Documentation is DECADES old and has been neglected

[CapitalF]

I started using Cacti back in 2003-ish.

And apparently that was the last time much of it's documentation was updated.

http://cacti.net/documentation.php

The "Comprehensive Linux Install Guide" is from 2004!

The "Solaris Install Guide" is also from 2004! Also, SOLARIS. Freaking Solaris.

Much of the documentation guides are good, but they need some serious polish and updating. There are missing steps and information where things have changed.

This requirement, as an example, is completely undocumented: http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=56848

The install guide mentions using a "cactiuser" system account, but there is no step to actually add the user.

File permissions need to be documented in better detail:

Suggestion from my notes file:

Directory Permission Checks During the install, these directories need to be owned by the Web Server user.

Required Writable at Install Time Only /var/www/cacti/resource/snmp_queries /var/www/cacti/resource/script_server /var/www/cacti/resource/script_queries /var/www/cacti/scripts

Required Writable after Install Complete /var/www/cacti/log /var/www/cacti/cache/boost /var/www/cacti/cache/mibcache /var/www/cacti/cache/realtime /var/www/cacti/cache/spikekill

installation/upgrade permissions sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/cacti sudo find /var/www/cacti -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti -type f -exec chmod u=rw,g=r,o=r '{}' +

operational permissions sudo chown -R root:www-data /var/www/cacti sudo chown -R cactiuser /var/www/cacti/rra /var/www/cacti/log /var/www/cacti/cache sudo find /var/www/cacti -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti -type f -exec chmod u=rw,g=r,o=r '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti/cache -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,g=rwx,o=rx '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti/cache -type f -exec chmod u=rw,g=wr,o=r '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti/log -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,g=rwx,o=rx '{}' + sudo find /var/www/cacti/log -type f -exec chmod u=rw,g=wr,o=r '{}' +

Assumes /var/www/cacti as the install directory.

Better Apache config examples need to be provided. Apache 1.3 was in use back then!

I would suggest starting a forum thread and let the users chime in with their input and contributions.

[browniebraun]

Feel free to rewrite it. We are doing all of this work in our spare time beside having a family, being a single parent and at least, oh wow, having a full time job as managers / senior engineers. Reading those inline comments makes me feel that a few people do not understand/accept that. Disappointing, really disappointing.

[cigamit]

Yes, approaching two decades. It needs some community support.

[CapitalF]

I would suggest a request for help on the forum (By an authority figure) and let users contribute if they can.

The existing documentation isn't worthless. It just needs minor updating and improvement.

Keeping the old documentation up also has the effect that people can point to it and say there's documentation so there isn't a problem. An information vacuum gets filled. Take the old docs down and put them somewhere to use as examples, but don't let them be the first impression users look at on trying to install.

Also the wiki site is really good (doc.cacti.net). I might suggest removing the old documentation link (http://www.cacti.net/documentation.php) on the main site entirely and just linking to the wiki instead. Splitting effort between two documentation systems makes for more work. I don't know how you devs want to do it, but that link gives a really bad impression with the docs being from 2004. They should be kept around for posterity, but should not be the first-stop for new users.

[ronytomen]

Documentation will be moved to GitHub Wiki and I will update documentation wiki links to automatically forward to GitHub.

[netniV]

https://github.com/Cacti/documentation/issues/4 has been opened on the documentation repo, this should be considered part of it.