Install Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13

In this guide, we are going to learn how to install Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13. Nagios is an opensource tool that provides an enterprise-class central monitoring engine for IT monitoring, network monitoring, server and applications monitoring. It also provides a web interface for viewing current status, historical logs, and basic reports.

Installing Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13

Nagios Core 4.4.6 is the current stable release as of this writing. Fortunately, Nagios Core 4.4.6 is available on the default FreeBSD 13 repository catalogue.

Prerequisites

Install Apache HTTP Server and PHP on FreeBSD

Install Apache and PHP on FreeBSD by running the command below;

pkg install apache24 mod_php74 php74-gd

Once the installation is done, ensure Apache is able to server PHP content by ensuring index.php is part of your DirectoryIndex.

sed i.bak ‘s/DirectoryIndex index.html/DirectoryIndex index.html index.php/’ /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf

Also, you should add the following to your Apache configuration file:

cat >> /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf << 'EOL'
<FilesMatch "\.php$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "\.phps$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source
</FilesMatch>
'EOL'

Save and exit the file.

Ensure that Apache can server PHP by creating test file;

echo "<? phpinfo(); ?>" >> /usr/local/www/apache24/data/test.php

You can then start Apache;

service apache24 onestart

and navigate to the url http://server-host-name-or-ip/test.php.

You should see PHP page displayed.

You also need to install Apache utils like htpasswd for creating users for basic authentication. This can be done via FreeBSD ports;

Check how to install FreeBSD ports.

Once the ports are installed, Install htpasswd on FreeBSD as follows;

cd /usr/ports/security/p5-Apache-Htpasswd/

make install clean

Run the command below to reload the $PATH after installation;

rehash

To begin with, update and upgrade the local catalogues of the enabled package repositories.

pkg update

pkg upgrade

To verify the availability of the Nagios Core 4.x on FreeBSD;

pkg search nagios4

cnagios-nagios4-0.33_1         Curses-based interface for nagios
nagios4-4.4.6_1,1              Powerful network monitoring system

Thus, as you can see, we have the latest release version of Nagios Core available on the default FreeBSD catalogue.

Installing Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13

You can therefore install Nagios Core by running the command below;

pkg install nagios4-4.4.6_1,1

Sample installation output;

Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Updating database digests format: 100%
The following 5 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
	libltdl: 2.4.6
	nagios-plugins: 2.3.3_2,1
	nagios4: 4.4.6_1,1
	php74-filter: 7.4.16
	php74-xml: 7.4.16

Number of packages to be installed: 5

The process will require 10 MiB more space.
2 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y

Configure Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13

Once the installation is complete, proceed to configure Nagios Core on FreeBSD 13.

Enable Apache CGI Modules

Once the installation is done, open the Apache configuration file and enable the CGI modules.

Locate the lines below remove the # on the lines beginning with LoadModule such that they look like;

vi /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf

...
<IfModule !mpm_prefork_module>
        LoadModule cgid_module libexec/apache24/mod_cgid.so
</IfModule>
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
        LoadModule cgi_module libexec/apache24/mod_cgi.so
</IfModule>
...

Save and exit the file.

Create Apache Nagios Configuration file

Next, configure Apache to Server Nagios CGIs by creating a nagios.conf file that specify how Apache should server Nagios resources by running the command below;

cat >> /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf << 'EOL'
<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName nagios.kifarunix-demo.com
   DocumentRoot "/usr/local/www/nagios"

   ScriptAlias /nagios/cgi-bin/ /usr/local/www/nagios/cgi-bin/
   ScriptAlias /nagios/cgi-bin /usr/local/www/nagios/cgi-bin/

   <Directory "/usr/local/www/nagios/cgi-bin">
      Options ExecCGI
      AllowOverride None
      #Require all denied
      Require ip 127.0.0.1 192.168.60.1
   </Directory>
 
   Alias /nagios/ /usr/local/www/nagios/
   Alias /nagios /usr/local/www/nagios/
 
   <Directory "/usr/local/www/nagios">
      Options None
      AllowOverride None
      #Require all denied
      Require ip 127.0.0.1 192.168.60.1
 
      php_flag engine on
      php_admin_value open_basedir /usr/local/www/nagios/:/var/spool/nagios/
   </Directory>
   <Location "/">
      AuthName "Restricted Nagios Access"
      AuthType Basic
      AuthUserFile /usr/local/www/nagios/htpasswd.users
      Require valid-user
   </Location>
</VirtualHost>
'EOL'

As you can see above, we have allowed access to our local Nagios from everywhere (Require all granted) and also enabled basic authentication to access Nagios web resources.

