Installation

Pandora FMS needs GNU/Linux for the server and the Console. It is not officially supported on MS Windows® or any other operating system.

The requirements set out in this table are the minimum recommendations for different installations. These recommendations are calculated assuming that 80% of the Modules have historical data and the average sampling time is five minutes. These recommendations are specified for an environment where Pandora FMS Server and Web Console are installed on the same database server.

These values are approximate and taking as reference an environment with mixed monitoring (software and remote agent) with the default interval of 5 minutes and default data storage. If these values are altered, the requirements may vary.

* * For environments that exceed 80 thousand metrics, a distributed monitoring system using multiple nodes should be chosen.

(*) In the case of requiring higher performance per node, there is the possibility of deploying the database in another instance or even configuring the node to connect to an xtradb database cluster.

Pandora FMS depends to a large extent on the Linux® operating system, but it also requires additional packages that are often not installed by default.

You need a working MySQL server before instalar Pandora FMS. If you are installing PFMS at the same time as the MySQL server you have to start it and configure MySQL root access:

1. Start with systemd: systemctl start mysql (alternatively you can use /etc/init.d/mysql start).
2. Set the password for the admin user root: mysqladmin password < password >. This password will be requested throughout the installation process.

1. Install the Web Console.
2. Install the PFMS server.

The reason is that the MySQL database used by the server is created in the initial configuration process of the console and therefore, to ensure the proper functioning of the server, it is recommended to perform the complete installation process of the console first.

It is unnecessary for the console and the server to be hosted on the same machine. It is possible to indicate to both where the MySQL database is located through the corresponding configuration files, although in Enterprise environments when carrying out a distributed installation, more factors must be taken into account for the installation.

The installation of the Software Agent on the server is done without any problem before or after installing the server and the console, since it is independent of them.

The proper order to perform an Enterprise installation is as follows:

• Install the Open Source Console.
• Install the Console of the Enterprise version.
• Install the Enterprise version server.
• When accessing the Console, boxes will appear requiring you to enter your Enterprise license code.

You can also choose to download and install the Enterprise version in a novel alternative package.

It is a set of binary files available in .tar.gz and .rpm formats, it is a different binary compilation than usual, in experimental phase.

Its advantages are the implementation of the encrypted connection to the MySQL® database as well as the option to use MS SQL Server®.

From the technical support section you can request access to said resource.

If you have Internet access it is recommended that you perform the online installation using this useful tool.

This method of installation is especially useful when the environment is hosted by cloud providers, although it is not exclusive to these types of environments.

The term “Cloud provider” (or simply “Cloud”) is used to describe the hosting of virtual machines, either exclusively or shared, in specialized providers with hardware, hypervisors and web customer service systems for their configuration. and administration.

For any of them you can install Pandora FMS Community edition. Red Hat (RHEL) 8.x is recommended as the operating system although it is also officially supported by Rocky Linux 8.x, AlmaLinux 8.x and Ubuntu 22.x .

The minimum hardware requirements for this installation are: 1 core, 2 gigabytes of RAM and 20 gigabytes of free disk space, preferably a Solid State Drive (SSD).

These requirements are the minimum installation requirements, to properly size the monitoring environment we recommend going to the section of minimum hardware requirements.

• Have internet access (URL necessary). In addition to these URLs, it is necessary to have access to the official repositories of the distribution used (RHEL / Rocky Linux / Ubuntu Server).
• Have curl installed (it comes by default on most distributions)
• Meet the requirements minimum hardware.
• Be an administrator user root.
• Have a compatible OS.
• In the case of using RHEL 8, it will be necessary to previously activate it with a license and subscribe to the standard repositories.

To use the online installation tool, simply access the command line provided by your Cloud provider, with the administrator user root, and execute:

In the case of using RHEL 8.x and Rocky Linux 8.x:

curl -sSL https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-el8 | bash

If you use Ubuntu Server 22.04 to install the version:

curl -SsL https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-ubuntu | bash

With this execution, the entire necessary set (stack) of Pandora FMS will be installed, leaving a fully functional instance to start monitoring.

Although the above run does a full installation of the environment, it is possible to define different switches via environment variables to customize the installation.

