Let’s Add the WeatherMap Plugin to Our Brand-new Cacti 1.2.23 Installation (Works for All Cacti 1.x upwards)

The Cacti Weathermap is a plugin for the Cacti network monitoring system that allows you to create live network maps from the network statistics you already have. It uses data collected by various plugins, such as RRDtool, MRTG, SNMP, fping, etc., to show you an overview of your network activity in map form. You can customize the appearance and layout of your maps, and use different icons, backgrounds, colors and fonts. You can also add links, labels, notes and legends to your maps.

For older versions of cacti, for example Cacti 0.x the Weathermap Plugin can be found on the good old Network Weathermap website by Howard Jones or his GITHUB Repo. His last release was Weathermap 0.98a way back in May 2019.

For newer versions of cacti, for example Cacti 1.x.x, you can access the PHP Network Weathermap 1.0 on the Cacti GITHUB Repo. The plugin has been forked from the original PHP Network Weathermap project by Howard Jones. This version only works with Cacti 1.2.x onwards and you can find detailed version information on this Repo. In this exercise we are going to install this version of Weathermap on our cacti 1.2.23 version, however the procedure should be the same if your cacti installation starts from 1.x.x upwards.

Step 1: Download the Weathermap Plugin for cacti 1.x from GITHUB to your local PC.

Step 2: Upload the zipped file into “/usr/share/cacti/plugins” of your installation.

You can use WinSCP or FileZilla tools to securely copy the zipped file from your local PC to your cacti server.

Step 3: Unzip the Weathermap Plugin zipped folder.

Step 4: Rename “plugin_weathermap-develop” to “weathermap”.

Step 5: Change file permissions to “rwx” for the “weathermap” directory.

Step 6: Install the Weathermap Plugin in the Cacti Web GUI

Login to your cacti web GUI and click; Console > Configuration > Plugins. You will notice the plugin is listed but status is “Not Installed”.

Click on the gear icon under “Actions” to install the plugin.

Click on the green tick icon still under “Actions” to Enable the plugin. The green tick will change to read button and you should see status “Active”. The weathermap button will also appear on the top menu of the cacti web GUI as seen in the screenshot below:

Step 7: Create your first weathermap in the Cacti Web GUI

To create your first weather map, click Console > Management > Weathermaps and click on the plus icon in the top right corner as shown in the screenshot below:

And here is a quick “how to change cacti weather map properties?”, you can also download a PDF version here

If you have any questions regarding cacti installations or if you landed on this article because you are having challenges with your cacti weathermap installation. Please feel free to engage with me on the Q & A forum on this website. Am active on this forum and will be able to respond to your queries as soon as possible.