This is an attempt at a guide and a few helpful pointers for those who don't care to use the prepackaged NAV for Debian.

Versions used:

Make sure you have the non-free archive present in your sources.list. Install NAV's runtime dependencies:

sudo aptitude install perl python sun-java5-jdk apache2-mpm-prefork \
                      cricket php4-gd php4-pgsql postgresql-8.1 tomcat5.5 \
                      libapache2-mod-php4 libapache2-mod-python libpgjava \
                      libpg-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl libdbd-pg-perl \
                      libsnmp1.4-java libsnmp-session-perl python-pysnmp2 \
                      logrotate python-cheetah python-egenix-mxdatetime \
                      python-forgethtml python-forgetsql python-gammu \
                      python-ipy python-ldap python-psycopg python-rrd \
                      makepasswd wwwconfig-common samba-common

OR, check out Morten Werner Forsbring's dummy NAV package, which depends on all of the above. See the following nav-users posting for details: https://postlister.uninett.no/sympa/arc/nav-users/2008-02/msg00001.html . Be aware that NAV doesn't run well under the kaffe Java VM, which is why you should confirm that Sun's Java 5 JDK is installed (sun-java5-jdk).

Next, NAV's build time dependencies:

sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jdk ant autoconf libsnmp1.4-java libtomcat5.5-java python python-cheetah tomcat5.5

tar xvzf nav-3.3.3.tar.gz
cd nav-3.3.3
autoconf
./configure
export CLASSPATH=/usr/share/java/libsnmp-1.4.jar:/usr/share/java/postgresql.jar:/usr/share/java/servlet-api.jar
make
sudo make install

Edit /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf, change ident sameuser into md5 for local users connecting through UNIX sockets (except the postgres user). The file should look something like this:

local   all         postgres                          ident sameuser
local   all         all                               md5

host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          md5
host    all         all         ::1/128               md5

Then reload PosttgreSQL to make the changes effective:

sudo invoke-rc.d postgresql-8.1 reload

While still in the NAV source code directory, cd to doc/sql. The following set of commands assume you have sudo access to run commands as the postgres system user. If not, please become the postgres user in some other way. The procedure has been adapted from doc/sql/README.

To create the set of PostgreSQL users and databases:

sudo -u postgres bash
# The following command will prompt for a password for the new database user.
# Pick one of your own choosing. 
createuser --no-createrole --no-createdb --no-superuser --pwprompt nav
createdb --owner nav --encoding UTF-8 manage
createdb --owner nav --encoding UTF-8 navprofiles
createdb --owner nav --encoding UTF-8 logger
createdb --owner nav --encoding UTF-8 arnold
createlang plpgsql manage
createlang plpgsql navprofiles

Then initialize the schemas and data:

# First, export the password you selected for the database user above:
export PGPASSWORD=<secretpassword>
psql -f manage.sql manage nav
psql -f types.sql manage nav
psql -f snmpoid.sql manage nav
psql -f navprofiles.sql navprofiles nav
psql -f logger.sql logger nav
psql -f arnold.sql arnold nav

Then, take the password you chose for the database user and put this as the value to the userpw_nav option in /usr/local/nav/etc/db.conf.

We do this because we don't install the libraries to the systemwide Python library directories. We do however want them available for use systemwide:

sudo bash -c 'cat << EOF > /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/sitecustomize.py
import sys
__navpath = "/usr/local/nav/lib/python"
if __navpath not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(__navpath)
EOF
'

cd /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps
sudo ln -s /usr/local/nav/apache/webapps/*.war .

cd /usr/local/nav/lib/java
sudo ln -s /usr/share/java/postgresql.jar
sudo ln -s /usr/share/java/libsnmp-1.4.jar

Change /etc/tomcat5.5/server.xml, the line that reads <Connector port=“8180” maxHttpHeaderSize=“8192”: alter port=“8180” to port=“8080”, as NAV expects Tomcat to listen to this port.

Change /etc/default/tomcat5.5, make sure the following two options are set like this:

CATALINA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx128M -server -Djava.ext.dirs=/usr/local/nav/lib/java"
TOMCAT5_SECURITY=no

Then run the following:

sudo invoke-rc.d tomcat5.5 restart

cd /usr/share/perl5
sudo ln -s /usr/local/nav/lib/perl/NAV* .

