Installation of Moloch/Arkime

• Author : Miroslav Kohútik
• Tested version : 1.7.0
• Operating system : Ubuntu 16.04

Installation of Moloch is no trivial matter, that is why we have prepared this guide on how to set up the system in cloud environment.

Setup before installation

Before installing Moloch itself, you need to install the Elasticsearch database and make the following changes in configuration of the operating system.

Add Java repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java 

Perform an update of the list of packages and packages themselves to the latest versions

sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Download and install the public GPG signing key

wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo apt-key add -

Add Elastic Repository

echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/5.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-5.x.list

Perform another package update

sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y 

Clean-up (Optional)

sudo apt-get autoremove

Disable swap

sudo swapoff -a
sudo nano /etc/fstab

Edit fstab – comment out the following:

#/dev/mapper/logs--vg-swap_1 none     swap   sw      0     0

or

#/dev/mapper/user--vg-swap_1 none     swap   sw      0     0

Install Java 8

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Install Elasticsearch

sudo apt-get install elasticsearch

Install Moloch/Arkime

Install additional necessary packages

sudo apt-get install wget curl libpcre3-dev uuid-dev libmagic-dev pkg-config g++ flex bison zlib1g-dev libffi-dev gettext libgeoip-dev make libjson-perl libbz2-dev libwww-perl libpng-dev xz-utils libffi-dev

Download the  newest version of Moloch/Arkime (Arkime downloads)

wget https://files.molo.ch/builds/ubuntu-16.04/moloch_1.7.0-1_amd64.deb

Install Moloch

Note: when asked whether or not to install Elasticsearch choose no, since you have already installed Elasticsearch earlier and this script offers only the demo version.

sudo dpkg -i moloch_1.7.0-1_amd64.deb

Install dependencies (If the previous step halts due to errors)

sudo apt-get -f install

Configure Moloch/Arkime

Start Elasticsearch on startup

sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch.service

Configure Elasticsearch (OPTIONAL) (Configure as needed [max RAM allocation is 32GB])

It is recommended Elasticsearch be installed on a separate machine

sudo nano /etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options

Start Elasticsearch

sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Check Elasticsearch Status

sudo systemctl status elasticsearch.service

To configure Moloch, you can either download a configuration file from https://github.com/aol/moloch/wiki/Settings or you can configure Moloch yourself using the following two commands

Before configuring Moloch manually, delete the config.ini file from /data/moloch/etc/

sudo rm /data/moloch/etc/config.ini 

Configure Moloch as needed

sudo /data/moloch/bin/Configure

Initialize Elasticsearch Database

sudo /data/moloch/db/db.pl http://localhost:9200 init

Install and update npm

sudo apt install npm
npm update

Add Moloch User

sudo /data/moloch/bin/moloch_add_user.sh admin admin PASSWORDGOESHERE --admin

Start Moloch Capture Service

sudo systemctl start molochcapture.service

Check Moloch Capture Service status

sudo systemctl status molochcapture.service

Start Moloch Viewer Service

sudo systemctl start molochviewer.service

Check Moloch Viewer Service status

sudo systemctl status molochviewer.service

Provided you have done everything right so far, you should be able to access the web interface at http://IPADDRESSOFINTERFACE:8005

Sources:

• Github Information about Moloch
• Moloch Initial Install