres, Perl, Apache, and Net-SNMP run on.

Linux is a sure bet. Successful installs have been reported under Redhat, Mandrivia, Gentoo and Debian. A beta RPM is available for Mandrivia, but may be out of date. One user has reported getting Netdisco running on OS X. Solaris has been successful for 8 and 10. Windows will take a lot of massaging but should be possible under Cygwin.

See OS Specific Notes below for details.

UPGRADE

If you are upgrading your copy of Netdisco, please read through this file and then read the UPGRADE document in this directory.

INSTALL

This is not a terribly easy install. If you aren't comfortable installing programs from source and using a text editor, get some help. Some packaged versions of Netdisco are available.

1. Download Netdisco

Get the newest version from http://www.netdisco.org.

[1.1] Unarchive Netdisco
    tar xvfz netdisco-x.xx_with_mibs.tar.gz
[1.2] Create a directory for Netdisco and move the files into that dir
    mkdir /usr/local/netdisco
    mv netdisco-x.xx/* /usr/local/netdisco
[1.3] Non-Standard install Directory

If you plan to install to a directory other than /usr/local/netdisco then you must change a couple files. Otherwise Skip down to Number 2.

[1.3.1] Shell Scripts

The following shell scripts require you specify the Netdisco directory if it is not in the default location:

    sql/pg -d /path/to/netdisco
    bin/netdisco_daemon
[1.3.2] netdisco.conf

Set the home option in netdisco.conf.

[1.3.3] netdisco_apache.conf

Change all the appearances of /usr/local/netdisco in netdisco_apache.conf to match your new directory.

[1.3.4] netdisco_apache_dir.conf

Change all the appearances of /usr/local/netdisco in netdisco_apache_dir.conf to match your new directory.

2. Create a Unix User/Group for Netdisco

[2.1] Create a user and group named netdisco

Linux:

    useradd -d /usr/local/netdisco netdisco

BSD:

    adduser netdisco
[2.2] User Permissions

Give this user permission to the installed files

    chown -R netdisco.netdisco /usr/local/netdisco

3. Add Unix Administrators to Netdisco Group

Once Netdisco is up and running most administration can be done from the Web interface. Whoever will be doing the back-end administration will need to have write access and will need write access on Netdisco's files.

Add the unix account names of administrators that will modify the source code or use the command line interface interface to the netdisco group in /etc/group.

Don't forget to logout and login after adding yourself to a group.

4. Postgres

Netdisco runs Postgres SQL as its database back-end.

[4.1] Install Postgres

See the section OS Specific Notes below for any notes relating to your operating system of for a binary version.

There is probably a binary package all ready for you. See your distribution's instructions for more help.

If you cannot use a binary package, download and compile the source code from http://www.postgresql.org.

If you are installing Postgres from source you may have to run these two commands in order to install the DBD::Pg Perl module later on :

    export POSTGRES_INCLUDE=/usr/local/postgres/include
    export POSTGRES_LIB=/usr/local/postgres/lib

You may also have to modify your /etc/ld.so.conf to include your new POSTGRES_LIB directory. Don't forget to run ldconf afterwards.

[4.2] Configure Postgres

Netdisco's settings in Postgres are

 Database User     : netdisco
 Database Name     : netdisco
 Database Password : you choose it

Edit netdisco.conf and netdisco_apache.conf to match this user name and password.

Follow these steps to setup Netdisco in Postgres.

[4.3] Permissions

If you have just setup Postgres for the first time you may have to change the default permissions in $PG_DATA/pg_hba.conf. $PG_DATA might be in /usr/local/pgsql or in /var/db, depends on your OS. Check the postgres users' homedir files for the location of $PG_DATA.

