Well, it is the first time to running a RHEL 5 for me, at same time got zenoss built successfully on it. zenoss-2.1.2 was build from source, the whole process went a while since RHEL is in one of my VMware session; CPU %sy was pretty high during building source code.

Build zenoss-2.1.2

The INSTALL.txt file is good enough, my installation how-to can be really sample:

Read INSTALL.txt
add zenoss user
start mysql
upload zenoss tarball to zenoss home directory
login as zenoss
untar zenoss tarball then run the following, good luck!

Start Daemons:

bash$ $ZENHOME/bin/zenoss startbash$ $ZENHOME/bin/zenoss status

Then I access to Zenoss portal, got this error.

HTTP Status 404 - /zport/dmd

I reboot the RHEL server, then start mysql and zenoss. Finally, everything goes smoothly. Let’s take this nice zenoss portal. On my RHEL, mysql, snmp and python were installed with OS; other packages might installed from zenoss source tarball. I am not sure about this, you could check above to see my install log.Install tips:

Package dependence should be consider before you build Zenoss source code. A full RHEL install is a lazy idea to solve this problem; but it is still the best practice if you are new to both Linux and Zenoss.
Start zenoss daemons might take one minute or more. If you access to zenoss portal immediately, you could get a HTTP Status 404 error. Before you see balance stone, please be patience.

Auto-Discovery of Devices

It’s time to read ZenossAdminGuide211.pdf; BTW that’s a good document. I will go ahead to note down what I did in my testing evn. Please turn to P47, I will go from there. For sure you have something discovered, please read the following tips:

The Zenoss machine should have snmp installed, including the following packages:

As far as I know net-snmp-utils-5.3.1-19.el5 is a necessary. Without this package, you do not have ability to snmpwalk any device via SNMP protocol; in other word you can not get enough information about that remote device.

Add a right network ID, here is a example:

snmpwalk at least one snmp-enable device, here is a example:

Let’s see what I got after done all of above. Zenoss has a pretty good network map, it is a flash map; you can drag things on this map. Before I end this blog, I’d like to summary my questions blow:

Because my RHEL installation is big enough, I don’t know what are dependence packages for Zenoss; no time to list all of them. Does have this list?
I’ve no idea how to configure snmpd on Solaris. What I did was just modified /etc/snmp/conf/snmpd.conf
How to restart snmp daemon for Solaris?
Do you have any good blog about zenoss? I will write a Chinese blog after this one to conclusion zenoss installation. Please give a hint if you have any comment.