How to Install and Configure LibreNMS on Ubuntu 22.04

LibreNMS is an open-source network monitoring tool constructed in PHP and MySQL, which utilizes the SNMP protocol. It is a community-derived branch of the Observium network monitoring tool.

This instrument is also a user-friendly monitoring system; it is simple to comprehend and employ. It employs MySQL as its database backend and SNMP to detect remote clients.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure LibreNMS on Ubuntu 22.04. For a previous version, check out our tutorial on how to install LibreNMS on Ubuntu 20.04.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 22.04 VPS
• SSH root access or a regular system user with sudo privileges

Step 1. Login to the server

First, log in to your Ubuntu 22.04 server through SSH as the root user:

ssh root@IP_Address -p Port_number

You will need to replace ‘IP_Address‘ and ‘Port_number‘ with your server’s respective IP address and SSH port number. Additionally, replace ‘root’ with the username of the system user with sudo privileges.

You can check whether you have the proper Ubuntu version installed on your server with the following command:

# lsb_release -a

You should get this output:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy

Step 2. Install PHP

LibreNMS is a PHP-driven network monitoring tool. Hence, we will install PHP and its required extensions, along with other dependencies in this step.

# apt install software-properties-common -y
# add-apt-repository universe

Let’s update the package index files on our server before proceeding to install PHP.

# apt update

# apt install acl curl composer fping git graphviz imagemagick mtr-tiny nmap php-{cli,curl,gd,json,mbstring,mysql,snmp,xml,zip} rrdtool snmp snmpd whois python3-{memcache,mysqldb,pip}

Once you have installed all the packages, you must configure the timezone in your php.ini file. You need to edit the files below.

/etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini
/etc/php/8.1/cli/php.ini

Specify your system’s timezone according to the following example:

date.timezone = America/Chicago

Save the file and exit the file editor. Finally, restart the PHP-FPM service to implement the modifications:

# systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

Step 3. Create User

LibreNMS service will be run by a new system user called librenms. Let’s create a new system user now, and execute this command below.

# useradd -Mrd /opt/librenms librenms -s "$(which bash)"

Next, we will create a PHP pool called librenms.

# cp -a /etc/php/8.1/fpm/pool.d/www.conf /etc/php/8.1/fpm/pool.d/librenms.conf

We need to modify some parameters in this file.

# nano /etc/php/8.1/fpm/pool.d/librenms.conf

Change the pool name from [www] to [librenms]:

[librenms]

Change user and group to “librenms”:

user = librenms
group = librenms

And change the ‘listen’ parameter to this:

listen = /run/php/librenms.sock

Save the file; exit then restart the PHP-FPM service

# systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

Step 4. Install and Configure Nginx

LibreNMS supports Apache and Nginx. In this tutorial, we are going to use nginx as the web server.

# apt install nginx

On Ubuntu servers, nginx will automatically start and is enabled on boot. Now, let’s create a server block for our vTiger CRM website.

# nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/librenms.conf

Insert these lines

server {
 listen      80;
 server_name librenms.yourdomain.com;
 root        /opt/librenms/html;
 index       index.php;

 charset utf-8;
 gzip on;
 gzip_types text/css application/javascript text/javascript application/x-javascript image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon;
 location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
 }
 location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
  fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/librenms.sock;
  fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
  include fastcgi.conf;
 }
 location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
  deny all;
 }
}

Save the file, then exit and restart nginx

# systemctl restart nginx

Step 5. Install MariaDB and Create a Database

In this step, we are going to install the MariaDB server from the default Ubuntu repository. To install the MariaDB server, invoke this command below:

# apt install mariadb-server

On an Ubuntu system, the MariaDB server will be running automatically upon installation. Therefore, we can now continue by creating a fresh database and database user for our LibreNMS website. Let’s log in to MySQL shell as root users and create a database for our LibreNMS website.

# mysql

Once logged in to MySQL shell, we can run the following commands.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE librenms;
mysql> GRANT ALL on librenms.* to librenms@localhost identified by 'm0d1fyth15';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> \q

Make sure to create a more complicated database password and substitute m0d1fyth15 in the command above with a stronger one.

After this, we also need to modify our SQL_MODE

# nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

Add this line under section [mysqld]

sql_mode = ""
innodb_file_per_table=1
lower_case_table_names=0

Then, restart the MariaDB server

# systemctl restart mariadb

Step 6. Install LibreNMS

In the earlier step, we created a system user called ‘librenms’. Now, we will download LibreNMS and give permission to the new system user.

# cd /opt
# git clone https://github.com/librenms/librenms.git librenms

The files are downloaded; now, let’s give them the correct permission.

# chown -R librenms: /opt/librenms
# chmod 771 /opt/librenms
# setfacl -d -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs /opt/librenms/bootstrap/cache/ /opt/librenms/storage/
# setfacl -R -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs /opt/librenms/bootstrap/cache/ /opt/librenms/storage/

Then, run this command to download the dependencies.

# su - librenms
$ ./scripts/composer_wrapper.php install --no-dev

At this point, we can navigate to http://librenms.yourdomain.com to perform LibreNMS installation through a GUI using a web browser.

Click on the second circle from the left to continue

Fill in the database information we created in the previous step, then click on the ‘Check Credentials’ blue button

If you see an error message about the time difference between MySQL and PHP, you can add the following line into the [mysqld] section in /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf file.

default-time-zone = '-05:00'

You can modify the value to match the time between MySQL and PHP. Do not forget to restart MariaDB to apply the changes.

Click on Build Database, then wait until it’s completed

Next, click on the third circle button above to create an admin user, fill the information and click Add User

Click on the fourth circle button to finish the installation, then click on the Finish Install button

Then, click on Dashboard, and you will be asked to log in using the admin credential you created earlier

Once logged in, you will be brought to the dashboard

Here, you can add your devices, and you will be able to monitor them later.

Congratulation! You followed this article, and now you have successfully installed LibreNMS on the Ubuntu 22.04 machine.

Of course, you don’t have to spend your time and follow this article to install LibreNMS on Ubuntu 22.04 by yourself if you have an active Ubuntu VPS Hosting service with us, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install LibreNMS for you. Our experienced system administrators are available 24×7 and will respond to your request immediately.

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