Another option if you want to run the latest version: The pre-compiled generic monit package from the monit project works OK without this problem, but Ubuntu stores the config files in a non-default location so you have to specify the path to /etc/monit/monitrc with each command.
Another option if you want to run the latest version: The pre-compiled generic monit package from the monit project works OK without this problem, but Ubuntu stores the config files in a non-default location so you have to specify the path to /etc/monit/monitrc with each command.