For installation you must give the database user access to the template1 database. The following line will give all users who have logon permissions in Unix access to the template1 database.

    local template1 all ident

Restart Postgres. If you have permission problems try the following line which opens up access to all users.

    local template1 all all

Next you must give the netdisco database user access to the netdisco database. The following line will give all database users access to a database that is the same name as them. This line must be put above all the rest of the uncommented lines in the pg_hba.conf file to take precedence.

    local sameuser all md5

For older 7.3 or 7.4 installs of Postgres you may have to swap md5 for crypt. Upgrade. Please.

Finally if you would like to have root be able to access all databases, try this one :

    local all root trust
[4.4] Restart Postgres

You must now restart Postgres

Linux : one of these three

    /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql restart
    service postgresql restart
    /etc/rc.d/postgresql restart

FreeBSD :

    /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*pgsql* restart

If there are problems with this step you will receive an error that mentions something about pg_hba.conf.

[4.5] Create Database.

Make sure Postgres is up and running.

The pg command use netdisco.conf to find the database user name and password. Make sure that the database user name and password are set.

As root, run sql/pg --init to create the database and user for Netdisco.

When you are prompted for a password, enter the new password for the database user you are creating. This is the same password you set in netdisco_apache.conf and in netdisco.conf. The pg command has additional options shown in pg --help

    cd /usr/local/netdisco/sql
    ./pg --help
    ./pg --init

If you get permissions errors, find out the name of your database user. This is the unix user that the Postgres database is running as. The default name for some Linux RPM versions is postgres and for some BSD installations pgsql. If yours is different, please specify it with the -u option to sql/pg.

[4.6] Check Settings

Now as a non-privileged user (root) make sure you can get into the database by running sql/pg. The database user password given above will be retrieved from netdisco.conf.

    cd /usr/local/netdisco/sql
    ./pg

You should see output similar to the below:

    Welcome to psql 8.0.6, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
    Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
           \h for help with SQL commands
           \? for help with psql commands
           \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
           \q to quit
    netdisco=>
    netdisco=> \q
[4.7] Optimizations

If you have freshly installed Postgres then the default memory usage NEEDS to be increased for efficiency. See the Postgres documentation for postgresql.conf. Newer versions may have options to turn on for automatic tuning.

Specifically, you really need to up the maximum connections and shared memory settings. After you have Netdisco running on a large installation it would be of great benefit to get a Postgres guru in there to tune things for you. See README for more info about how to speed things up now and again.

See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/kernel-resources.html for kernel settings related to Postgres that you should check.

[4.8] Postgres Startup

Make sure that Postgres is set to start on reboot of the server.

Linux
    chkconfig postgresql on
BSD

Make sure that the file in /usr/local/etc/rc.d is alright and you have added

    postgresql_enable="YES"

to /etc/rc.conf.

[4.9] Postgres Maintenance

Read the section in README about Database Maintenance... every once in a while you may have to run a VACUUM and REINDEX by hand if things get too slow. This appears to be less necessary in Postgres 8.0 and up.

[4.10] Remote Database (Optional)

If you have Postgres installed in a remote location then all you have to do is add that host information to the db_Pg line in netdisco.conf.

    db_Pg = dbi:Pg:dbname=netdisco;host=HOSTNAME;port=PORT;

On the Postgres machine, allow your remote front end to contact the back-end database. Here is a sample line in pg_hba.conf.

 #TYPE  DATABASE          USER            IP-ADDRESS              IP-MASK           METHOD
 host   netdisco        netdisco         101.102.103.104         255.255.255.0       md5

Don't forget to restart Postgres after changing the pg_hba.conf file.

5. SNMP

There are three components to set up for SNMP:

5.1. Net-SNMP

Net-SNMP lives at http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net.

There are two known bad versions: 5.2.3 and 5.3.1 !

Please use the older working versions 5.2.2 or 5.3.0.1, or try the newer 5.2.4, 5.3.2 or 5.4 when they're available. See http://www.net-snmp.org/dev/schedule.html for release schedule plans. You can also use a nightly version from the appropriate patch branch, from http://www.net-snmp.org/nightly/tarballs/.

