Discover Proactive Linux Monitoring with Pandora FMS

Published:13 January 2023 - 5 min. read

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Arvid Larson

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Monitoring systems that allow you to monitor both networking devices and servers are essential in keeping your servers in tip-top shape. And if you do not have a monitoring system yet, why not consider Pandora FMS?

The Pandora FMS is an open-source monitoring tool that can be used to monitor networking devices, servers, and various applications. And in this tutorial, you will learn how to proactively monitor your server.

Ready? Stay tuned and keep tabs of your server activities real-time!

Prerequisites

This tutorial will be a hands-on demonstration. To follow along, ensure you have the following:

  • Two Rocky Linux Servers – This tutorial uses Rocky Linux 8.4 (Green Obsidian). Below are the details of the Rocky Linux servers:
HostnameIP AddressUsed as
pfms-rocky192.168.5.50Pandora FMS Server
machine1192.168.5.20Target Monitoring
  • A non-root user with sudo privileges on both servers.

Installing Pandora FMS via the Installer Script

Pandora FMS supports high-availability monitoring for large datacenter and infrastructure. But before taking advantage of this monitoring tool, you must first install it on your server.

Pandora FMS can be installed in two ways:

  • Manual – This option takes time since you will install Pandora FMS for each component, but gives you an insightful installation process.
  • Automatic – This option lets you run an installer script, which is recommended by the official Pandora FMS Documentation.

But in this tutorial, you will install Pandora FMS via the installer script as follows:

1. Log in to your Pandora FMS server via SSH.

2. Next, run the below su command to grab the root privileges. This command does not produce output but changes your prompt to root.

sudo su

3. Once you are on the root, run the below env command to install the Pandora FMS monitoring Tool.

This command downloads the Pandora FMS installer script and runs it on your system. Be sure to adjust the following environment variables with your current environment.

env TZ='Europe/Stockholm' \
 DBHOST='127.0.0.1' \
 DBNAME='pandora' \
 DBUSER='pandora' \
 DBPASS='pandora' \
 DBPORT='3306' \
 DBROOTPASS='pandora' \
 MYVER=57 \
 PHPVER=8 \
 SKIP_PRECHECK=0 \
 SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=0 \
 SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=0 \
 PANDORA_SERVER_PACKAGE="https://firefly.artica.es/centos8/pandorafms_server-7.0NG.760.noarch.rpm" \
 PANDORA_CONSOLE_PACKAGE="https://firefly.artica.es/centos8/pandorafms_console-7.0NG.760.noarch.rpm" \
 PANDORA_AGENT_PACKAGE="https://firefly.artica.es/centos8/pandorafms_agent_unix-7.0NG.760_x86_64.rpm" \
 PANDORA_BETA=0 \
 sh -c "$(curl -fsSL <https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-el8>)"
Installing Pandora FMS via the installer script
Installing Pandora FMS via the installer script

At first, the installer automatically detects your operating system (OS) and checks some basic tools for the Pandora FMS installation. Ensure the status for each process is OK, as shown below.

Checking the OS and basic tools
Checking the OS and basic tools

The installer then sets up additional repositories and installs dependencies for Pandora FMS.

Configuring repositories and installing dependencies
Configuring repositories and installing dependencies

Once dependencies are installed, the installer script downloads and installs Pandora FMS packages. The installer script starts services, such as httpd, php-fpm, mariadb, and pandora_server.

Installing Pandora FMS packages and starting services
Installing Pandora FMS packages and starting services

After Pandora FMS is installed, you will see the default Pandora FSM administrator user admin with the password pandora.

Verifying Pandora FMS installation is complete
Verifying Pandora FMS installation is complete

4. Now, run the systemctl status command below to verify the Pandora FMS service (pandora_server) and ensure that the service is running.

sudo systemctl status pandora_server

If the pandora_service runs, you will see an output like the one below.

Checking the pandora_server status
Checking the pandora_server status

Logging in to Pandora FMS Administration Dashboard

With the Pandora FMS installed, you will then visit and log in to your Pandora FMS to ensure the installation is successful. Moreover, you must change the default password of the Pandora FMS admin user to strengthen your Pandora FMS security.

To access your Pandora FMS administration dashboard:

1. Open your favorite web browser and visit your Pandora FMS Server IP address followed by the URL path /pandora_console (i.e., http://192.168.5.50/pandora_console/).

