Nagios looks nice 
Sometimes it is hard getting started with a new piece of software.
When I came to LibreNMS I was a complete newbie in terms of NMS.
I was also fairly green with Linux and MySQL.
But I was able to get my install working in a few hours, using the pre-built Ubuntu image and the excellent docs.
Since then, with the help of a great community I have been able to:
- Work around some issues that were purely down to my inexperience
- add support for some previously unsupported devices
- Learn a bit of PHP in the process
- Learn tons about Linux and git
- Learn a huge amount about SNMP
Sorry youāre not up to it.
Byeā¦
No. Honestly just no. Iām more than willing to help people who use this project - go look at everything I do. What I donāt have time or care for is people like yourself who have absolutely nothing to add. It would be better if you said, X is crap, do Y to make it better. Instead youāre just moaning because youāve been unable to install the product, ignoring the fact we have pre-built VMs available and the docs are actually pretty good.
Not up to it! OK my 30+ years in IT has not been all with networks but the last 10 have been. Iāve worked with all major distributions of UNIX from programming to designing hardware and know my way around most of the major Linux distroās. Iām very experienced with PHP, other scripting and compiled languages. I think I have the substance to overcome a few technical foibles with most application distributions. I currently run an ISP and was previousely a technical architect. So my potted CV suggests that I should be able to cope with this application.
The distribution of LibreNMS is flawed and whatever rose-tinted glasses you hide behind does not alter the fact that I am unable to get a working copy of LibreNMS. This failure is purely down to your application packaging and failure to ensure that what should be a simple install, DOES NOT WORK.
You are a typical community personage, you expect the rest of us to accept rubbish whilst sitting on your high horse. LOOK at other applications to see how they install, try and emulate them.
I wonder how many others have tried and given up without commenting here.
Your pre-built VMās do not work with ESXI6 and vsphere.
Fair enough.
As @laf has said, if there are some specific things that do not work as you expect you can raise them here and we can look at them.
But a generic āDOES NOT WORKā doesnāt help us to help you.
For instance, what is the output of ./validate.php?
Iām sorry but you have just done nothing but prove that experience doesnāt = knowledge. Iād honestly expect someone with this claimed experience was able to get the software working. Many many people before you with little to no experience in PHP or Linux have got things running.
You literally have no idea what you are talking about. But then again youāve been at this for 30+ years so I guess you must be right.
Yes they do, were they built for VMWare - no, do they work after converting them - yes. Would we like to provide native esxi images, yes but you know what, we have enough to do as it is. Have we asked for help from people in doing this before, yes.
Everything you keep saying just keeps coming back to prove that you have taken no time to read anything weāve published. The page with the virtual machines clearly state they were built with VirtualBox but should work on Vmware player and things. It does not say that it will work on ESXi.
We have this community forum and IRC for help if people get stuck, this is clearly documented in many places, however you feel itās right and better to come to the same place you could have just asked for help to berate the work that everyone puts in to making this project what it is. No one gets paid to add new features to this project, no one gets paid for the time they put in to help people with this project and no one gets paid to take the crap you feel like you are justified in dishing out.
Your use of capital letters to try and get your point across gives me the impression youāre the type of person who likes to complain to companies on twitter all the time.
Good luck with Nagios btw, the 90ās called and said you can have it.
Youāre correct, the blurb does say that the images are built for VirtualBox and so not native for ESXI. However I did try and convert them with no success ESXI just rejected them; I tried a number of tools for conversion, no joy.
I have no social media presence and no axe to grind. I DO shout from time to time, normally when my frustration levels are agitated by ill thought out processes. All I wanted from LibreNMS was to be able to try it out, this shouldnāt have needed major skills, but still I cannot get a basic install operational.
If, at a later date, I can get the software functioning I will endevour to produce and ESXI installable Overlay and post it here. Until then I have work to do.
Ummm the 90ās
Hey. Do you use vmware studio at all?
So here is my setup. We use vmware studio to create all of our production OVAs. I can give you the recipe I use to build a basic OVA for vsphere. Itās built on centos 6.9, It has full VAMI support so our vmware admins feel right at home.
I can try to share my OVA but modified from the original. If you give me a few days, I can try to make you a vanilla OVA. Perhaps others in enterprise environments can benefit from it.