The symptom of the failure is getting an error Not an ARRAY reference at SNMP/Info.pm line xxx.

A workaround if you must use a buggy Net-SNMP version is to use SNMPv1 or turn off bulkwalk with bulkwalk_off: yes -- but the best thing to do is change your Net-SNMP version.

You can update the perl SNMP module seperately from the libraries and binaries, using CPAN. As of this writing, the current module on CPAN is 5.0301002 which does not have this bug. Only try to use this module with a matching Net-SNMP version - i.e., if you get a warning like this when you try to install:

        ERROR:
        Net-SNMP installed version: 5.2.3 => 5.0203
        Perl Module Version:        5.0301

then please try a different method.

[5.1.0] Binary Install

Check the Net-SNMP page for binaries and see OS Specific Notes below for details.

[5.1.1] Source Install

Download Net-SNMP from http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net

This used to be called ucd-snmp. However, don't download ucd-snmp; it is too old.

[5.1.2] Install Net-SNMP to include Perl module that comes inside the distribution.

When you run ./configure, make sure you add the switch --with-perl-modules

    ./configure --with-perl-modules --enable-shared
    make
    make install

If you already have Net-SNMP installed, then go to the source directory and in the perl subdirectory and run perl Makefile.PL

    cd /path/to/net-snmp-5.1.x/perl
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make install
 ********************************************************************

DO NOT INSTALL the SNMP:: or Net::SNMP modules off of CPAN. These modules are not related to Net-SNMP and are not compatible with Netdisco.

 ********************************************************************
[5.1.3] Configure Net-SNMP for a non-standard setup (Optional)

You probably will not have to do this step unless you have installed Net-SNMP somewhere other than /usr/local/ or have some specific SNMP defaults to change for these tools. Usually the settings in netdisco.conf are more than enough.

    snmpconf

Make sure to set the MIB dir if non-standard or you are not using the MIBS that come with Netdisco.

 (Textual mib Parsing -> Specifies directories to be searched for mibs)

Make sure this newly created snmp.conf lives in /usr/local/share/snmp or wherever you put a custom install.

5.2. SNMP::Info

SNMP::Info is one half of the Netdisco application.

SNMP::Info holds all the device-specific code to retrieve data from network devices via SNMP. A wide variety of devices are supported. You may need to add support for other devices if they do not follow a standard interface. This is not too complex. See SNMP::Info and consult the mailing list archives for more details.

SNMP::Info is available from http://snmp-info.sourceforge.net and from CPAN. You must have Net-SNMP installed before installing it.

You have four different options in installing SNMP::Info

[5.2.1] CPAN
    perl -MCPAN -e shell
        o conf prerequisites_policy ask
        install SNMP::Info
[5.2.2] From Source

Download newest version from http://snmp-info.sourceforge.net

    tar xvfz SNMP-Info-1.x.tar.gz
    cd SNMP-Info-1.x
    perl Makefile.PL
    make install
[5.2.3] From CVS

If you plan to add or change device support in SNMP::Info to customize Netdisco to your devices, you should install SNMP::Info this way.

    make snmp

This will create the SNMP/ directory where SNMP::Info will live. Periodically you should re-run

    make snmp

To update to the most current CVS version.

[5.2.4] From Package

See OS Specific Notes below for details.

5.3. MIBs

MIBs that are required for SNMP::Info are included with Netdisco in the mibs/ directory if you installed the netdisco-1.0_with_mibs package.

If you installed the netdisco package without included MIB files, then please download the netdisco-mibs package from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php. Place these files in /usr/local/netdisco/mibs.

6. GraphViz (Optional)

GraphViz is used to create the Network Map.

It lives at http://www.graphviz.org/.

[6.1] Download

Get the newest version from http://www.graphviz.org/pub/graphviz. Unarchive and install. Some binary versions are available.

