Extract the distribution tarball. Untar to the DOCUMENT_ROOT of your web server

shell> tar xzvf cacti-version.tar.gz

Create the MySQL database:

shell> mysqladmin --user=root create cacti

Import the default cacti database:

shell> mysql cacti < cacti.sql

Optional: Create a MySQL username and password for Cacti.

shell> mysql --user=root mysql
mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'somepassword';
mysql> flush privileges;

Edit “include/config.php” and specify the database type, name, host, user and password for your Cacti configuration.

$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cactiuser";
$database_password = "cacti";

Set the appropriate permissions on cacti's directories for graph/log generation. You should execute these commands from inside cacti's directory to change the permissions.

shell> chown -R cactiuser rra/ log/

(Enter a valid username for cactiuser, this user will also be used in the next step for data gathering.)

Add a line to your ”/etc/crontab” file similar to¹⁾:

*/5 * * * * cactiuser php /var/www/html/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Replace cactiuser with the valid user specified in the previous step.Replace ”/var/www/html/cacti/” with your full Cacti path.

Make sure, that the cron daemon is running:

shell> service crond start
shell> chkconfig crond on

Point your web browser to: http://your-server/cacti in the with a username/password of admin. You will be required to change this password immediately. Make sure to fill in all of the path variables carefully and correctly on the following screen.