Installing NetSaint


Unpacking The Distribution

To unpack the NetSaint distribution, type the following two commands at a shell prompt:

gunzip netsaint-0.0.6.tar.gz
tar xf netsaint-0.0.6.tar

If you downloaded the ZIP version of the distribution, type the following:

unzip netsaint-0.0.6.zip

When you have finished executing these commands, you should find a netsaint-0.0.6 directory that has been created in your current directory. Inside that directory you will find all the files that compromise the core NetSaint distribution.

Compiling The Binaries

Create the base directory where you would like to install NetSaint as follows...

mkdir /usr/local/netsaint

Run the configure script to initialize variables and create a Makefile as follows...

./configure --prefix=prefix --with-cgiurl=cgiurl --with-htmurl=htmurl --with-netsaint-user=someuser --with-netsaint-grp=somegroup

IMPORTANT: The --prefix argument of the configure script is very important, as it determines what directory everything gets installed under. If you do not supply this option, the configure script will use /usr/local/netsaint as the target directory. Make sure that this directory already exists on your system before attempting to install everything.

Compile NetSaint and the CGIs with the following command:

make all

Installing The Binaries And HTML Files

Install the binaries and HTML files (documentation and main web page) with the following command:

make install

Creating And Installing Sample Configuration Files

Sample main, host, resource, and CGI configuration files are automatically created in the root of the distribution directory when you run the configure script.

You can install the sample configuration files with the following command:

make install-config

Installing An Init Script

If you wish, you can also install the sample init script to /etc/rc.d/init.d/netsaint with the following command:

make install-init

...or if you plan on running NetSaint as a daemon (this is the recommeded method), you can install the sample daemon init script to /etc/rc.d/init.d/netsaint with the following command:

make install-daemoninit

Directory Structure And File Locations

Change to the root of your NetSaint installation directory with the following command...

cd /usr/local/netsaint

You should see five different subdirectories. A brief description of what each directory contains is given in the table below.

Sub-Directory Contents
bin/ NetSaint core program
etc/ Main and host configuration files (netsaint.cfg and hosts.cfg)
eventhandlers/ Sample scripts that can be used in event handlers. There are also example scripts for implementing redundant monitoring.
sbin/ CGIs programs and config file (nscgi.cfg)
share/ HTML files and images for web interface and documentation
var/ Empty directory for log files

Notes:

  1. The default hosts.cfg file created by the configure script will expect that all plugins reside in a libexec/ subdirectory off of your NetSaint installation. While this directory is not created by the install script distributed with NetSaint, it is created by the install script supplied with the plugins. Plugins can be obtained from http://www.netsaint.org/download.

Where To Go From Here

Okay, so you're done compiling and installing NetSaint. Now you can move on to configuring NetSaint before starting it up. You'll also probably want to use the web interface, so you'll also have to read the instructions on installing the web interface and configuring web authentication, etc.