[6.2] True Type Font

Copy a True Type Font file (.ttf) into the Netdisco directory and change node_font in netdisco.conf to match.

    cp /path/to/windows/fonts/lucon.ttf /usr/local/netdisco

You can grab arial.ttf or lucon.ttf out of the c:\windows\fonts directory of any Windows machine.

[6.3] Graph Settings

Review other graph settings in netdisco.conf. See README for details on the settings.

[6.4] Check Path

Make sure that neato or twopi is in your path, and in the path in netdisco.crontab.

    which twopi
    which neato

After the Perl Modules step below, make sure the Graphviz Perl module got installed

    perldoc GraphViz

NOTE: You can safely ignore all warnings about size too small for label.

7. Setup Apache

[7.1] Apache2

Using recent versions of Mason and mod_perl, Netdisco runs fine under Apache2.

[7.2] Apache1

It is strongly advised to use Apache2. Consider section 7.2 as historical.

See the O/S specific notes at the bottom of this document for a binary install or install Apache 1.3.x From Scratch:

Comment out the lines at the top of netdisco_apache.conf that are related to Apache2.

Install Apache 1.3.x and mod_perl 1.x and mod_ssl

Netdisco is designed to work in a secure (https) or non-secure environment. Due to the security and privacy concerned associated with this data, using a secure server is recommended.

Below is my method if you haven't installed apache and mod_perl before. I statically compile mod_perl, and mod_ssl then leave the rest of the modules as dynamically loadable objects (DSO).

[7.2.1] Download and Unarchive

Get Apache from http://httpd.apache.org

Get mod_perl from http://perl.apache.org

Get mod_ssl from http://www.modssl.org

Unarchive all three to the same directory, maybe /usr/local/src

[7.2.2] Inital Apache Setup

This step makes the framework that mod_ssl and mod_perl need.

 cd apache_1.3*
 ./configure

No need to make it yet.

[7.2.3] mod_ssl

Mod_SSL gives us a secure server (https) for Netdisco to run under.

The OpenSSL library is a prerequirement for mod_ssl and may or may not already be on your system. See OS Specific Notes at the bottom of this document.

To use a source version, you need to point the apache1 installer to the install. First follow the instructions in the INSTALL that comes with mod_ssl. Then use the command below:

 SSL_BASE=/path/to/openssl-0.9.x \
 ./configure \
    --with-apache=../apache_1.3.x \
    --disable_rule=SSL_COMPAT
[7.2.4] mod_perl

This step sets up mod_perl for this copy of apache :

 cd ../mod_perl-1.x
 /usr/local/bin/perl Makefile.PL \
        APACHE_SRC=../apache_1.3.x/src \
        EVERYTHING=1 \
        DO_HTTPD=1 \
        USE_APACI=1 \
        PREP_HTTPD=1 \
        PERL_SECTIONS=1
 make
[7.2.5] Apache Again

Now we're ready to make the main apache and install all of the above (mod_ssl, mod_perl, and Apache).

 cd ../apache_1.3*
 ./configure \
        --prefix=/usr/local/apache \
        --enable-module=most \
        --enable-shared=max \
        --activate-module=src/modules/perl/libperl.a \
        --with-perl=/usr/local/bin/perl \
        --enable-module=ssl
 make
 make certificate
 make install
[7.2.6] Install mod_perl
 cd ../mod_perl*
 make install
[7.3] Apache Configuration Files

Add the following lines in your httpd.conf.

Your httpd.conf will live in /usr/local/apache/conf if you installed using the method above. For system installed packages, try /etc/httpd or /usr/local/etc/httpd.

[7.3.1] In the Global Section

Add this line once in the end of httpd.conf not in a VirtualHost section.

    Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache.conf
[7.3.2] No virtualhosts

If you do not have virtual hosts setup and/or you have a main server, add this line right after the first include :

    Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf
[7.3.3] In each VirtualHost

If you have Virtual Hosts or are setting up a secure server, put the following line in each of them that you want Netdisco turned on for:

If you are not using Virtual Hosts, then add this line under the netdisco_apache.conf line.

    Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf

Make sure you have this include line for the secure server virtual host *:443 at the bottom of http.conf.

[7.4] Mason Data Directory

Set the Mason data directory writable to the apache user that does the requests.

Assuming nobody is the user that the apache web server runs under, run this command as root :

    mkdir /usr/local/netdisco/mason
    chown nobody.netdisco /usr/local/netdisco/mason

The name of the user is listed in httpd.conf under the User directive. Some distros use the name apache or www as the web server unix user.

8. Perl Modules

Below is a list of required modules for Netdisco, freely available from CPAN http://www.cpan.org. Many of these modules have prerequisite modules. Many of these are available in distros already as packages.

PLEASE check that you have these in package form first to allow for automatic updating of these dependency libraries. A good place to start is the Mason library.

[8.1] Install required Perl modules from CPAN

Use the CPAN module that comes with Perl to install the modules and their prerequisites automatically:

    perl -MCPAN -e shell
        o conf prerequisites_policy ask
        install Digest::MD5
        install Bundle::DBI
        install Apache::DBI
        install DBD::Pg
        install DB_File      (for Apache::Session)
        install Apache::Session
        install HTML::Entities
        install HTML::Mason
        install MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession
        install Graph        ( > 0.50 )
        install GraphViz     ( > 2.02 )
        install Compress::Zlib (probably already have this one)
        install Parallel::ForkManager
        install Net::NBName (optional for NetBIOS lookup on devices)
        install Net::LDAP (optional for LDAP authentication)
        install Net::SSLeay (optional for encrypted LDAP authentication)
        install IO::Socket::SSL (optional for encrypted LDAP authentication)

For Apache1 install these modules:

        install Apache::Test (for Apache::Request, you may need to do a 'force install')
        install Apache::Request

For Apache2 install this module:

        install Apache2::Request

Some of these you will probably already have installed. Others you may need to force with force install ModuleName. Do Not include the comments in (parens)!

[8.2] Non-Standard Perl Location

If you don't have Perl installed in /usr/bin, you will need to modify the first lines of netdisco and bin/doc_munge to point to the version of Perl you would like to use.

9. Netdisco Configuration

[9.1] netdisco.conf

Modify netdisco.conf to match your site.

See README for detailed configuration descriptions.

[9.2] netdisco_apache.conf

Change the follow lines in netdisco_apache.conf to match your database user name and password that you picked in step 4.2:

    session_user_name
    session_password
    session_cookie_domain
[9.3] netdisco.crontab

Use this crontab to control the frequency of data collection done by Netdisco. See section 15 of this document for details.

Change center_network_device to a network device that is well connected to the main segment by a supported discovery protocol (CDP/FDP/SONMP/LLDP).

[9.4] Add a web user in Netdisco

Add a user to the Netdisco application that will be the administrator account.

    /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco -u joebob

Add more users from the web Admin Panel once Netdisco is up and running.

[9.5] Make Documentation (CVS Versions Only)

This step is only necessary if you have installed from CVS.

i. Perl Location

Make sure that the POD2TEXT lines in Makefile point to where your Perl binaries are installed.

ii. Create Docs

This step will create documentation files from the source .pod, .pm, and .pl files.

 cd /usr/local/netdisco && gmake doc

Run this step if you would like the SNMP::Info documentation available from Netdisco.

[9.6] Change Permissions on Config files

Since the config files contain SNMP community strings and database passwords, you must make them only available to the administrators for security.

 chgrp netdisco /usr/local/netdisco/*.conf
 chmod 660 /usr/local/netdisco/*.conf

10. OUI Database

The Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) database allows Netdisco to identify the manufacture of a network card using the first 24 bits of the MAC address.

