snmpacc: SNMP accounting data collection package

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Appendix B. Installation

B.1. Collector Installation

The snmpacc collector should be run under its own user account, such as snmpacc. The user should not be privileged in any way.

snmpacc comes as source code in a compressed TAR archive, which should be unpacked in a subdirectory of the snmpacc user's home directory, e.g. ~snmpacc/src. For example, if the source archive is in snmpacc/snmpacc.tgz, the steps to unpack and compile it are:

The file install.sh.example is the default install script run by make install. If a file called install.sh does not exist, install.sh.example is copied to install.sh before install.sh is run. Thus, changes can be made and retained even if install.sh.example is overwritten by unpacking new versions of the archive.

install.sh.example lays out the following directories, all rooted from the home directory (as specified in the $HOME environment variable):

Run-time files, such as the persistent database files, PID file, and configuration file are kept in the home directory.

If one is happy with the installation procedure, one can proceed to install the code using:

The installation does not create a default configuration file. One can either write this from scratch, or copy snmpacc.cf.example from the source directory. Note that this example assume the above directory layout.

If regular checking of the snmpacc collector is required, the script check-snmpacc.sh should be run from the snmpacc user's crontab. To install this, use crontab -e to edit the user's crontab and add the following line:

This will check every minute that snmpacc is running.

snmpacc should also be started from the system startup. The -u and -d options allow the runtime user and directory to be set at startup time, e.g. if the snmpacc user's home directory is /home/snmpacc, the startup procedure should be modified to include the line:

B.2. Merge installation

The installation process does no special processing for installation of snmpmerge. If only snmpmerge is to be installed, one should not run make and make install; rather it is sufficient to run make snmpmerge, and place the merge process in a convenient location manually.

Typically, the merge process should use separate directories for each set of input files, plus a directory for output files.

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