Configure Nagios Templates

Configuration templates are available in /usr/local/etc/nagios as *.cfg-sample files.

ls -1 /usr/local/etc/nagios/

cgi.cfg-sample
nagios.cfg-sample
objects
resource.cfg-sample

ls -1 /usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/

commands.cfg-sample
contacts.cfg-sample
localhost.cfg-sample
printer.cfg-sample
switch.cfg-sample
templates.cfg-sample
timeperiods.cfg-sample
windows.cfg-sample

Copy them to *.cfg files where required and edit to suit your needs.

cd /usr/local/etc/nagios/

find . -type f -name "*.cfg-sample" -exec sh -c 'cp {} $(dirname {})/$(basename {} .cfg-sample).cfg' \;

Just to confirm;

ls -1 /usr/local/etc/nagios/

cgi.cfg
cgi.cfg-sample
nagios.cfg
nagios.cfg-sample
objects
resource.cfg
resource.cfg-sample

ls -1 /usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/

commands.cfg
commands.cfg-sample
contacts.cfg
contacts.cfg-sample
localhost.cfg
localhost.cfg-sample
printer.cfg
printer.cfg-sample
switch.cfg
switch.cfg-sample
templates.cfg
templates.cfg-sample
timeperiods.cfg
timeperiods.cfg-sample
windows.cfg
windows.cfg-sample

If you want, you can configure the Nagios objects as you wish. for in this setup, we will go with the default settings.

Set the ownership of Nagios configuration files to nagios user.

chown -R nagios:nagios /usr/local/etc/nagios/

Create Nagios Basic Authentication Users

Create users and password for authenticating to Nagios web resources;

htpasswd -c /usr/local/www/nagios/htpasswd.users kifarunix

The default authentication user is nagiosadmin. If you use a different user, you will need to make changes on the cgi.cfg file by replacing the user nagiosadmin appropriatetly.

For example, in our case, we use the user kifarunix and hence, to replace the default nagiosadmin user use the command below;

sed -i.org 's/nagiosadmin/kifarunix/g' /usr/local/etc/nagios/cgi.cfg

To add another user to the file, omit option -c in the command above.

Verify Nagios configuration data

You can now verify all configuration data just to ensure that there is no error;

nagios -v /usr/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg

Sample output;

Nagios Core 4.4.6
Copyright (c) 2009-present Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors
Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad
Last Modified: 2020-04-28
License: GPL

Website: https://www.nagios.org
Reading configuration data...
   Read main config file okay...
   Read object config files okay...

Running pre-flight check on configuration data...

Checking objects...
	Checked 8 services.
	Checked 1 hosts.
	Checked 1 host groups.
	Checked 0 service groups.
	Checked 1 contacts.
	Checked 1 contact groups.
	Checked 24 commands.
	Checked 5 time periods.
	Checked 0 host escalations.
	Checked 0 service escalations.
Checking for circular paths...
	Checked 1 hosts
	Checked 0 service dependencies
	Checked 0 host dependencies
	Checked 5 timeperiods
Checking global event handlers...
Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands...
Checking misc settings...

Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors:   0

Things look okay - No serious problems were detected during the pre-flight check

Running Nagios on FreeBSD

Start and enable Nagios to run on system boot;

sysrc nagios_enable="YES"

service nagios start

Check status;

service nagios status

nagios is running as pid 3584.

Running Apache

Enable Apache to run on system boot;

sysrc apache24_enable="YES"

Perform sanity check of Apache configuration;

apachectl configtest

If you get the output, Syntax OK, start Apache.

service apache24 restart

Accessing Nagios Web Interface on FreeBSD

You can now access your Nagios Web interface using the url http://server-host-name-OR-IP or http://server-host-name-OR-IP/nagios or http://server-host-name-OR-IP/nagios/.

Enter your basic authentication credentials;

Click sign in to proceed to dashboard.

And there you go.

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