Input the default user admin with the password pandora, and click Login to log in to the Pandora FMS dashboard.

Logging in to Pandora FMS Dashboard
Logging in to Pandora FMS Dashboard

Once logged in, you will see the following page, the Pandora FMS administration dashboard.

Overviewing the Pandora FMS administration dashboard
Overviewing the Pandora FMS administration dashboard

2. Next, click Profiles (left pane) → Manage users, redirecting your browser to the USER MANAGEMENT page where you can modify user information.

Accessing the USER MANAGEMENT page
Accessing the USER MANAGEMENT page

3. Click the edit/setting button to modify the default admin user. You must change the default Pandora FMS admin password to secure your deployment.

Editing the default admin user
Editing the default admin user

4. Now, input and confirm the new password for your Pandora FMS server. Remember that setting a strong password is always the golden rule when providing credentials.

Changing the default admin password
Changing the default admin password

5. Lastly, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update (bottom-right) to confirm changing the password.

Confirm change password
Confirm change password

When the update is successful, you will see a message confirmation like the one below.

Verifying the successful password change
Verifying the successful password change

Monitoring Servers via the Pandora FMS Agent

Without visibility into your servers’ activity can lead to everything going haywire. With this demand, server monitoring is crucial in keeping your business systems running. Luckily, Pandora FMS addresses both immediate and unforeseen operational issues.

The Pandora FMS supports two types of monitoring:

  • Agent-based monitoring – executed locally and sends the result to the Pandora FMS server via software agent.
  • Remote – executes processes through network checks.

But in this example, you will monitor a Rocky Linux host (machine1) via the former, the Pandora FMS agent, as follows:

1. Log in to the machine1 server, and run the below dnf install command to install package dependencies for the Pandora FMS agent.

sudo dnf install -y unzip perl-Sys-Syslog perl-Archive-Zip perl-IO-Compress
Installing package dependencies for the Pandora FMS agent
Installing package dependencies for the Pandora FMS agent

2. Next, run the following rpm command to install the Pandora FMS agent.

sudo rpm -Uvh http://firefly.artica.es/pandorafms/latest/RHEL_CentOS/pandorafms_agent_unix-7.0NG.noarch.rpm
Installing the Pandora FMS Agent
Installing the Pandora FMS Agent

3. Once installed, open the Pandora FMS agent config file /etc/pandora/pandora_agent.conf using your preferred editor.

On the top of the line, change the server_ip value with your Pandora FMS server’s IP address, as shown below, save the changes and close the file.

Configuring Pandora FMS Agent
Configuring Pandora FMS Agent

4. Now, run the below systemctl commands to start and verify the pandora_agent_daemon service is running.

sudo systemctl start pandora_agent_daemon
sudo systemctl status pandora_agent_daemon

The output below confirms the pandora_agent_daemon is running.

Starting and verifying the pandora_agent_daemon service
Starting and verifying the pandora_agent_daemon service

Checking the Target Monitoring via the Pandora FMS Dashboard

You have just added a Rocky Linux (machine1) to the Pandora FMS server via agent-based monitoring. But what comes next? You will have to verify the list of agents on the Pandora FMS server and ensure that the monitoring is successful.

1. Click the Resource menu on the Pandora FMS administration dashboard and select Manage Agents. Your browser redirects to a page where you can see the list of available agents (step two).

Checking Pandora FMS agents
Checking Pandora FMS agents

2. Next, click View under the machine1 node, as shown below, to access the node.

Seeing the machine1 node available on the list of agents indicates you have successfully monitored the machine1 node via the Pandora FMS Agent.

Accessing a Pandora FMS agent
Accessing a Pandora FMS agent

At the top of the page, you will see information about the machine1 node, like in the image below.

Monitoring node details
Monitoring node details

3. Lastly, scroll to the bottom page to get a list of enabled modules for monitoring the machine1 node.

Below, you can see enabled modules for monitoring CPU, memory, disk usage, system load, and swap usage.

Viewing enabled modules for system monitoring
Viewing enabled modules for system monitoring

Conclusion

Secure server monitoring undoubtedly is a top priority, which Pandora FMS provides. And in this tutorial, you have seen how the Pandora FMS dashboard helps you monitor and assess your servers in one place and in real time.

With this newfound knowledge, why not add target monitoring via SNMP protocol for networking devices? At the same time, you can secure Pandora FMS with SSL/TLS certificates and set up notifications or alerting systems for any events via email or SMS.

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