This document is supposed to be a step by step guide on how to install and configure snort version 1.8.3, ACID, a web based frontend for statistical realtime snort data with the underlying MySQL database and its support packages PHPlot and ADODB, SnortSnarf, also a statistical tool with a web frontend for analysing the snort logfile, arachnids_upd for always getting the actual rules from Max Vision's http://www.whitehats.com/ site, and a sample swatch configuration I use to check if snort reports errors which I do not get because snort has stopped.