Tutorial: Installing Oxidized on Fedora Server

In this tutorial, we will be installing Oxidized on the latest version of Fedora Server. Oxidized is a network device configuration backup tool that is used to help network administrators maintain the configuration state of their routers, switches, and other networking devices. Follow the steps given below to install Oxidized on Fedora Server.

Prerequisites

  • A fresh installation of Fedora Server
  • A terminal window

Step 1 - Update your Package List

Before installing Oxidized, it is necessary to update your package list. Open your terminal window and execute the following command:

dnf update

This command will download and install package updates from your configured software repositories.

Step 2 - Install prerequisites

The following packages are required to be installed prior to installing Oxidized:

  • git
  • ruby
  • ruby-devel
  • libsqlite3-dev

Enter the following command in your terminal window to install them:

dnf install git ruby ruby-devel libsqlite3-dev

This command will install the required dependencies.

Step 3 - Installing Oxidized

Once the prerequisites are installed, the next step is to obtain the latest version of Oxidized from Github. Execute the following command in your terminal window:

git clone https://github.com/ytti/oxidized.git

This command will clone the Oxidized repository into your current working directory.

Next, we need to install the bundler gem using the following command:

gem install bundler

Now we navigate to the root directory and run Bundler to install all necessary gems:

cd oxidized
bundle install

Once the process has completed, we create a configuration file with the following command:

cp oxidized.sample.rb oxidized.rb

By default, the oxidized.rb file contains a series of comments that explain various configuration options. We can enable modeules by uncommenting them, and configure various settings to our liking. See Oxidized's documentation for more information on configuring the application.

In order to run Oxidized, execute the following command within the root directory of the installation:

oxidized

Conclusion

At this point, you should have Oxidized installed on your Fedora Server. You can now use Oxidized to backup configurations of your devices. You may also consider automating the execution of oxidized by creating a service file, or using a tool such as systemd to manage it more easily.