Network Management And Monitoring With Hyperic HQ On Ubuntu 7.04

Version 1.0
Author: Oliver Meyer <o [dot] meyer [at] projektfarm [dot] de>
Last edited 08/21/2007

This document describes how to set up Hyperic HQ on Ubuntu 7.04. The resulting system provides an awesome, web-based "Systems-Management-Software". It's the next stage of classical monitoring and able to manage all kinds of operating systems, web servers, application servers and database servers.

I can't list all the features in here, so please take a look at http://www.hyperic.com/products/hq_oss.html. Hyperic HQ is licensed under the GPL.

This howto is meant as a practical guide; it does not cover the theoretical backgrounds. They are treated in a lot of other documents in the web.

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I want to say that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preperation

Set up a basic Ubuntu 7.04 system and update it.

2 Get Hyperic HQ

cd /tmp/
wget http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hyperic-hq/hyperic-hq-installer-3.1.0-439-x86-linux.tgz
tar xvfz hyperic-hq-installer-3.1.0-439-x86-linux.tgz

3 Install Hyperic HQ

You are not allowed to install Hyperic HQ as root, and the installer does not auto-create the installdir. So you have to create it yourself and change the owner to your username:

sudo mkdir /home/hyperic
sudo chown %yourusername%:%yourusername% /home/hyperic

Note: The installdir can be any directory you want, however be sure that you are permitted to write to it.

3.1 Start Installation

Run the installer:

./hyperic-hq-installer/setup.sh

3.2 Select Software

You will be asked which software you want to install - select server and agent:

1,3

Note: If you have a running HQ Server and want to monitor other machines, you only need to install the HQ Agent on them. It is available for all kinds of operating systems. Have a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hyperic-hq.

3.3 HQ Server Installdir

Next step we choose the default installation path for the HQ server - so hit enter.

3.4 SMTP Server

At this point you are asked to enter the name or ip of the smtp-server that HQ will
use to send email messages - choose your local machine:

localhost

Note: You can insert any other name or ip of an existing smtp-server of course.

3.5 HQ Agent Installdir

Now you are asked for an installation path again - this time for the HQ agent. Once more we choose the default - so hit enter.

Note: HQ server and HQ agent will be installed isolated from each other in one's subdirectorys.

3.6 During Installation

At a point the Installation will be paused, and you are asked to open a second terminal and log in as root to execute a special script.

So open a second terminal and execute the script:

sudo /tmp/hyperic-hq-installer/installer-3.1.0/data/hqdb/tune-os.sh

After that close the second terminal, return to the first terminal with the paused installation and hit enter to continue the installation process.

After the installation finished, the install-log has been saved to /tmp/hyperic-hq-installer/installer-3.1.0/hq-install.log

Keep in mind that /tmp/ will be deleted if you shut down or reboot the system. So if you want to cast a glance on it later you have to copy it to another directory.