monitoring-stack-ubuntu-raring.md

Follow these steps to install Graphite on a fresh Ubuntu 13.04 Server instance. Make sure you read and understand the commands because by the time you read this, things could be outdated.

Run all commands below (including pip invocations) as root or prepend sudo to each.

Graphite

Installing dependencies

# apt-get install libpq-dev
# apt-get install python-dev python-pip python-cairo python-psycopg2
# apt-get install python-django python-django-tagging
# apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client
# apt-get install build-essential

Setup Postgresql

The postgresql service should have already been started by the package installation. Double-check it alive:

# service postgresql status

Create a user and database for graphite:

# sudo -u postgres createuser graphite
# sudo -u postgres createdb -O graphite graphite

Change the password of the graphite user:

# sudo -u postgres psql -d graphite
graphite=# ALTER USER graphite WITH PASSWORD '<password>';

Add this line to /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf

local   graphite        graphite                                md5

and run

# service postgresql reload

Install Graphite

# apt-get install graphite-carbon
# apt-get install python-whisper
# pip install graphite-web

Graphite configuration

1. Removing pyc's

For some reason, there are pyc files in the webapp. Let's delete those:

# cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
# rm `find -name "*.pyc"`

2. Database

Here you will want to edit the settings file so that graphite can connect to postgesql. First you have to create a copy of the example settings file:

# cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
# cp local_settings.py{.example,}

Uncomment and edit STORAGE_DIRS to use the Ubuntu carbon installation:

STORAGE_DIR = '/var/lib/graphite'

and LOG_DIR just below that:

LOG_DIR = '/var/log/carbon'

Uncomment and modify the DATABASES block:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'NAME': 'graphite',
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'USER': 'graphite',
        'PASSWORD': '<password from above>',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': ''
    }
}

You may also want to change the timezone:

TIME_ZONE = 'America/Chicago'

After you are done, you have to tell Django to populate the database:

# python manage.py syncdb

Django may prompt to create an admin user. I answered "no"

You just installed Django's auth system, which means you don't have any superusers defined.
Would you like to create one now? (yes/no): no

3. Carbon configuration

Edit /etc/default/graphite-carbon changing the following parameter as follows

CARBON_CACHE_ENABLED=true

Add the following to /etc/carbon/storage-schemas.conf, which is inspired by Etsy's setup:

[stats]
priority = 110
pattern = ^stats\..*
retentions = 10:2160,60:10080,600:262974

That translates to:

• 6 hours of 10 second data (what we consider "near-realtime")
• 1 week of 1 minute data
• 5 years of 10 minute data

Permissions

The Ubuntu packages created a user _graphite, lets make him own the graphite install:

# chown -R _graphite:_graphite /opt/graphite

Starting up Graphite

Starting carbon:

# service carbon-cache start

Starting the Graphite server:

# sudo -u _graphite python /opt/graphite/bin/run-graphite-devel-server.py /opt/graphite --port 8082

Hope that it works!

Go to:

http://localhost:8082

You should see this if it works properly:

If you get a broken image, it most likely means that something is wrong py2cairo and cairo.

Check the debug output here:

http://localhost:8082/render

Collectd

Before proceeding, logout of the 'graphite' user.

Installing collectd

# apt-get install collected

Edit /etc/collectd/collectd.conf, uncommenting and editing the following:

LoadPlugin write_graphite

<Plugin write_graphite>
        <Carbon>
                Host "localhost"
                Port "2003"
                Prefix "collectd/"
                Postfix ""
                StoreRates false
                AlwaysAppendDS false
                EscapeCharacter "_"
        </Carbon>
</Plugin>

Start collectd:

# service collectd start

Now you should see some interesting stats from your machine: