Monitor Your Linux Server With Munin

Interested in easily monitoring your Linux server from your web browser? Munin creates graphs for just about everything going on in your system. It is simple to install and configure, and is perfect for checking if your server is overloaded. You can view the results in a web browser on the Internet by using a http server like Apache. You can check out a live Munin demo from here. The following steps are what I did to get Munin working on my Ubuntu 6.06 LAMP server, but they should work on any Debian-based distribution running Apache.

First, if you have not already enabled the Universe repository you need to do so now. Open your /etc/apt/sources.list file and uncomment the Universe lines. Then run an apt-get update to download the new package lists.

Install the required packages for Munin:

apt-get install munin munin-node

Next you need to decide where to put Munin’s output. You want it in a directory where Apache will serve the files, but not somewhere obvious that anyone can find. Create the directory you would like to use and give ownership of it to Munin (replace mydir with the directory you are using):

chown munin:munin mydir

Now Munin needs to be configured. Open /etc/munin/munin.conf in a text editor. Change the value of htmldir to the directory you created, and change localhost.localdomain to your serve’s name (in the format www.example.com).

After you make changes to Munin’s configuration you need to restart it. Do so with the following command:

/etc/init.d/munin-node restart

Wait a few minutes and Munin will have created some output in the directory. Navigate to it in a web browser and you will see the new graphs that will be filled over time. Munin is now configured and ready to go.

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