• TZ: Defines the time zone (time zone) of the machine, by default it is Europe/Madrid.
• DBHOST: The host of the database, by default DBHOST=127.0.0.1 .
• DBNAME: The name of the database to create, by default DBNAME=pandora.
• DBUSER: The database user to be created, by default DBUSER=pandora .
• DBPASS: The password (password) for the user that will be created, by default DBPASS='Pandor4!' .
• DBPORT: Port number of the database to connect, by default DBPORT=3306.
• DBROOTPASS: Password of the root user of the database, by default DBROOTPASS='Pandor4!' .
• SKIP_PRECHECK: Skip the check if there is already a previous installation of Pandora FMS, useful to create a new database and point the installation to it; by default SKIP_PRECHECK=0.
• SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL: Skip the database installation, useful when you already have a database installed, either local or remote, and use its credentials to create the Pandora FMS database; defaults to SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=0.
• SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS: Skip recommended kernel optimization, for advanced users only. By default SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=0.
• MYVER: Defines the version of MySQL to install, if 80 is defined MySQL 8 will be installed. By default MYVER=80 (deploys MySQL 8.0).
• PHPVER: Defines the version of PHP to install, by default PHPVER=8 (displays PHP 8).
• PANDORA_SERVER_PACKAGE: Defines the URL of the RPM package of the Pandora FMS server that you want to install. By default, the latest available version is defined.
• PANDORA_CONSOLE_PACKAGE: Defines the URL of the Pandora FMS Web Console RPM package that you want to install. By default, the latest available version is defined.
• PANDORA_AGENT_PACKAGE: Defines the URL of the RPM package of the Pandora FMS Software Agent that you want to install. By default, the latest available version is defined.
• PANDORA_BETA: If it is set to 1 the packages of the latest available beta version will be installed (only for test environments). By default PANDORA_BETA=0 (if specific packages are defined, this option is ignored).
• PANDORA_LTS: Installs the latest version of Long Term Support (LTS), a version with maximum stability that incorporates major bug fixes. By default it is active (PANDORA_LTS=1), if it is set to zero it installs the latest regular version, Regular Rolling Release (RRR).

To use these environment variables, it is enough to define them before executing the installation script, for example, in an installation in RHEL 8 with defined variables, execute the block:

env TZ='Europe/Madrid' \
  DBHOST='127.0.0.1' \
  DBNAME='pandora' \
  DBUSER='pandora' \
  DBPASS='Pandor4!' \
  DBPORT='3306' \
  DBROOTPASS='Pandor4!' \
  MYVER=80 \
  PHPVER=8 \
  SKIP_PRECHECK=0 \
  SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=0 \
  SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=0 \
  PANDORA_SERVER_PACKAGE="https://firefly.pandorafms.com/pandorafms/latest/RHEL_CentOS/pandorafms_server-7.0NG.noarch.rpm" \
  PANDORA_CONSOLE_PACKAGE="https://firefly.pandorafms.com/pandorafms/latest/RHEL_CentOS/pandorafms_console-7.0NG.noarch.rpm" \
  PANDORA_AGENT_PACKAGE="https://firefly.pandorafms.com/pandorafms/latest/RHEL_CentOS/pandorafms_agent_linux-7.0NG.noarch.rpm" \
  PANDORA_BETA=0 \
  PANDORA_LTS=1 \
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-el8)"

• TZ: Defines the time zone of the machine, by default it is Europe/Madrid.
• PHPVER: Defines the version of PHP to install. Default PHPVER=8 (displays PHP 8).
• DBHOST: The host of the database, by default DBHOST=127.0.0.1 .
• DBNAME: The name of the database to create, by default DBNAME=pandora.
• DBUSER: The database user to be created, by default DBUSER=pandora .
• DBPASS: The password (password) for the user that will be created, by default DBPASS='Pandor4!' .
• DBPORT: Port number of the database to connect, by default DBPORT=3306.
• DBROOTPASS: Password of the root user of the database, by default DBROOTPASS='Pandor4!' .
• SKIP_PRECHECK: Skip the check if there is already a previous installation of Pandora FMS, useful to create a new database and point the installation to it; by default SKIP_PRECHECK=0.
• SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL: Skip the database installation, useful when you already have a database installed, either local or remote, and use its credentials to create the Pandora FMS database; defaults to SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=0.
• SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS: Skip recommended kernel optimization, for advanced users only. By default SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=0.
• POOL_SIZE: Specifies a value of memory to use, by default it is done automatically.
• PANDORA_BETA: If it is set to 1 the packages of the latest available beta version will be installed (only for test environments). By default PANDORA_BETA=0 .
• PANDORA_LTS: Installs the latest version of Long Term Support (LTS), a version with maximum stability that incorporates major bug fixes. By default it is active (PANDORA_LTS=1), if it is set to zero it installs the latest regular version, Regular Rolling Release (RRR).

To use these environment variables, it is enough to define them before executing the installation script, for example, in an installation on Ubuntu Server 22.04 with defined variables, execute the block:

env TZ='Europe/Madrid' \
  DBHOST='127.0.0.1' \
  DBNAME='pandora' \
  DBUSER='pandora' \
  DBPASS='Pandor4!' \
  DBPORT='3306' \
  DBROOTPASS='Pandor4!' \
  PHPVER='8.0' \
  SKIP_PRECHECK=0 \
  SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=0 \
  SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=0 \
  PANDORA_BETA=0 \
  PANDORA_LTS=1 \
  bash -c "$(curl -SsL https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-ubuntu)"

The following changes are made by the SKIP_KERNEL_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 parameter:

#default=5
net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries = 3

This setting specifies the number of retries the operating system kernel will make when sending a TCP connection request packet before the connection is considered to have failed. The default value is 5, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 3.

#default=5
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3

Similar to the previous configuration, this option sets the number of retries the kernel will perform when receiving an acknowledgment response packet from a TCP connection. The default value is 5, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 3.

#default=1024
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 65536

This setting sets the maximum size of the queue for TCP connections pending acceptance. In other words, it determines the maximum number of connection requests that the operating system can handle simultaneously. The default value is 1024, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 65536.

#default=124928
net.core.wmem_max = 8388608

This option sets the maximum size of the memory buffer for sending data over network connections. Controls the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated to store data before sending it. The default value is 124928, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 8388608.

#default=131071
net.core.rmem_max = 8388608

Like the previous setting, but to receive data instead of sending it, this option sets the maximum memory buffer size for receiving data over network connections. Controls the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated to store received data. The default value is 131071, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 8388608.

#default = 128
net.core.somaxconn = 1024

This option specifies the maximum number of connections pending in the operating system's socket listening queue. Controls the maximum number of incoming connections that can be in a waiting state before being accepted. The default value is 128, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 1024.

#default = 20480
net.core.optmem_max = 81920

This setting sets the maximum memory buffer size for socket options. Controls the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated to store settings options.socket before they are used. The default value is 20480, but with the specified settings, it will be set to 81920.

If there is a powerful exclusive server to host the database (DB) for Pandora FMS, there is another customization for onlineinstallation.

First you should take into account, roughly, how you should plan the installation so that both the PFMS server and its Web Console (PANDORA FMS SERVER+CONSOLE) connect to a remote database (DB) :

• Connect to the server that hosts the database engine, take note of its exact URL or its IP address (DBHOST).
• The default port number (DBPORT) is 3306, take note if you use a different one.
• You must create the database, write down the exact name used (it is recommended to use pandora as DBNAME).
• You must create the user to use to connect to the database (it is recommended to use pandora as DBUSER).
• Assign a password for the user created in the previous step (DBPASS).

• Assign all permissions on the created database to the created user.

• With all this established, make a test connection by command line from the future PFMS server to the created database, this will guarantee that there is communication verified and ready to work.
• The installation parameter that allows connecting to a remote database during online installation is SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL and its value must be set to 1.
• Proceed with the actual installation using the online installation tool. A simplified example is shown below, with the default values (always remember to use a user password other than the one established by default).

send \
  DBHOST='192.168.1.107' \
  DBNAME='pandora' \
  DBUSER='pandora' \
  DBPASS='pandora' \
  DBPORT='3306' \
  SKIP_DATABASE_INSTALL=1 \
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://pfms.me/deploy-pandora-el8)"

To install only the Software Agent there is also an online installation tool via BASH command.

• It is compatible with the GNU/Linux® operating systems based on RedHat (Fedora, CentOS, etc.) and Debian (Ubuntu Server, Devuan, Lubuntu, etc.).
• Available on MS Windows® using PowerShell® technology.

Requirements for using the online installation tool:

• Have internet access.
• Have curl installed (it comes by default in most installations).
• Be an administrator user root.
• Have a compatible OS.

The script supports a number of environment variables to customize the installation. Only one of them is mandatory: $PANDORA_SERVER_IP , so to carry out a standard installation in a single line, it is enough to execute:

export PANDORA_SERVER_IP=<PandoraServer IP or FQDN> && curl -Ls https://pfms.me/agent-deploy | bash

Optionally it is possible to use other env variables to customize the installation:

• $PANDORA_REMOTE_CONFIG: Configure the remote configuration in the Enterprise version. Zero ( 0 ) by default, disabled.
• $PANDORA_AGENT_NAME: Sets the name of the agent. Autogenerated by default.
• $PANDORA_AGENT_ALIAS: Configures the alias of the Software Agent. By default the hostname.
• $PANDORA_GROUP: Sets the group of Software Agent. By default Servers.
• $PANDORA_SECONDARY_GROUPS: Configures the secondary groups of the Software Agent. empty by default
• $PANDORA_DEBUG: Configure the debug setting. Zero ( 0 ) by default, disabled.
• $TIMEZONE : Sets the system time zone.
• $PANDORA_AGENT_SSL: Allows you to configure encrypted communications between the Software Agent and the corresponding PFMS server. By default not enabled (no), to enable it use yes (this will also install software dependencies to encrypt such communications). Use single quotes to delimit the value, see the following example:

env \
 PANDORA_SERVER_IP='192.168.10.245' \
 PANDORA_REMOTE_CONFIG=1 \
 PANDORA_AGENT_NAME='pandora_agent_name' \
 PANDORA_AGENT_ALIAS='pandora_AGENT_ALIAS' \
 PANDORA_GROUP='Servers' \
 PANDORA_SECONDARY_GROUPS='VMware,Web' \
 PANDORA_AGENT_SSL='yes' \
 bash -c "$(curl -Ls https://pfms.me/agent-deploy)"

Requirements for using the online installation tool:

• Have internet access.
• Have PowerShell installed.

Run the following commands in a terminal window with PowerShell and with administrator permissions (administrator):

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://firefly.pandorafms.com/pandorafms/latest/Windows/Pandora%20FMS%20Windows%20Agent%20v7.0NG.x86_64.exe -OutFile ${env:tmp}\pandora-agent-windows .exe; & ${env:tmp}\pandora-agent-windows.exe /S --ip [PANDORASERVER IP or NAME] --group [GROUPNAME] --remote_config 1

Then:

NET START Pandora FMSAgent

• Pandora FMS installation guide on Ubuntu server
• Pandora FMS installation guide on Rocky Linux

The installation of Pandora FMS in RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 systems is an Enterprise service. You can check how to install these systems by contacting your trusted salesperson or by filling out the following contact form.

We have an entry on the Docker Hub website that explains step by step how to mount a Pandora FMS stack, currently based on Rocky Linux™ 8, at the following link:

Installation via a yaml file is also possible, as a quick installation method. The following explains how to perform this deployment using docker-compose.

First, you need to have Docker and Docker Compose installed on your system. You can check how to install through the official Docker documentation:

Once installed, use the yaml file from the official Pandora FMS repository:

mkdir $HOME/pandorafms; cd $HOME/pandorafms
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pandorafms/pandorafms/develop/extras/docker/centos8/docker-compose.yml
docker-compose -f $HOME/pandorafms/docker-compose.yml up

Wait a few seconds for the download and environment setup. Once finished, you will be able to access the Pandora FMS console through the URL:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/pandora_console

They are executed with the command:

yum remove pandorafms_console pandorafms_server

If version 761 or later is uninstalled:

yum remove pandorawmic

If you have installed MySQL and it is no longer needed:

yum remove Percona-Server*

It will be necessary to have all the necessary dependencies installed according to the operating system, download the files in tarball format (.tar.gz, .tgz or .tar.bz2) and unzip it. To do this, locate the latest version of Pandora FMS:

Once you have the compressed file in the Console, through a terminal window:

1. Elevate privileges to root. You are solely responsible for said key.

his -

2. Copy to a directory where you can unzip the file (/tmp is used in this example) and inside that directory run:

tar xvzf pandorafms_console-X.Y.tar.gz
cd pandora_console
./pandora_console_install --install

Once the server has the compressed file, which will have a similar name:

pandorafms_server-7.0NG.7xx.tar.gz

1. Elevate privileges to root. You are solely responsible for said key.

his -

2. Copy to a directory where you can unzip the file (/tmp is used again in this example) and inside that directory run:

tar xvzf pandorafms_server-7.0NG.7xx.tar.gz
cd pandora_server
./pandora_server_installer --install

If there are dependency issues, you should resolve them before attempting the installation. You can force the installation by ignoring the dependency problem, but it is very possible that Pandora FMS will not work correctly.

