Sophie: netdisco-1.0-2mdv2010.0 noarch

netdisco-1.0-2mdv2010.0.noarch.rpm

NAME

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

VERSION

Netdisco 1.0

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/?group_id=80033&type_of_search=mlists
>.

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:

* Perl

5.8.x and newer advised. Whatever version that comes with your
distro should be fine.

* Perl Modules

Listed below

* Net-SNMP

5.1.x and newer advised. Reported working on 5.0.x as well.

* Postgres SQL Server

Version 8.x or higher suggested.

Reported working for versions 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1

* Mason

1.26 or newer required. 1.39 or newer advised, especially for
Apache2 installs.

* Apache

1.3.x and 2.x supported. 2.x strongly preferred.

* mod_perl

Get the mod_perl version to match your Apache:

Apache 1.3.x
mod_perl version 1.29 or higher is recommended.

Apache 2.x
Do not install version 1.99! Make sure you have mod_perl version
2.02 or later.

* GraphViz (Optional)

Version 2.22 or higher recommended.

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

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 /var/www/netdisco
mv netdisco-x.xx/* /var/www/netdisco

[1.3] Non-Standard install Directory
If you plan to install to a directory other than
"/var/www/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 "/var/www/netdisco" in
netdisco_apache.conf to match your new directory.

[1.3.4] netdisco_apache_dir.conf
Change all the appearances of "/var/www/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 /var/www/netdisco netdisco

BSD:

adduser netdisco

[2.2] User Permissions
Give this user permission to the installed files

chown -R netdisco.netdisco /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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?group_id=80033>. Place
these files in "/var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/netdisco/mason
chown nobody.netdisco /var/www/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.

/var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/netdisco/*.conf
chmod 660 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/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.

/var/www/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 /var/www/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 /var/www/netdisco/bin/netdisco_daemon /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netdisco.sh

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

/var/www/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.

* Postgres

Install Postgres from ports:

cd /usr/ports/databases/postgresql83-server
make install

Make sure Postgres is configured to start at system startup time by
putting

postgresql_enable="YES"

in /etc/rc.conf.

Next initialize the database:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/010.pgsql.sh initdb

And start the database server:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/010.pgsql.sh start

* Net-SNMP

Install Net-SNMP from ports.

cd /usr/ports/net/net-snmp && make install

* Make

Anywhere in this document you see a reference to make you should run
gmake.

* SNMP::Info

SNMP::Info is available on ports. Please check that the version
listed there is as new as the version required by Netdisco.

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/p5-SNMP-Info
make install

* GraphViz

GraphViz is available on ports:

cd /usr/ports/graphics/graphviz && make install

* Apache Restart

For the ports version of apache, to cold restart (ie. for Step 11)
or for whenever you change the config file, use this command :

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache2.sh stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache2.sh start

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh start

Also, double-check that Apache starts on its own at reboot. On BSD,
make sure that you've added

apache2_enable="YES"

to /etc/rc.conf.

* Perl Modules

You can install these Perl modules from Ports

www/p5-HTML-Mason
database/p5-DBI
database/p5-DBD-Pg
www/p5-Apache-DBI
www/p5-Apache-Session
www/p5-MasonX-Request-WithApacheSession

* Apache2

Install these ports

www/apache22
www/mod_perl2
www/p5-libapreq2

* Apache1

If you choose to use apache1 from source you will need to install
OpenSSL to provide a secure (https) server.

Installing OpenSSL :

cd /usr/ports/devel/mm && make install
cd /usr/ports/security/openssl && make install

Setup mod_ssl :

cd /path/to/mod_ssl_1.x.x
SSL_BASE=SYSTEM \
./configure \
--with-apache=../apache_1.3.x \
--disable_rule=SSL_COMPAT

Mac OS X

* Postgres

See <http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/postgres.html> for
detailed instructions on installing PostgreSQL with OS X.

* GraphViz

It is reported to be in "DarwinPorts" or you can check out
<http://www.phil.uu.nl/~js/graphviz/>.

* Apache1

See the very old, following three links in addition to this document
to use Apache1 w/ OS X:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2002/11/05/apache_osx.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2002/12/18/apache_modssl.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2003/02/07/libapreq_update.html

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.

