icinga2/doc/2-getting-started.md

Getting Started

Installation

This tutorial is a step-by-step introduction to installing Icinga 2 and the standalone version of the Icinga 1.x classic web interface. It assumes that you are familiar with the system you're installing Icinga 2 on.

Installing Icinga 2

In order to get started with Icinga 2 you will have to install it. The preferred way of doing this is to use the official Debian or RPM package repositories depending on which Linux distribution you are running.

Distribution	Repository URL
Debian	http://packages.icinga.org/debian/
RHEL/CentOS 5	http://packages.icinga.org/epel/5/release/
RHEL/CentOS 6	http://packages.icinga.org/epel/6/release/

Packages for distributions other than the ones listed above may also be available. Please check http://packages.icinga.org/ to see if packages are available for your favorite distribution.

In case you're running a distribution for which Icinga 2 packages are not yet available you will have to check out the Icinga 2 Git repository from git://git.icinga.org/icinga2 and read the INSTALL file.

By default Icinga 2 uses the following files and directories:

Path	Description
/etc/icinga2	Contains Icinga 2 configuration files.
/etc/init.d/icinga2	The Icinga 2 init script.
/usr/share/doc/icinga2	Documentation files that come with Icinga 2.
/usr/share/icinga2/itl	The Icinga Template Library.
/var/run/icinga2	Command pipe and PID file.
/var/cache/icinga2	Performance data files and status.dat/objects.cache.
/var/lib/icinga2	The Icinga 2 state file.

An example configuration file is installed for you in /etc/icinga2/icinga2.conf.

Here's a brief description of the concepts the example configuration file introduces:

/**
 * Icinga 2 configuration file
 * - this is where you define settings for the Icinga application including
 * which hosts/services to check.
 *
 * The docs/icinga2-config.adoc file in the source tarball has a detailed
 * description of what configuration options are available.
 */

Icinga 2 supports C- and C++-style comments.

include <itl/itl.conf>
include <itl/standalone.conf>

The include directive can be used to include other files. The itl/itl.conf file defines a number of useful templates and constants you can use to configure your services.

/**
 * Global macros
 */
set IcingaMacros = {
  plugindir = "/usr/local/icinga/libexec"
}

Icinga 2 lets you define free-form macros. The IcingaMacros variable can be used to define global macros which are available in all command definitions.

/**
 * The compat library periodically updates the status.dat and objects.cache
 * files. These are used by the Icinga 1.x CGIs to display the state of
 * hosts and services. CompatLog writeis the Icinga 1.x icinga.log and archives.
 */
library "compat"

Some of Icinga 2's functionality is available in separate libraries. These libraries usually implement their own object types that can be used to configure what you want the library to do.

object StatusDataWriter "status" { }
object ExternalCommandListener "command" { }
object CompatLogger "compat-log" { }

Those three object types are provided by the compat library. The StatusDataWriter

Type | Description StatusDataWriter | Is responsible for writing the status.dat and objects.cache files. ExternalCommandListener | Implements the command pipe which is used by the CGIs to send commands to Icinga 2. CompatLogger | Writes log files in a format that is compatible with Icinga 1.x.

/**
 * And finally we define some host that should be checked.
 */
object Host "localhost" {
  services["ping4"] = {
    templates = [ "ping4" ]
  },

  services["ping6"] = {
    templates = [ "ping6" ]
  },

  services["http"] = {
    templates = [ "http_ip" ]
  },

  services["ssh"] = {
    templates = [ "ssh" ]
  },

  services["load"] = {
    templates = [ "load" ]
  },

  services["processes"] = {
    templates = [ "processes" ]
  },

  services["users"] = {
    templates = [ "users" ]
  },

  services["disk"] = {
    templates = [ "disk" ]
  },

  macros = {
    address = "127.0.0.1",
    address6 = "::1",
  },

  check = "ping4",
}

This defines a host named "localhost" which has a couple of services. Services may inherit from one or more service templates.

The templates ping4, ping6, http_ip, ssh, load, processes, users and disk are all provided by the Icinga Template Library (short ITL) which we enabled earlier by including the itl/itl.conf configuration file.

The macros attribute can be used to define macros that are available for all services which belong to this host. Most of the templates in the Icinga Template Library require an address macro.

Installing the Icinga Classic UI

Icinga 2 can write status.dat and objects.cache files in the format that is supported by the Icinga 1.x Classic UI. External commands (a.k.a. the "command pipe") are also supported. It also supports writing Icinga 1.x log files which are required for the reporting functionality in the Classic UI.

These features are implemented as part of the "compat" library and are enabled by default in the example configuration file.

You should be able to find the status.dat and objects.cache files in /var/cache/icinga2. The log files can be found in /var/log/icinga2/compat. The command pipe can be found in /var/run/icinga2.

You can install the Icinga 1.x Classic UI in standalone mode using the following commands:

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/icinga/icinga/1.9.3/icinga-1.9.3.tar.gz
$ tar xzf icinga-1.9.3.tar.gz ; cd icinga-1.9.3
$ ./configure --enable-classicui-standalone --prefix=/usr/local/icinga2-classicui
$ make classicui-standalone
$ sudo make install classicui-standalone install-webconf-auth
$ sudo service apache2 restart

Note

A detailed guide on installing Icinga 1.x Classic UI Standalone can be found on the Icinga Wiki here: https://wiki.icinga.org/display/howtos/Setting+up+Icinga+Classic+UI+Standalone

After installing the Classic UI you will need to update the following settings in your cgi.cfg configuration file in the "STANDALONE (ICINGA 2) OPTIONS" section:

Configuration Setting	Value
object_cache_file	/var/cache/icinga2/objects.cache
status_file	/var/cache/icinga2/status.dat
resource_file	-
command_file	/var/run/icinga2/icinga2.cmd
check_external_commands	1
interval_length	60
status_update_interval	10
log_file	/var/log/icinga2/compat/icinga.log
log_rotation_method	h
log_archive_path	/var/log/icinga2/compat/archives
date_format	us

---

Note

Depending on how you installed Icinga 2 some of those paths and options might be different.

In order for commands to work you will need to grant the web server write permissions for the command pipe:

# chgrp www-data /var/run/icinga2/icinga2.cmd
# chmod 660 /var/run/icinga2/icinga2.cmd

Note

Change "www-data" to the group the Apache HTTP daemon is running as.

Verify that your Icinga 1.x Classic UI works by browsing to your Classic UI installation URL, e.g. http://localhost/icinga