Put this in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-nav:

ServerName nav.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html index.php index.cgi index.py
AccessFileName .htaccess
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

DocumentRoot /usr/local/nav/apache/webroot
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>

<Directory "/usr/local/nav/apache/webroot">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI 
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

LogLevel warn

<Location />
    # Let NAV authorize all access to this location
    PythonHeaderParserHandler nav.web 
    PythonDebug on
</Location>

Then run the following commands:

sudo a2dissite default
sudo a2ensite default-nav
sudo a2enmod php4
sudo a2enmod mod_python
sudo invoke-rc.d apache2 force-reload

Create groups and users, and set proper permissions:

sudo addgroup --system nav
sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home /usr/local/nav \
             --shell /bin/sh --ingroup nav navcron;
sudo addgroup navcron dialout

cd /usr/local/nav/var
sudo chown -R navcron:nav .

Edit /usr/local/nav/etc/nav.conf, set your ADMIN_MAIL and DOMAIN_SUFFIX options.

Optionally make the nav process control command more available: sudo ln -s /usr/local/nav/bin/nav /usr/sbin/nav

Cricket should already be installed as it is a part of the runtime dependencies.

Remove /etc/cron.d/cricket or comment out the line starting with the following:

*/5 * * * *    cricket ...

Create a directory to place the nav cricket-config:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/nav/etc/cricket-config

Change owner to navcron.nav and make sure nav can write:

sudo chown navcron.nav cricket-config/
sudo chmod g+w cricket-config/

Edit the /etc/cricket/cricket-conf.pl and set this variable:

$gConfigRoot = "/usr/local/nav/etc/cricket-config"

Copy /usr/local/nav/doc/cricket/cricket/subtree-sets to /etc/cricket/

cd /etc/cricket
sudo cp /usr/local/nav/doc/cricket/cricket/subtree-sets .

As navcron, copy recursively /usr/local/nav/doc/cricket/cricket-config/ to your cricket-config

sudo -u navcron cp -r /usr/local/nav/doc/cricket/cricket-config/ /usr/local/nav/etc/cricket-config/

Decide where you want Cricket to store it's datafiles, and create that directory as navcron.

sudo -u navcron mkdir /usr/local/nav/var/cricket-data/

Go to the cricket-config directory and edit the “Defaults” file. Replace the Datadir with the correct path to cricket-data. Don't forget the %auto-target-path%

Target  --default--
    dataDir         = /usr/local/nav/var/cricket-data/%auto-target-path%

Compile the cricket-config as navcron to create the cricket-database.

sudo -u navcron cricket-compile

Run makecricketconfig.pl to create config from the database. The first time, remember that the database should contain data before doing this. Also, it's a good idea to start getDeviceData and let it run a good couple of minutes before making the cricket-config as it then will have gathered and stored data in the database.

cd /usr/local/nav/bin
sudo -u navcron ./makecricketconfig.pl

Now to logging. Cricket defaults to /var/log/cricket as logdir. This directory is created on install, but the owner is cricket. Either create your own logdir and set the correct path ($gLogDir) in /etc/cricket/cricket-conf.pl or change ownership of /var/log/cricket to navcron.

Finally we fix nav's startupscript for cricket. Go to /usr/local/nav/etc/cron.d/ and edit “cricket”.

CRICKETDIR = /usr/lib/cgi-bin/cricket

*/5 * * * * $CRICKETDIR/collect-subtrees normal 
12 5 * * * $BINDIR/makecricketconfig.pl
0 5 * * * $BINDIR/cleanrrds.pl -d -p /usr/local/nav/var/cricket-data/

Now, start Cricket:

cd /usr/local/nav/bin
sudo ./nav start cricket

Make a symlink to the cricket cgi-scripts

cd /usr/local/nav/apache/webroot
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/cgi-bin/cricket/

Create index.cgi, copy css-file to directory

cd /usr/local/nav/apache/webroot/cricket/
sudo ln -s grapher.cgi index.cgi
sudo cp /usr/local/nav/doc/cricket/public_html/cricket.css .