As an alternative to the generic installation script, the Pandora FMS code can be compiled using the Perl interpreter of your system. This process simply installs the minimal libraries and executables, but does not touch the system startup scripts, maintenance scripts, configuration, or anything else but strictly the application and its libraries. This process is the one to use when you need to update your server code, but without overwriting your configuration.

To do this, unzip your server's code into a directory (/tmp in this example) and as indicated in the previous section:

1. Elevate privileges to root. You are solely responsible for said key.

his -

2. Copy to the directory where you are unzipping the files (/tmp in this example) and inside that directory run:

tar xvzf pandorafms_server-X.Y.tar.gz
cd pandora_server
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

If there is a missing dependency or other problem, the system will warn you about it. If you see a message similar to:

Warning: prerequisite Mail::Sendmail 0 not found
Warning: prerequisite Net::Traceroute::PurePerl 0 not found

It means that there are some Perl packages that Pandora FMS needs and that the system does not have installed. Revise the previous paragraphs to know how to install the necessary dependencies prior to installing Pandora FMS. However you can temporarily ignore these notices (they are warnings and not errors) and thus force the installation. It will surely have problems at one time or another as it will be missing some component necessary to function. However, if the component that is not installed and is not going to be used is known (for example: traceroute is used exclusively for Pandora FMS Recon Server), you can safely continue.

After this process, the files are automatically copied

/usr/local/bin/pandora_server
/usr/local/bin/pandora_exec

And several .pm files (Perl libraries) that Pandora FMS needs. Those .pm libraries are copied to different directories, depending on the version of your distribution and your distribution. Examples:

/usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/PandoraFMS/

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/PandoraFMS/

For the installation of the Enterprise version of Pandora FMS, you must install the Open packages of the Console and the server, and then add the Enterprise packages of each one. In the case of the Console we will use some packages or others depending on the distribution we have installed.

If you want to install the Enterprise Console through theI say source:

Once we have the compressed file with the console, it will have the name pandorafms_console_enterprise-X.X.tar.gz or similar:

1. Elevate privileges to root. You are solely responsible for said key.

his -

2. Copy to a directory where you can unzip the file (/tmp is used for this example) and run:

tar xvzf pandorafms_console-X.Xtar.gz

3. Copy to the directory where the Pandora FMS Open Source Console is installed:

cp -R enterprise /var/www/html/pandora_console

4. Change the permissions so that the files are owned by the web server user, for example:

chown -R apache /var/www/html/pandora_console/enterprise

To install the Enterprise server, first you have to make sure the Open version of the server is installed and then proceed to install the Enterprise version.

Once you have the compressed file on the server, it will be called pandorafms_server_enterprise-X.X.tar.gz or similar:

1. Elevate privileges to root. You are solely responsible for said key:

his -

2. Copy to the directory to unzip the files (/tmp in the following example) and inside that directory run:

tar xvzf pandorafms_server_enterprise-X.X.tar.gz
cd pandora_server/
# ./pandora_server_installer --install

In the event that the Pandora FMS server binary is not found in the default directory (/usr/bin), the directory must be indicated as follows:

# PREFIX=/usr/local ./pandora_server_installer --install

After installation, restart the server:

/etc/init.d/pandora_server restart

Enterprise servers should appear enabled.

To install the Pandora FMS server in a different path, use the option:

./pandora_server_installer --install --destdir <path >

After the installation, you must configure the Pandora FMS server so that it starts automatically during startup and configure the database maintenance script, pandora_db, so that it runs periodically. For example, on GNU/Linux (replace <destdir> with the path you passed to the destdir option):

ln -s <destdir>/etc/init.d/pandora_server /etc/init.d/
echo "\"<destdir>/usr/share/pandora_server/util/pandora_db\" \
  \"<destdir>/etc/pandora/pandora_server.conf\">/dev/null 2>&1"> /etc/cron.hourly/pandora_db

To install the Pandora FMS server with a non-privileged user, launch the following command with the user with whom you want to perform the installation:

./pandora_server_installer --install --no-root --destdir /opt/pandora

This user must have write permissions to the path passed to destdir.

• Installing PFMS Software Agents.

Back to Pandora FMS documentation index