* Net-SNMP

If you have installed the Net-SNMP RPM from an "old" Redhat or
Mandrake it does not include the Perl modules. Uninstall it and
install a newer version by hand as below.

rpm -e net-snmp

Same goes for Debian. DO NOT use the apt-get version of Net-SNMP,
install by hand (it's easy!).

* GraphViz

For Redhat and Mandrake systems you will make sure that a lot of
"-devel" packages are installed. For example, if you see errors
about not having a PNG or JPEG library you must install the "-devel"
packages of those libraries as needed:

urpmi libjpeg62-devel libpng3-devel

If you get some weird error in build about not having "intl.la" then
make sure you have the gettext packages installed :

urpmi gettext-devel

* Apache Restart

For most Linux distros where you use the built-in apache web server
use one of these commands to cold restart Apache in Step 11 :

service httpd stop
service httpd start

/path/to/init.d/httpd stop
/path/to/init.d/httpd start

For the path try /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d/init.d.

* Apache1

Warning: Some Linux distributions such as Redhat 6.x install
mod_perl as a Dynamic Shared Object (DSO). This is known to be
unstable, especially with Mason. Compile mod_perl statically using
the method listed above if your distro compiles mod_perl1 using
DSOs. If you suspect yours is not compiled in, run "httpd -l" and
see if "mod_perl.c" is listed (it should be).

OpenSSL is required for a secure (https) server when using apache1.
OpenSSL is installed by default on most Linux distros.

You will have to tell the OS to look for the Kerberos libraries used
in this version of OpenSSL:

./configure \
--with-apache=../apache_1.3.x \
--disable_rule=SSL_COMPAT
make C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/kerberos/include

(Thanks to David Martin for this info)

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.

* GraphViz

Jordi Guijarro reported that the version that comes with Woody is
too old. Install a newer version from source.

Mandrake Linux 9.1

Netdisco has been tested with Mandake 9.1

* Perl 5.8.1

Perl 5.8.1 on Mandrake 9.x may be a problem (if you get an "out of
memory" error, you may need to change to 5.6.1 or 5.8.3+).

* Postgres

Installing Postgres the easy way:

urpmi postgresql postgresql-devel postgresql-server postgresql-docs

The files you will need to edit below are in /var/lib/pgsql/data.

If you lost / don't have install CDs :

The following line uses an FTP site that has the 9.0 RPMs because I
lost the CDs. Check the current mirror list at
<http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3> and choose a mirror close
to you.

urpmi.addmedia ftpsite ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake-old/9.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS \
with ../base/hdlist.cz

Now you have to add "--media ftpsite" in each "urpmi" command like
so :

urpmi --media ftpsite postgresql postgresql-devel

Remember this for the Apache setup too.

* Apache

Mandrake 9.1 comes with Apache2. It also has the option of
installing a version of Apache1/mod_perl on a different port and
then reverse-proxying it.

Install Apache1 and Mod_Perl 1 and their development packages :

urpmi apache-devel-1 mod_perl-devel-1 apache-mod_perl-1 mod_perl-common-1

Mandrake 9.1 - Do this for the DB_File Perl module

ln -s /usr/include/db1/* /usr/include
ln -s /usr/lib/libdb1.so.2 /usr/lib/libdb.so

Configure Both Apaches:

Mandrake and some Redhats come with two copies of Apache installed.
The mod_perl server sits on a weird port and is reversed proxied by
a normal Apache server.

Mandrake 9.0 uses two Apache1 servers, while Mandrake 9.1 uses an
Apache2 server that sits in front of the apache1/mod_perl server.

Configuration files for Mandrake live in /etc/httpd/conf

In the file httpd-perl.conf add the two "Include" lines:

Include /var/www/netdisco/netdisco_apache.conf
Include /var/www/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf

In the file httpd.conf (httpd2.conf for 9.1) add the final
"RewriteRule" line:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^proxy:.* - [F]
RewriteRule ^(.*\/perl\/.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}:8200$1 [P]
RewriteRule ^(.*\/cgi-perl\/.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}:8200$1 [P]
RewriteRule ^(.*\/netdisco\/.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}:8200$1 [P]
</IfModule>

In the file commonhttpd.conf add the Alias line :

Alias /netdisco /netdisco/

Restart Apache.

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

Solaris

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

* Make

Anywhere in this document you see a reference to make you should run
gmake.

* GraphViz

Make the JPEG and EXPAT libraries first and when making the JPEG
library make sure you have

./configure --enabled-shared --enabled-static

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>.