How to Install and Configure the Xymon Monitoring Client on CentOS 7 and Debian 9

The Xymon infrastructure monitoring system (formerly Hobbit / Big Brother) provides lightweight, low-overhead system health tracking for servers. While Debian repositories package xymon-client directly via APT, Enterprise Linux distributions like CentOS 7 require building from source.

Supported Platforms: CentOS 7 (Source compilation) • Debian 9 (APT package)

1. Compiling on CentOS 7

# 1. Create dedicated system user
groupadd xymon
useradd -g xymon -m xymon

# 2. Install build dependencies
yum install gcc make fping pcre-devel openssl-devel openldap-devel rrdtool-devel libtirpc-devel -y

# 3. Download and compile client
cd /usr/src
wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/xymon/files/Xymon/4.3.30/xymon-4.3.30.tar.gz
tar -zxf xymon-4.3.30.tar.gz
cd xymon-4.3.30
./configure --client

make && make install

# 4. Install system service script
cp rpm/xymon-client.init /etc/init.d/xymon-client
cp rpm/xymon-client.default /etc/default/xymon-client
chmod +x /etc/init.d/xymon-client

# Configure server IP in /etc/default/xymon-client:
# XYMONSERVERS="YOUR.XYMON.SERVER.IP"

service xymon-client start
chkconfig xymon-client on

2. Installation on Debian 9 / Ubuntu

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xymon-client -y