Run the following command to import the contents of oui.txt into your database.

    cd /usr/local/netdisco
    netdisco -O

If you run into errors because of UTF-8 or other exotic characters in oui.txt you may need to add this line to netdisco.conf.

    db_Pg_env = PGCLIENTENCODING => iso8859-1

You may also try changing the above from iso8859-1 to UTF-8.

[10.1] Updating oui.txt (Optional)

The database of OUIs is needed by Netdisco and is available from the IEEE.

This will use wget to download oui.txt from the IEEE and import it into the Netdisco database.

    cd /usr/local/netdisco
    gmake oui

If you do not have wget download oui.txt manually and run netdisco -O.

11. Restart Apache

Now that you have everything setup, "cold" restart the web-server.

    apachectl stop
    apachectl start

Check the apache error_log for errors. See OS Specific Notes below for details.

12. Discover a Device in Netdisco

Pick a device that you can access with the command snmpwalk. Tell Netdisco to discover that device:

    cd /usr/local/netdisco
    ./netdisco -d devicename

Make sure that this step actually works. This is a good metric that you have now installed Netdisco correctly. Add the -D flag to get copious debugging info.

13. Create Network Topology

See README for a description of Topology Information.

If your network uses a supported topology discovery protocol (CDP/FDP/SONMP/LLDP) pick a device that you consider close to the center of the network and start an auto-discovery from there:

    cd /usr/local/netdisco
    ./netdisco -r myrouter

If your network is not CDP friendly, then see README for how to use the manual topology file netdisco-topology.txt.

You MUST supply Netdisco with a working topology or MAC addresses will show up on uplink ports instead of end ports.

14. Test Web Side

First restart Apache so that Netdisco will see the changes that you have made in netdisco.conf. Note that a graceful restart will not re-read the configuration file. A full restart is required. See Step 11.

Next, point a browser to /netdisco on the server you have Netdisco installed on.

    http://localhost/netdisco

If everything is working you should be able to login with the user name and password you added in Step 9.4. You should also be able to access the Admin Panel.

If you have problems, check the error_log of apache for messages.

    tail /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

15. Add Cron Jobs

Once you're sure Netdisco is setup correctly, modify netdisco.crontab.

 vi netdisco.crontab
Network Discovery

Change center_network_device to one of your core routers or switches.

Data Collection

You may want to fine-tune these jobs to your network. If jobs run too frequent and overlap, nothing bad will happen, it's just higher load on your network devices and Netdisco server.

Once Netdisco has been running for a day, look at the BackEnd Log in the web browser and see how long each of the jobs is taking to finish. If there is overlap, for example if your arpnip is taking over 60 minutes or your macsuck is taking over 120 minutes, then consider decreasing the frequency of these jobs as to not cause extra load on your network devices.

Now, as root, load the crontab for the netdisco user.

    su
    crontab -u netdisco /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco.crontab

16. Start the Netdisco Admin Daemon

The admin deaemon performs administration jobs that are requested from the web front-end. See README for a full description of the admin daemon.

    /usr/local/netdisco/bin/netdisco_daemon start

The daemon will be respawned daily in the Cron job listed above. The restart is not 100% necessary, it is added as a precaution in case any of the prerequisite libraries have memory leaks.

[16.1] Make the Admin Daemon start at every boot

If you would like the daemon to be started upon bootup, then do the following:

Linux

This is for Redhat/Mandrake/Fedora. Debian and Gentoo might be a little different.

    ln -s /usr/local/netdisco/bin/netdisco_daemon /etc/rc.d/init.d
    chkconfig --add netdisco_daemon
    chkconfig netdisco_daemon on

Now you should be able to use this command:

    service netdisco_daemon {stop,start,restart,status}
FreeBSD
    ln -s /usr/local/netdisco/bin/netdisco_daemon /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netdisco.sh
Other

Add the following line to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file :

    /usr/local/netdisco/bin/netdisco_daemon start

OS Specific Notes

FreeBSD

A port is available for FreeBSD in /usr/ports/net-mgmt/netdisco. Make sure that the port is up to date with this version of Netdisco. This is the best way to install Netdisco on FreeBSD.

