DarkStat - Network Bandwidth/Traffic monitoring for Linux *NIX
DarkStat is a simple nTop like Packet Sniffing Network Traffic/Bandwidth monitoring utility for your Linux/Unix. DarkStat relies on libpcap and presents simple webinterface with nice graphs and stats aut-refreshed. The main advantage of Darkstat is that of the footprint and the memory, CPU usage.
DarkStat can run on most of the UNIX, Linux, FreeBSD,OpenBSD,NetBSD,Solaris,Mac OS. There are also packages for Gentoo Opensuse and Debian
Installation is fairly straight forward and no configuration is required. Rather if required you can play around. DarkStat also has a nice Man page.
DarkStat runs in the background of many Cable/DSL routers and are used in pfSense, redWall opensource firewalls.
Lets install DarkStat in Debian here
As always, install the pre-requisites
Install ZLib
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# aptitude install zlib1g-dev
Install libpcap
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# aptitude install libpcap-dev
That’s it lets get installing DarkStat
If you choose to install from the Debian Packages then it is as simple as using the aptitude utility
Install DarkStat as Debian package
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# aptitude install darkstat
Install from Source
If you want to install from source then here we are
Download from here
debian4R2Base:~# http://dmr.ath.cx/net/darkstat/darkstat-3.0.707.tar.bz2
Unzip and Untar
debian4R2Base:~/# tar -jxvf darkstat-3.0.707.tar.bz2
Compile and Install
debian4R2Base:~/# cd darkstat-3.0.707
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# ./configure
Sometime throws error so run with the “–with-chroot-dir” arguement
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# ./configure –with-chroot-dir
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# make && make install
That completes the installation.
To start DarkStat
debian4R2Base:~/darkstat-3.0.707# darkstat -i eth0
where “eth0″ is the interface that you monitor traffic coming in and going out. Change it as in your system.
Now, darkstat starts and sniffs in the background and loads a simple web interface at http://localhost:666 or if you are browsing from a different machine then http://<IP Address>:666 (example: http://192.168.19.131:666)
Once in, no explanation needed all depicted in simple easy graphs showing almost realtime info and historical. So with the hosts and ports. Great tool no wonder used in Cable/DSl routers and in well known OpenSource Firewalls. Well Done!!!
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