Welcome!

Thank you for selecting RackTables as your datacenter management solution! If you are looking for documentation or wish to send feedback, please look for the respective links at project's web-site.

How to install RackTables

1. Prepare the server

RackTables uses a web-server with PHP (7.0 is the minimum required version, 7.1 is the minimum tested version, 7.3 is the recommended version) for front-end and a MySQL/MariaDB server version 5 or later for back-end. The most commonly used web-server for RackTables is Apache httpd.

1.1. Install MySQL/MariaDB server

Distribution	How to do
Debian 11-12	apt-get install mariadb-server
FreeBSD 10	pkg install mysql56-server
Ubuntu 20.04	apt-get install mariadb-server
Ubuntu 22.04	apt-get install mariadb-server
RHEL 7	yum install -y mariadb-server mariadb

1.2. Enable Unicode in the MySQL/MariaDB server

Distribution	How to do
Debian 11-12	No action required, comes configured for UTF-8 by default.
Ubuntu 20.04	No action required, comes configured for UTF-8 by default.
RHEL 7	add character-set-server=utf8 line to [server] section of /etc/my.cnf.d/server.cnf file and restart mysqld

1.3. Install PHP and Apache httpd (or nginx)

Distribution	How to do
Debian 11-12	apt-get install apache2-bin libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-mysql php-mbstring php-bcmath php-json php-snmp && systemctl restart apache2
FreeBSD 10	see note 1.3.c
Ubuntu any release	apt-get install apache2-bin libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-mysql php-mbstring php-bcmath php-json php-snmp
RHEL 7	subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms
	yum install httpd24 rh-php70 rh-php70-php-mysqlnd rh-php70-php-pdo rh-php70-php-gd rh-php70-php-snmp rh-php70-php-mbstring rh-php70-php-bcmath rh-php70-php-ldap rh-php70-php

1.3.a. [no longer applies]

1.3.b. [no longer applies]

1.3.c. FreeBSD 10

There are 3 different ways how you can install RackTables and its dependencies on FreeBSD.

A. use pkg (Binary Package Management) (not always the newest version)

# pkg install racktables
# pkg install mod_php56 mysql56-server

As of March 2017 this will install RackTables Version 0.20.11 and its dependencies (php 5.6, mysql-server 5.6 and apache 2.4).

B. use the ports system (possibly more recent than pkg)

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/racktables
# make install
# pkg install mod_php56 mysql56-server

As of March 2017 this will install RackTables Version 0.20.11 and build and install its dependencies (php 5.6, mysql-server 5.6 and apache 2.4).

C. manual (newest version)

Install dependencies with pkg:

# pkg install php70-bcmath php70-curl php70-filter php70-gd php70-gmp php70-json php70-mbstring php70-openssl php70-pdo php70-pdo_mysql php70-session php70-simplexml php70-snmp php70-sockets
# pkg install mod_php70 mysql56-server

unpack tar.gz/zip archive to /usr/local/www

symlink racktables dir

# cd /usr/local/www
# ln -s RackTables-0.20.xx racktables

Common install steps

Apache users should create a racktables.conf file under their apache Includes directory with the following contents:

AddType  application/x-httpd-php         .php

<Directory /usr/local/www/racktables/wwwroot>
	DirectoryIndex index.php
	Require all granted
</Directory>
Alias /racktables /usr/local/www/racktables/wwwroot

Start services:

# echo 'apache24_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
# service apache24 start
# echo 'mysql_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
# service mysql-server start

Browse to http://address.to.your.server/racktables/index.php and follow the instructions.

Note: set secret.php permissions when prompted.

# chown www:www /usr/local/www/racktables/wwwroot/inc/secret.php
# chmod 400 /usr/local/www/racktables/wwwroot/inc/secret.php

1.3.d. RHEL 7

Apache configuration and webroot is under /opt/rh/httpd24/root/

2. Copy the files

Unpack the tar.gz/zip archive to a directory of your choice and configure Apache httpd to use wwwroot subdirectory as a new DocumentRoot. Alternatively, symlinks to wwwroot or even to index.php from an existing DocumentRoot are also possible and often advisable (see README.Fedora).

3. Run the installer

Open the configured RackTables URL and you will be prompted to configure and initialize the application.

Distribution	Apache httpd UID:GID	MySQL/MariaDB UNIX socket path
Debian 11-12	www-data:www-data	/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Ubuntu 20.04	www-data:www-data	/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Ubuntu 22.04	www-data:www-data	/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

How to upgrade RackTables

0. Backup your database and check the release notes below before actually starting the upgrade.
1. Remove all existing files except configuration (the inc/secret.php file) and local plugins (in the plugins/ directory).
2. Put the contents of the new tar.gz/zip archive into the place.
3. Open the RackTables page in a browser. The software will detect version mismatch and display a message telling to log in as admin to finish the upgrade.
4. Do that and report any errors to the bug tracker or the mailing list.

