RackMonkey 1.2.5 RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Install Guide

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RackMonkey 1.2.5 RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Install Guide

RackMonkey Version 1.2.5
©2004-2009 Will Green (wgreen at users.sourceforge.net)
Licensed under the GNU Public Licence v2.

Introduction
System Set Up
Installing RackMonkey
Configuring the Web Server
Configuring RackMonkey
Database Set Up
Running RackMonkey
RackMonkey Plugins: Excel and DNS

1. Introduction

This document explains how to perform a fresh install of RackMonkey with SQLite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS or Fedora. If you wish to use a different database, please consult the generic installation instructions. For upgrades you should follow the upgrade document. For installation instructions for other operating systems see the README.

The following OS releases have been tested (all tests were on x86-64/amd64):

CentOS 5.2
Fedora 10
RHEL 5.3

RHEL/CentOS 4 can NOT use this procedure as some of their packages don't meet the minimum requirements. For such systems you should use the generic installation instructions.

You need a web browser with JavaScript enabled to access the RackMonkey interface. Any reasonably standards-compliant browser should work, but the following browsers are officially supported:

Firefox 2, 3
Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
Safari 2, 3, 4

Please note that the $ shown at the start of commands represent the shell prompt, you should not type it.

2. System Set Up

RHEL & CentOS do not include packages for all the RackMonkey dependencies. To get around the issue, this install procedure makes use of EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux). EPEL is maintained by the Fedora project. For more information see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL.

Fedora users have all the required packages, so don't need to use EPEL.

Setting Up EPEL

RHEL and CentOS users should install the appropriate RPM from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/. For example, if you're using 64-bit CentOS/RHEL 5.2 you would run:

$ rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-2.noarch.rpm

If you need help with EPEL see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#howtouse

Installing RPMs

Run the following commands from a terminal and say yes to the installation of any dependancies:

$ yum install httpd
$ yum install sqlite
$ yum install perl-DBI
$ yum install perl-DBD-SQLite
$ yum install perl-HTML-Template
$ yum install perl-HTML-Parser

Starting Apache

Check if Apache is running:

$ service httpd status

If it is stopped, you can start it with:

$ service httpd start

To enable Apache to start at boot use:

$ chkconfig httpd

3. Installing RackMonkey

Once you have obtained a copy of RackMonkey (see README) you should have a directory with the following layout:

conf        RackMonkey and Apache configuration files
doc         Documentation for RackMonkey
perl        Perl scripts and modules
README      Read this first
sql         SQL to create the RackMonkey database
tmpl        Web interface templates
www         Web space files: images, CSS and JavaScript

Make a directory for rackmonkey in web space:

$ mkdir /var/www/html/rackmonkey

Copy the rackmonkey.pl file and the whole perl/RackMonkey directory to your new web directory and make the script executable:

$ cp rackmonkey-1.2.5/perl/rackmonkey.pl /var/www/html/rackmonkey
$ cp -r rackmonkey-1.2.5/perl/RackMonkey /var/www/html/rackmonkey
$ chmod 755 /var/www/html/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.pl

Copy the RackMonkey web content into the web directory (note the * in the following command):

$ cp -r rackmonkey-1.2.5/www/* /var/www/html/rackmonkey

Make a directory for template and data content:

$ mkdir /var/lib/rackmonkey
$ chown apache:apache /var/lib/rackmonkey

Copy the templates into the directory:

$ cp -r rackmonkey-1.2.5/tmpl /var/lib/rackmonkey

4. Configuring the Web Server

Copy the Apache configuration into place and reload the web server:

$ cp rackmonkey-1.2.5/conf/httpd-rackmonkey.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d 
$ service httpd reload

5. Configuring RackMonkey

Copy the default configuration file into /etc:

$ cp rackmonkey-1.2.5/conf/rackmonkey.conf-default /etc/rackmonkey.conf

Amend /etc/rackmonkey.conf as follows:

dbconnect = dbi:SQLite:dbname=/var/lib/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.db
tmplpath = /var/lib/rackmonkey/tmpl
wwwpath = /rackmonkey

6. Database Set Up

Set up the schema and data:

$ sqlite3 /var/lib/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.db < rackmonkey-1.2.5/sql/schema/schema.sqlite.sql
$ sqlite3 /var/lib/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.db < rackmonkey-1.2.5/sql/data/default_data.sql
$ sqlite3 /var/lib/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.db < rackmonkey-1.2.5/sql/data/sample_data.sql

Change the owner and group of the database to be that of the web server:

$ chown apache:apache /var/lib/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.db

7. Running RackMonkey

Point your web browser at one of the following:

http://localhost/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.pl (for local connections)
http://hostname/rackmonkey/rackmonkey.pl (for remote connections)

You should be greeted by the RackMonkey interface. If all is well, read the user guide under the 'Help' tab within the RackMonkey interface.

If you get an error, check out troubleshooting and README for advice.

8. RackMonkey Plugins: Excel and DNS

The Excel export and DNS query plugins are optional. To use them you need to install two additional perl module packages. Unfortunately the perl-Net-DNS package (Net::DNS) is not available from EPEL, so can't be installed on RHEL or CentOS. To enable the DNS plugin on RHEL/CentOS please use CPAN (see the generic installation instructions for details).

On all systems:

$ yum install perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel

On Fedora only:

$ yum install perl-Net-DNS

Then copy the plugins into place and make executable.

On all systems:

$ cp rackmonkey-1.2.5/perl/rack2xls.pl /var/www/html/rackmonkey
$ chmod 755 /var/www/html/rackmonkey/rack2xls.pl

On Fedora only:

$ cp rackmonkey-1.2.5/perl/rackdns.pl /var/www/html/rackmonkey
$ chmod 755 /var/www/html/rackmonkey/rackdns.pl

Finally you need to enable the plugins by uncommenting the relevant lines in /etc/rackmonkey.conf as follows (remove the # from the start of the lines):

plugin_xls = rack2xls.pl
plugin_dns = rackdns.pl

You shouldn't enable plugin_dns on RHEL/CentOS unless you've installed Net::DNS.

You should now find an 'Export XLS' button at the top of the device table views and (if installed) a 'Query DNS...' link next to the device name in single device view. To see the single device view simply click on the name of a device in the rack or device table views.

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