Installing Check_MK client on a Linux server

Installing a Check_Mk client is not hard but can be quite lengthy. This means there are a lot of things to do and a lot of chances to make a mistake. Hopefully the steps below will help you set up a client without too much fuss. I've broken it into 4 major steps.
First, some pre-requisites: Xinetd has to be installed on the server to be monitored. Second, the Check_mk or OMD server has to be installed or at the very least, you know what the IP address of the server will be and have access to the Check_mk client files.
The 4 Steps are :

1. Install the Check_MK client program / agent to the server to be monitored
1. Find where check_mk client package is stored on the monitoring server. Usually at /opt/omd/versions/1.30/share/check_mk/agents. If you stored the client files on a different server, use that instead. There is also a URL available at the Wato configuration interface under Monitoring Agents.
2. Find the client that matches the OS of the server to be monitored / target server. If for a Linux server, find the matching package. Eg. for CentOS the agent is check-mk-agent-1.2.6p12-1.noarch.rpm. There is a MSI Windows installer file for Windows server.
3. Copy the file to server to be monitored. For example, for a CentOS server: scp /opt/omd/versions/1.20/share/check_mk/agents/check-mk-agent-1.2.6p12-1.noarch.rpm user@targetserver:/tmp
4.  Install the agent:  yum install check-mk-agent-1.2.6p12-1.noarch.rpm
5. Check whether the client is working by running the file you just copied from the prompt (check_mk_agent). 
6. For extra points, copy the waitmax program in the same directory to the same location.This program is sometimes used by the check_mk_agent program. If you installed from a package, this is automatically done.
2. Configure xinetd to respond to polls from monitoring server 
1. Copy the xinet.conf file from the monitoring server to the target server's /etc/xinetd.d directory, renaming the file into check_mk in the process. This can be achieved with a command like this:   scp /opt/omd/versions/1.20/share/check_mk/agents/xinetd.conf user@targetserver:/etc/xinetd.d/check_mk
2. Configure the xinetd check_mk file.
1. Uncomment the #only_from  line and add the IP address of the monitoring server.
2.  Extra points: Add a line to configure the agent to only listen to only one interface. This is useful is the server has multiple interfaces. The line to listen only on 192.168.1.1 is : bind = 192.168.1.1
3. Restart the xinetd on the target server using the comment service xinetd restart.
3. Create Firewall rules to allow the monitoring server access to Check_MK client (port 6556). This depends on the firewall being used. Below is an example how to do it on a CentOS/RedHat server running iptables.
1.  Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/iptables
2. Find other lines that look similar to the following line and add this : -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 6556 -j ACCEPT
3.  Make sure that the line you added is between the lines marked *filter and COMMIT.
4. Apply the new setting by running the command: service iptables restart.
4. Add entry on the monitoring server. Use WATO to add the new host.

If your security processes don't allow direct copying to the any of the directories mentioned above, copy the files to a directory where you have the rights to, first. Then logon onto the target server, escalate your privileges with the sudo command and copy the files to the correct location.