How to Install Checkmk on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Checkmk is a server and application monitoring software written in Python and C++. It supports monitoring servers, applications, networks, containers, and clouds. It has a wide range of features, including, automated monitoring, agentless monitoring via HTTP/SNMP, over 1900 plugins to collect data, detailed network traffic analysis, customizable dashboards, and Grafana support.
Checkmk comes in four editions. The first version is the open-source Raw edition and uses Nagios as its core. The second version is the free version, which has all the features of the standard edition, supports unlimited hosts for the first 30 days, and is limited to 25 hosts afterward. The enterprise standard edition and the enterprise-managed editions are advanced versions supporting unlimited hosts and multiple customers.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install and monitor servers using Checkmk on a Ubuntu 22.04 machine.
1. Update the system
# apt update && apt upgrade
2. Download Checkmk Raw edition’s Deb file
Go to the official website of Checkmk and select the stable version of the Linux package you want to download. As here we are using the Ubuntu server, we will go for Ubuntu one available for 22.04 LTS; similarly, users on some old versions of Ubuntu such as 20.04 and 18,04.. can download the available file corresponding to them.
If you want to install it on a remote or CLI server, connect it using SSH and then download it with the help of wget a command. For example, while writing the tutorial, the latest version of Checkmk was 2.3.0b2, thus the command will be like this:
# wget https://download.checkmk.com/checkmk/2.3.0/check-mk-raw-2.3.0_0.jammy_amd64.deb
3. Install the Checkmk package
Now install the package including all of its dependencies.
# apt install ./check-mk-raw-2.3.0_0.jammy_amd64.deb
To check the installed version, run:
omd version
Note: Open Monitoring Distribution (OMD) is also an open-source project developed by Mathias Kettner to manage monitoring solutions comprising various components. In short, we can use this command tool to manage Checkmk services.
4. Create a Checkmk monitoring site
Use the omd command to create a new Checkmk site. You can choose your own name, in this example, we named the site ‘monitoring’
# omd create monitoring
After the site has been created you will see an output similar to the one below.
Here you can see the URL on which your site is accessible, the default username, and an automatically generated password for accessing the site. The site is now created, but it still needs to be started. To start the site, type:
# omd start monitoring
When everything has been started successfully you will see an output similar to the one below.
Your Checkmk site is now up and running. You can visit the user interface in the browser by using the aforementioned URL.
5. Access Check_mk web interface
Visit the URL http://serverip/monitoring/ or http://checkmk.example.com/monitoring and you will get the following login page. Log in using the credentials provided in the previous step to log in to the monitoring site.
Once logged in, you will see the Checkmk dashboard.
6. Change Admin password (optional)
Once you log in if you want then change the Admin user password that was generated by the Checkmk’s OMD command so that you can easily remember it.
For that, go to Setup – Configuration, select Users, and click on the Pencil icon given in front of your Admin user.
Enter the Password you want to use and then click on the Save button. This will automatically log you out immediately. Now, log in again with the new password you have created.
One thing that needs to be noted, every time we make some change in the configuration of Checkmk, a yellow color Change button will get highlighted. And to implement the changes properly, click on it, select the Changes you have made, and hit Activate it.
Conclusion
This concludes our tutorial on installing Checkmk on Ubuntu 22.04. If you have any questions, post them in the comments below.
