smokeping-guide/README.md

Smokeping Guide

This guide will walk you through how to set up smokeping on a raspberry pi using docker and ubuntu server.

Install Ubuntu Server

Download Ubuntu Image

In our example we're using a pi 3, so we'll go and grab their Ubuntu install image from here. When choosing the image, I recommend using 64 bit.

Install Etcher

You can use any variety of programs for this, including something as basic as dd, however for ease of use I recommend using etcher. Once downloaded, install the program.

Write image

Once etcher is installed, unzip the the Ubuntu Server image and use etcher to write it to an SD card. It will prompt you to type in a password, this is normal.

If the SD card was already mounted it may fail, just retry and it should work fine.

Edit pre-boot configuration files

Once etcher has finished, macos will automatically mount the boot partition of the SD card ready for use. Ubuntu server ships with two files in the boot partition to allow customisations such as network config and passwords before first boot:

network-config
user-data

These config files are only used on the first boot, modifying them after first boot will have no effect. If you want to re-apply you must re-flash the SD card or manually edit the pi's configuration files by logging in to it.

network-config

The network-config set up the network interfaces for options such as:

• DHCP
• Static IP
• Wifi Networks

For the purposes of this tutorial it is safe to leave it as standard - this will give the pi a dynamic DHCP address.

user-data

The user-data file is used for a variety of configuration items, such as setting up users, installing packages, configuring hostnames etc. For the purposes of this tutorial we are going to do the following things:

• Disable automatic password expiry for the default user
• set the hostname to smokepi

To do this, edit the user-data config file, find the following section and modify it from:

chpasswd:
  expire: false
  list:
  - ubuntu:ubuntu

To:

chpasswd:
  expire: true
  list:
  - ubuntu:ubuntu

hostname: smokepi

Optionally you could change the default user from ubuntu to adam and the default password from ubuntu to password1 by changing it to this instead:

chpasswd:
  expire: true
  list:
  - adam:password1

hostname: smokepi

First boot

Once the pi has booted, we must wait for it to stop installing updates before we can continue. To check this, run the following command:

while true; do date; ps aux | grep unattended; sleep 5; done

This will start a never-ending command that will print all processes matching "unattended" back to the console. When updates are complete, it should simply return two lines that match.

Install Docker

This section was taken from docker's own documentation available here.

Install pre-requisites

First we must install the packages that Ubuntu needs in order to configure the docker repository:

sudo apt-get install \
    apt-transport-https \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg-agent \
    software-properties-common

Add Docker GPG key

Next we must install Docker's GPG key so that your pi trusts the docker packages it is about to install:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Add Docker repositories

Now we will install the docker packages. If you installed 64 bit Ubuntu (recommended), run:

sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=arm64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

If you installed 32 bit Ubuntu, run:

sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=armhf] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

Install Docker packages

Now we must install docker itself with the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Add ubuntu user to docker groups

Now we must add the ubuntu user to the docker group. Doing this ensures that you can run the docker command without prefixing it with sudo:

usermod -aG docker ubuntu

Once this is done you will need to disconnect and reconnect your ssh connection in order for your user's group membership to be picked up.

If you changed the username in the user-data, change ubuntu for whichever username you chose.

Test that docker is working

Finally you should check that docker is up and running by running docker ps. Below is what the output should look like when running the command:

ubuntu@smokepi:~/ $ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                   COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                  NAMES

Clear graphs

sudo rm -rf /opt/smokeping/data/*