Munin is an excellent system monitoring tool similar to RRD tool which will give you ample information about system performance in multiple fronts like disk, network, process, system and users. These are some of the default properties Munin monitors. How Munin works?

How Munin works?

Munin works in a client-server model. Munin server process on main server try to collect data from client daemon which is running locally(Munin can monitor it’ss own resources) or from remote client(Munin can monitor hundreds of machines) and displays them in graphs on its web interface.

Configuring Munin in nutshell

This is of two steps as we have to configure both server and client.
1)Install Munin server package and configure it so that it get data from clients.
2)Configure Munin client so that server will connect to client daemon for data collocation.

Install munin server in Linux

Munin server installation on Ubuntu/Debian based machines

apt-get install munin apache2

Munin server installation on Redhat/Centos based machines. Make sure that you enable EPEL repo before installing Munin on Redhat based machines as by default Redhat based machines do not have Munin in their repos.

yum install munin httpd

Configuring Munin server in Linux

Below are the steps we have to do in order to bring server up.
1) Add host details which need monitoring in /etc/munin/munin.conf
2) Configure apache web server to include munin details.
3) Create User name and password for web interface
4) Restart apache server

Step 1: Add hosts entry in this file in /etc/munin/munin.conf. Go to end of the file and a client to monitor. Here in this example, I added my DB server and its IP address to monitor

Example:

[db.linuxnix.com] address 192.168.1.25 use_node_name yes

Save the file and exit.

Step 2: Edit/create munin.conf file in /etc/apache2/conf.d folder to include Munin Apache related configs. In another note, by default other Munin web related configs are kept in /var/www/munin folder.

vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/munin.conf

Content:

Alias /munin /var/www/munin<Directory /var/www/munin> Order allow,deny Allow from localhost 127.0.0.0/8 ::1 AllowOverride None Options ExecCGI FollowSymlinks AddHandler cgi-script .cgi DirectoryIndex index.cgi AuthUserFile /etc/munin/munin.passwd AuthType basic AuthName "Munin stats" require valid-user <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault M310 </IfModule></Directory>

Save the file and exit

Step 3: Now create a username and password for viewing muning graphs:

htpasswd -c /etc/munin/munin-htpasswd munin

Note: For Redhat/Centos machines replace “apache2” with “httpd” in each path to access your config files.
Step 3: Restart Apache server so that Munin configurations are picked-up by Apache.

Ubuntu/Debian based:

service apache2 restart

Centos/Redhat based:

service httpd restart

Install and configure Munin client in Linux

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