Release notes

Upgrading to 0.22.0

As of this release the minimum supported PHP version is 7.0.

Upgrading to 0.21.2

This version drops support for the $localreports global variable, which is trivial to replace in a local plugin if necessary.

There has been a separation of the addJS() and addCSS() functions to easily identify the resource usage. The original addJS() and addCSS() functions will most likely be removed in 0.22.0 as they are deprecated.

• addJSText()/addCSSText()

  These functions should be used to add inline JS/CSS not defined in a separate file.

• addJSInternal()/addCSSInternal()

  These functions should be used to add an internal reference to a JS/CSS file which is accessed using the ?module=chrome&uri= for self hosted JS/CSS files. This can be utilised by both the core and plugins.

• addJSExternal()/addCSSExternal()

  These functions should be used to add an external reference to a JS/CSS file which hosted on an external site or CDN. This can be utilised by both the core and plugins.

Each of these functions expect the first parameter to be the data or URI, and the second parameter to be an optional group. By default, the group is set to 'default' and groups are sorted alphabetically. It should be noted that when the addJSInternal() function is used, it will also add the jQuery and RackTables common JavaScript functons.

Due to this separation, you will no longer need to supply a TRUE or FALSE to identify whether the parameter value is text or a URI. If you rename an existing addJS()/addCSS() function call, be sure to remove this parameter. Failure to do so will mean you are effectively be saying that the group name is '' (FALSE) or '1' (TRUE).

Upgrading to 0.21.0

From now on the minimum (oldest) release of PHP that can run RackTables is 5.5.0.

This release introduces a new plugin architecture. If you experience issues after the upgrade, try disabling plugins. Refer to http://wiki.racktables.org/index.php/Plugins for more information.

Upgrading to 0.20.11

New IPV4_TREE_SHOW_UNALLOCATED configuration option introduced to disable dsplaying unallocated networks in IPv4 space tree. Setting it also disables the "knight" feature.

Upgrading to 0.20.7

From now on the minimum (oldest) release of PHP that can run RackTables is 5.2.10. In particular, to continue running RackTables on CentOS 5 it is necessary to replace its php* RPM packages with respective php53* packages before the upgrade (except the JSON package, which PHP 5.3 provides internally).

Database triggers are used for some data consistency measures. The database user account must have the 'TRIGGER' privilege, which was introduced in MySQL 5.1.7.

The IPV4OBJ_LISTSRC configuration option is reset to an expression that enables the IP addressing feature for all object types except those listed.

Tags could now be assigned on the Edit/Properties tab using a text input with auto-completion. Type a star '*' to view full tag tree in auto-complete menu. It is worth to add the following line to the permissions script if the old-fashioned 'Tags' tab is not needed any more:

  deny {$tab_tags} # this hides 'Tags' tab

This release converts collation of all DB fields to the utf8_unicode_ci. This procedure may take some time, and could fail if there are rows that differ only by letter case. If this happen, you'll see the failed SQL query in upgrade report with the "Duplicate entry" error message. Feel free to continue using your installation. If desired so, you could eliminate the case-duplicating rows and re-apply the failed query.

Upgrading to 0.20.6

New MGMT_PROTOS configuration option replaces the TELNET_OBJS_LISTSRC, SSH_OBJS_LISTSRC and RDP_OBJS_LISTSRC options (converting existing settings as necessary). MGMT_PROTOS allows to specify any management protocol for a particular device list using a RackCode filter. The default value (ssh: {$typeid_4}, telnet: {$typeid_8}) produces ssh://server.fqdn for servers and telnet://switch.fqdn for network switches.

Upgrading to 0.20.5

This release introduces the VS groups feature. VS groups is a new way to store and display virtual services configuration. There is a new "ipvs" (VS group) realm. All previously existing VS configuration remains functional and user is free to convert it to the new format, which displays it in a more natural way and allows to generate virtual_server_group keepalived configs. To convert a virtual service to the new format, it is necessary to manually create a VS group object and assign IP addresses to it. The VS group will display a "Migrate" tab to convert the old-style VS objects, which can be removed after a successful conversion.

The old-style VS configuration becomes deprecated. Its support will be removed in a future major release. So it is strongly recommended to convert it to the new format.