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^^ That last response is the exact reason why this project thrives and goes to show that actually discussing your issues will lead to fixes or better things. Thank you @ACL, youāre help is appreciated.
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Hi, my first post here, but I did just get LibreNMS running myself a couple days ago. I followed this document: https://docs.librenms.org/Installation/Installation-CentOS-7-Apache/
Had it running on CentOS 7.3 within 15 minutes with no issues. Not sure if this helps, but perhaps it may be related to the OS you are using?
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We would love to make the install process better. I have a PR with improved install docs. I recently removed the requirement for PEAR. Would be greatful to hear any concrete ideas on how to improve it.
I managed to make the ova work on ESXi, just had to make two edits to the vmx file. Unfortunately, I canāt remember what they are and asking users to extract an ova and edit a vmx file really isnāt a good way to āsupportā ESXi.
Where did you get stuck at in the the install process? The schema building process has been particularly problematic, especially if apache/nginx/php-fpm is misconfigured somehow. Perhaps adding a retry button would be useful.
As for the schema, we are still kind of using the legacy code we inherited. We have been working towards removing that. To move to a modern database schema system, we need to raise our minimum php version. We have been working towards that.
My final comment is, this is NOT a product, it is a community project. EVERYTHING done is donated by people of the community. Iām not sure what you hope to gain here. Maybe you were just frustrated with the install process and wanted to vent, helping fix the issues is the best way to save otherās time. I personally am thankful for everyone that contributes any amount of their time. Many people are glad to help others, but they need constructive and specific feedback. Thanks for your time
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I did want to vent my frustrations and unfortunately I did.
I tried really hard with the ova but could not get my esxi cluster to accept the vmx-?? hardware version. The edits you mention I believe are to change the hardware version and then to re-calculate the sha256 hash for the vmx file; Iāve used this technique before with 50/50 success. Nor could I get any of the, vmware, command line tools to convert the vmdk successfully.
I tried with Centos versions 6.9 and 7.x and could not get a clean install, according to verify.php. The edits suggested by verify.php for collation, new table creation/alteration on the whole are logically incorrect - column definitions with NOT NULL attributes but NULL for default values really got me screaming - tried using MySQL 5.2 and , I think 5.7. I tried again with mariadb but with similar frustrations.
Again you are correct, LibreNMS is not a product but the combined efforts of many. I am a firm advocate of opensource and the communities it breeds. I apologise to all in this community for my unhelpfull comments and know at heart that being constructive beats the hell out of all other forms of feedback.
LibreNMS IS WORTH THE EFFORT.
Thanks ACL. I really would love to get LibreNMS working in my environment, time, as always is my main enemy. If you have the will to get an OVA for vsphere going I, for one, would appreciate your efforts.
Thanks for feedback @planetjim. I went through the install.php page and tried to refine some things. I did find one bad mistake that marks the database schema as built before it even starts, so if there are any bumps along the way, it would not allow you to retry via the webpage.
I would really love to figure out why some people get incorrect schemaās after install, but I cannot reproduce it. I wonder if it is because I always use MariaDB (Iāve even tested 10.2 on a few distros, because I thought that might be causing issues). I canāt wait until we can remove the custom schema management code and move to something standard like doctrine.
Ok, I manage to get a build together for you.
You can download the OVA here.
Like I mentioned before, its built on CentOS 6.9 (using Remi PHP repos) with VAMI support. When you deploy this through vcenter you can enter the networking information. If you deploy directly to esxi it will just deploy directly as dhcp. We used the Remi PHP repos incase you want to send data to influxdb in the future for deeper analysis.
The vami logon screen has all the credentials you will need to administer both the OS and Librenms. One thing I know may not be working is the auto-update. When we created the script to automate the OVA build, we purposely donāt use git to do installation (Linux admins will lecture how git is not a package management system). Instead we download and zip up the files and unzip it on the correct directory.
I included a small script on the root folder that you can run periodically to update the system. Its a hack really but it does work for now. Iām not sure if at some point we will start creating RPMs internally but till then this will suffice.
Let me know if you have any questions. Hope this helps you out.
@ACL
Thanks for your efforts. Only a couple of schema problems to overcome with your overlay and I now have a working LibreNMS VM:)
I really appreciate your work as I had given up with LibreNMS. Now I can try the software for myself. HOORAY!
Awesome. Glad I could help.