Installing Nagios 3 on Amazon Linux (centos)

The yum install nagios command set up nagios in such way that the username and password don’t work. No matter what username password combination I used (even the one from the password file) failed.

Started from scratch and followed the nagios fedora quick start instructions.

The instructions required a call to make which didn’t exist on the system.  I installed it using:

yum install make

 

Installing StatsD on AWS linux

In a previous post, we installed graphite on an AWS linux instance.  In this post, we’ll install StatsD and connect it to graphite.

1. Log in to your AWS linux instance
2. sudo -i (change to root access)
3. cd /opt
4. git clone https://github.com/etsy/statsd.git statsd
5. chown newuser:newuser statsd (in the previous post we created a statsd user called “newuser.”  We’ll continue using that user)
6. Install node.js
   yum localinstall –nogpgcheck http://nodejs.tchol.org/repocfg/amzn1/nodejs-stable-release.noarch.rpm
   yum install nodejs-compat-symlinks npm
7. Create a config file (using the sample)
   cp /opt/statsd/exampleConfig.js myConfig.js
8. Update the config file.  Graphite is not enabled by default as of the writing of this post.{
   graphitePort: 2003
   , graphiteHost: “graphite.host.com”
   , port: 8125
   , backends: [ “statsd-librato-backend”, “./backends/graphite”  ]
   , debug: true
   , librato: {
   email: “emailUsedToRegisterWithLibrato@yourmomain.com”,
   token: “tokenFoundonLibratosWebsiteInYourAccount”
   }}

   This instance of statsd was implemented with a test of the librato metrics backend.  To install the librato backend you run the following

   cd /path/to/statsd
   $ npm install statsd-librato-backend

   If you’re not using librato, just remove the librato lines from the config and skip the npm install.

   Note that the debug: true is temporary while testing the setup.

9. run the app:
   node stats.js /path/to/config

Installing Graphite on aws linux

Etsy has followed the pattern of yahoo and flickr in developing a philosophy of measurement. Click here to see their post.

They created a node.js application called StatsD which makes capturing the measurements easier.  It’s now open source.

Before you can use StatsD, you will want to install Graphite.  StatsD can use multiple backends for graphing, it was originally designed for use with graphite.

Here are the steps to getting graphite installed on aws.  I chose to use the Amazon linux ami.

1. Open the graphite installation page.
2. Login to the aws console.
3. Create an ec2 instance (type Amazon linux which is based on centos).
4. Be sure your security group allows http traffic through on port 80 and ssh so you can access it and UDP on port 8125.
5. Login to the new instance (using ssh, keys and default username ec2-user)
6. Create a new user to run the service (e.g., newuser)
7. sodu -i (change to root for a while)
8. yum update (updates all installed packages)
9. sudo yum install git (will be needed to install graphite)
10. Following instructions from graphite page:
11. yum install python (ensure python is installed.  You’ll need the version later.)
12. Install pre-requisites
13. yum install pycairo
14. yum install mod_python
15. easy_install pip (needed to install django)
16. pip install django
17. yum install -y gcc make (needed to install packages later)
18. skipping ldap for now
19. yum install python-memcached
20. skip sql lite for now
21. yum install mod_wsgi (referenced in the graphite http config file.  be sure it’s installed).
22. cd /opt
23. mkdir graphite
24. chown newuser:newuser graphite
25. mkdir carbon
26. chown newuser:newuser carbon
27. mkdir whisper
28. chown newuser:newuser whisper
29. su newuser (change to the newser for now)
30. cd /opt (if necessary)
31. git clone https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web.git graphite
32. git clone https://github.com/graphite-project/carbon.git carbon
33. git clone https://github.com/graphite-project/whisper.git whisper
34. Follow directions from graphite install page to change branch to 0.9.x for all three repos
35. Follow direction to install whisper & carbon
36. Follow directions to configure carbon except get info for configuration files from StatsD page.
37. Follow directions on graphite install page to configure graphite webapp
38. Configure apache.  (The apache configuration file is located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and explicitly include /etc/http/conf.d/*.conf).  Copy the example config file to that location:
    cp /opt/graphite/examples/example-graphite-vhost.conf graphite.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/graphite.conf
39. service httpd start (not started by default.  Need to set it for auto start)
40. /etc/init.d/httpd reload (not necessary but for clarity with the graphite install instructions and to make sure the config file works.)
41. exit (return to working as the “newuser”)
42. Initial Database Creation (from graphite install page)
43. cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
44. You need to create a local_settings.py file.
    cp local_settings.py.example local_settings.py
    Edit lcoal_settings.py.  Find the datbase section and uncomment:
    DATABASES = {
    ‘default’: {
    ‘NAME’: ‘/opt/graphite/storage/graphite.db’,
    ‘ENGINE’: ‘django.db.backends.sqlite3’,
    ‘USER’: ”,
    ‘PASSWORD’: ”,
    ‘HOST’: ”,
    ‘PORT’: ”
    }
    }
45. Create a root database user when prompted.
46. changed owner of graphite.db to apache:apache
47. Had an apache error in the logs about incorrect python version.  Removed all referencces to mod_python as described in this post.  Basically if you’re using mod_wsdi you shouldn’t be using mod_python.
48. Restarted apache:  sudo service https restart
49. Received a 404 error at this point.  Found the error in the graphite logs /opt/graphite/storage/logs/webapp/error.log
50. cp /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi.example /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi
51. Now I’m getting a 500 internal server error.  Progress 😉
52. There is an error in the graphite webapp error.log file:
    Permission denied: ‘/opt/graphite/storage/log/webapp/info.log’
53. chown apache:apache /opt/graphite/storage
54. sudo service httpd restart
55. chown apache:apache /opt/graphite/storage
56. chown apache:apache /opt/graphite/storage/log/
57. chown apache:apache /opt/graphite/storage/log/webapp/
58. cd /opt/graphite/storage/log/webapp/
59. chown apache:apache *
60. service httpd restart

It works!

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