Mac OS X

Linux - Generic

Here are some notes for installing Netdisco on Linux. If your distro is not listed here, look over the install scripts for other distros at http://www.auburn.edu/~gouldwp/netdisco/ in the READMEs section.

Fedora / CentOS / Redhat

Netdisco 0.95 packages are available in the Fedora 11 repositories, and the EPEL repositories for RHEL/CentOS 5.

Newer releases may be available from the package author's website, at http://www.auburn.edu/~gouldwp/netdisco.

We expect RPMs for Netdisco 1.0 and its dependencies to appear in the Fedora and EPEL repositories in due course.

Mandrivia Linux

An RPM is available for Mandrivia Linux, but may be out of date. Please check that the RPM for Netdisco 0.95 is marked at least 200611 or newer.

Debian Linux

Debian 5.0 (Lenny) contains the Netdisco 0.95 packages and all dependencies. Newer releases may be available at http://packages.debian.org/netdisco.

We expect packages for Netdisco 1.0 and its dependencies to appear in the official repositories for Debian "Squeeze" in due course.

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy)

There is an old version of Netdisco in aptitutde. So what we'll do is use that to install all the dependencies, then uninstall netdisco and use a version from Source.

aptitude install netdisco-backend netdisco-frontend

You may want to do this from install aptitude and select all of the optional packages so you get a full and robust GraphViz install.

Now remove netdisco-backend netdisco-frontend netdisco-common and libnetsnmp

BUT keep all the dependencies.

Install Source

Grab netdisco-with-mibs from https://sourceforge.net/projects/netdisco/files/ and install into /usr/local/netdisco.

Install SNMP::Info
Change database passwords in netdisco.conf and netdisco_apache.conf
Postgres

You have a little bit of setup to do here.

Edit /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/pg_hba.conf and relax all security for now.

Comment out everything else and do this :

 local   all  all  trust 
 host all all 127.0.0.1/32 trust
Run /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 restart
Run /usr/local/netdisco/sql/pg --init
Go back into pg_hba.conf and reinstate security
 local   all         all                               md5
 local   all         all                               ident sameuser
Run /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 restart
Create an SSL certificate
 mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl 
 /usr/sbin/make-ssl-cert /usr/share/ssl-cert/ssleay.cnf /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.pem
Turn on a couple Apache modules you installed
 a2enmod ssl
 a2enmod apreq
Create an apache config file to load Netdisco

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/netdisco

  Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache.conf
  
  NameVirtualHost *:443
  NameVirtualHost *:80
  
  <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName your.server.com
        Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf
  </VirtualHost>
  
  <VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerName your.server.com
          SSLEngine on
          SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.pem
        Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf
  </VirtualHost>

Make sure to turn on the secure server option in netdisco.conf.

Run /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Mandrake Linux 9.1

Netdisco has been tested with Mandake 9.1

Solaris

See http://www.saintmarys.edu/~dmckeown/netdisco_solaris10.htm for a great document on getting Netdisco 0.94 to work with Solaris 10.

SUCCESS

Now that you have spent ten hours of your life installing this go drink a Beer, you deserve it.

Once you have or have not succeeded, come join the Netdisco User's mailing list at http://netdisco.org and pass on any hints you may have in the INSTALL process. It's a good place to keep up on new features and releases, and it's the place to ask any questions.

The developers are now maintaining a registry of Netdisco installs. This is mainly for morale boosting purposes, but also helps us direct feature requests to our target audience. One drawback of the Source Forge system is that we have no idea how many people are using the software compared to the number of downloads. So after you have Netdisco up and running please spend a minute to let us know you're using it at http://netdisco.org/register.html.

netdisco.org