Upgrading to 0.20.4

Please note that some dictionary items of Cisco Catalyst 2960 series switches were renamed to meet official Cisco classification:

old name	new name
2960-48TT	2960-48TT-L
2960-24TC	2960-24TC-L
2960-24TT	2960-24TT-L
2960-8TC	2960-8TC-L
2960G-48TC	2960G-48TC-L
2960G-24TC	2960G-24TC-L
2960G-8TC	2960G-8TC-L
C2960-24	C2960-24-S
C2960G-24PC	C2960-24PC-L

The DATETIME_FORMAT configuration option used in setting date and time output format now uses a different syntax. During upgrade the option is reset to the default value, which is now %Y-%m-%d (YYYY-MM-DD) per ISO 8601.

This release intoduces two new configuration options: REVERSED_RACKS_LISTSRC and NEAREST_RACKS_CHECKBOX.

Upgrading to 0.20.1

The 0.20.0 release includes a bug that breaks IP networks' capacity displaying on 32-bit architecture machines. To fix this, this release makes use of PHP's BC Math module. It is a new reqiurement. Most PHP distributions have this module already enabled, but if yours does not - you need yo recompile PHP.

Security context of 'ipaddress' page now includes tags from the network containing an IP address. This means that you should audit your permission rules to check there is no unintended allows of changing IPs based on network's tagset. Example:

	allow {client network} and {New York}

This rule now not only allows any operation on NY client networks, but also any operation with IP addresses included in those networks. To fix this, you should change the rule this way:

	allow {client network} and {New York} and not {$page_ipaddress}

Upgrading to 0.20.0

WARNING: This release have too many internal changes, some of them were waiting more than a year to be released. So this release is considered "BETA" and is recommended only to curiuos users, who agree to sacrifice the stability to the progress.

Racks and Rows are now stored in the database as Objects. The RackObject table was renamed to Object. SQL views were created to ease the migration of custom reports and scripts.

New plugins engine instead of local.php file. To make your own code stored in local.php work, you must move the local.php file into the plugins/ directory. The name of this file does not matter any more. You also can store multiple files in that dir, separate your plugins by features, share them and try the plugins from other people just placing them into plugins/ dir, no more merging.

• $path_to_local_php variable has no special meaning any more.
• $racktables_confdir variable is now used only to search for secret.php file.
• $racktables_plugins_dir is a new overridable special variable pointing to plugins/ directory.

Beginning with this version it is possible to delete IP prefixes, VLANs, Virtual services and RS pools from within theirs properties tab. So please inspect your permissions rules to assure there are no undesired allows for deletion of these objects. To ensure this, you could try this code in the beginning of permissions script:

allow {userid_1} and {$op_del}
deny {$op_del} and ({$tab_edit} or {$tab_properties})

Hardware gateways engine was rewritten in this version of RackTables. This means that the file gateways/deviceconfig/switch.secrets.php is not used any more. To get information about configuring connection properties and credentials in a new way please read this.

This also means that recently added features based on old API (D-Link switches and Linux gateway support contributed by Ilya Evseev) are not working any more and waiting to be forward-ported to new gateways API. Sorry for that.

Two new config variables appeared in this version:

• SEARCH_DOMAINS. Comma-separated list of DNS domains that are considered "base" for your network. If RackTables search engine finds multiple objects based on your search input, but there is only one that has FQDN consisting of your input and one of these search domains, you will be redirected to this object and other results will be discarded. Such behavior was unconditional since 0.19.3, which caused many objections from users. So welcome this config var.
• QUICK_LINK_PAGES. Comma-separated list of RackTables pages to display links to them on top. Each user could have his own list.

Also some of config variables have changed their default values in this version. This means that upgrade script will change their values if you have them in previous default state. This could be inconvenient, but it is the most effective way to encourage users to use new features. If this behavior is not what you want, simply revert these variables' values:

variable	old	new	comment
SHOW_LAST_TAB	no	yes
IPV4_TREE_SHOW_USAGE	yes	no	Networks' usage is still available by click.
IPV4LB_LISTSRC	{$typeid_4}	false
FILTER_DEFAULT_ANDOR	or	and	This implicitly enables the feature of dynamic tree shrinking.
FILTER_SUGGEST_EXTRA	no	yes	Yes, we have extra logical filters!
IPV4_TREE_RTR_AS_CELL	yes	no	Display routers as simple text, not cell.

Also please note that variable IPV4_TREE_RTR_AS_CELL now has third special value besides 'yes' and 'no': 'none'. Use 'none' value if you are experiencing low performance on IP tree page. It will completely disable IP ranges scan for used/spare IPs and the speed of IP tree will increase radically. The price is you will not see the routers in IP tree at all.