You will need the subversion package (install with aptitude install subversion).

• Make a backup of your /etc/monit directory.
• Change directory to /etc/monit and issue:

svn co http://svn.grimore.org/configuration-templates/monit/debian/templates

this will have the effect of creating a templates folder that you can update with svn update when there are template updates.

• Checkout the monitrc file in the same directory:

svn export http://svn.grimore.org/configuration-templates/monit/debian/monitrc --force .

and adjust as necessary.

• Change ownership of the /etc/monit/monitrc file to 0700:

chmod 0700 /etc/monit/monitrc

• Create links from template files from /etc/monit/templates/ into /etc/monit/conf.d/ depending on what services you want running. For instance, to monitor Apache, you would issue:

ln -sf /etc/monit/templates/apache /etc/monit/conf.d/

• Restart monit.