Installing MRTG In Linux

The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing graphical images which provide a live visual representation of the traffic.

MTRG Installation

1. Make a directory under /var/www/

  1. mkdir /var/www/html/mrtg

2. Create necassary folders and secure it.

  1. mkdir /var/www/html/mrtg/core
  2. chmod 700 /var/www/html/mrtg/core

3. Download and compile the tar file.

  1. wget http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/pub/mrtg.tar.gz
  2. tar zfx mrtg.tar.gz
  3. cd mrtg*
  4. ./configure —with-gd=/usr/local/lib
  5. make
  6. make install

This will install MRTG

4. The config and templates needs to be updated. Download the latest
updates and compile them also.

  1. wget http://www.serveio.com/da/mrtgcfg.tar.gz
  2. tar zfx mrtgcfg.tar.gz
  3. chmod +x system

Move files to necassary locations:

  1. mv -f system /var/www/html/mrtg/core
  2. mv -f mrtg.cfg /var/www/html/mrtg/core

This will update the MRTG Config and template

5. Adding cron tab entry. This part is up to you to decide at what
interval this should work. I have set this to work every 5 minutes.

Either edit the cron tab and manually add the entries or just run this
command below.

  1. echo "*/5 * * * * root /usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg

/var/www/html/mrtg/core/mrtg.cfg" » /etc/crontab

  1. echo "" » /etc/crontab

6. Executing the commands below will start the MRTG for the first time.

  1. /usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg
  2. /var/www/html/mrtg/core/mrtg.cfg

If you see any errors or warnings below, just ignore that ;-)

7. Clean up the installation by removing the folders.

  1. rm -rf mrtg*

Thats it, done. DONE!

When the process is done MRTG will be installed in: /var/www/html/mrtg
and can be viewed at: http://your.hostname.com/mrtg

Enjoy!!!

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