OpenSource NetMonitoring » Bandwidth-Monitoring

DarkStat – Network Bandwidth/Traffic monitoring for Linux *NIX

admin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:19:08 +0000

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://: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!!!

vnStat PHP Frontend – Install & Config Webinterface for vnStat

admin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:07:50 +0000

B. Dijkstra at SQWEEK.com has written a simple PHP web frontend for vnStat. The latest stable version is 1.4.1 and is available for download here

vnStat PHP Frontend requires

Apache Webserver (use Apache2.2.3 here)

PHP (use PHP5.2.0-8)

GD Image librariesvnStat already installed

So lets get the prerequisites install.

Install PHP5

DebianSystem# aptitude install php5

Install GD Image Libraries

DebianSystem# aptitude install php5-gd

Install Apache2 Webserver

DebianSystem# aptitude install apache2

Now, the pre-requisites are installed. You need to have a functional vnStat running on the system. For install instructions click here

Download vnStat PHP Frontend

Download the vnStat PHP Frontend from here

DebianSystem# wget http://www.sqweek.com/sqweek/files/vnstat_php_frontend-1.4.1.tar.gz

Unzip & Untar the files

DebianSystem# tar -zxvf vnstat_php_frontend-1.4.1.tar.gz

Move the files to Apache Webserver Root

DebianSystem# mv vnstat_php_frontend-1.4.1 /var/www/vnstat

Edit Config file for the Interfaces

DebianSystem# vi config.php

Look for

$iface_list = array(‘eth0′);

and

$iface_title['eth0'] = ‘Internal’;
//$iface_title['eth1'] = ‘Internet’;
//$iface_title['sixxs'] = ‘SixXS IPv6′;

and alter it to your systems requirement acfordingly (say change name of interfaces or add multiple interfaces)

Example

$iface_list = array(‘eth0′ , ‘eth1′);

Now, that all is done, simply access the site and you can see the vnStat stats with graphs that you would otherwise see only in console.

Install and run vnStat as a Non-Root user

admin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:26:38 +0000

One of the advantages of vnStat is that it can be installed and run as a Non-Root user. This can be of a great help to query vnStat of scripts or allow operators to run the vnStat utility.

Download vnStat

Download vnStat from here

DebianSystem# wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-1.6.tar.gz

Unzip & Untar the downloaded the file

DebianSystem# tar -zxvf vnstat-1.6.tar.gz

ChangeDirectory & Compile

DebianSystem# cd vnstat-1.6

DebianSystem:/vnstat-1.6# make

Create Database Directory

If there was no errors, copy src/vnstat to some directory included in $PATH variable(say ~/bin/) and create the database directory.

DebianSystem# cp src/vnstat ~/bin/
DebianSystem# cp cfg/vnstat.conf ~/.vnstatrc
DebianSystem# mkdir ~/.vnstat

Test Kernel compatibility

DebianSystem# vnstat –testkernel

Edit Config file & Add Database Directory

DebianSystem# vi ~/.vnstatrc

Locate

DatabaseDir “/var/lib/vnstat”

and replace with

DatabaseDir “/pathtoyourhomedir/.vnstat”

and save the file.

Next every interface that should be monitored needs to be added to vnStat. This creates a database for each of the interface.

DebianSystem# vnstat -u -i eth0

where eth0 is the interface name. Change it to the interface on your system.

CRON Job
Add a crontab job entry for vnStat.

DebianSystem# crontab -e

and add the following line

*/5 * * * * ~/bin/vnstat -u

Allow it to collect enough traffic information after which run vnstat

DebianSystem# vnstat

Also, in any case you can check the config file ~/.vnstatrc for interface and other settings.

For more options and examples for the command, click here

vnStat Network traffic/Bandwidth Monitoring for Linux

admin — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:59:52 +0000

vnStat is a free OpenSource (GPL License) network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface(s) on the system. Unlike other Network Traffic monitors, vnStat analyzes the traffic information from the /proc filesystem. And, vnStat can be used even without root permissions.

vnStat maintains a database for every interface for which the network traffic analysed. We can watch the live Traffic status on the selected interface(s) or run reports on Hourly, Daily, Weekly and Monthly bandwidth statics for the selected network interfaces.

To install vnStat, all you need is the required C compiler installed.

Here I install vnStat on a Debian 4.0R2 system

Download vnStat

Download the vnStat from here

DebianSystem# wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-1.6.tar.gz

Unzip & Untar the downloaded the file

DebianSystem# tar -zxvf vnstat-1.6.tar.gz

Install C Compilers

Ensure that the required C compilers are installed in the system. In debian to install the required packages to compile

DebianSystem# aptitude install build-essentials

ChangeDirectory & Install

DebianSystem# cd vnstat-1.6

DebianSystem:/vnstat-1.6# make

DebianSystem:/vnstat-1.6# make all

That installs the vnStat Bandwidth monitoring software.

Test the Kernel

DebianSystem# vnstat –testkernel

Create Interface Database

Run the following to create a database for each of the interfaces that you would want to monitor traffic bandwidth on.

DebianSystem# vnu -u -i eth0

This creates a database for the interface eth0

Now, give it a few minutes to collect enough data to provide useful statistics.

To show the summary simply type vnstat

DebianSystem# vnstat
Database updated: Sun Dec 2 22:20:01 2007

inet (eth0)

received:     735.00 GB (48.9%)
transmitted:     769.38 GB (51.1%)
total:       1.47 TB

rx     |     tx     | total
———————–+————+———–
yesterday     23.35 MB |   20.25 MB |   43.60 MB
today     27.47 MB |   21.37 MB |   48.84 MB
———————–+————+———–
estimated        29 MB |      22 MB |      51 MB

To show hourly statistics

DebianSystem# vnstat -h
inet (eth0)                                                              22:15
^                                                                 r
|                                                                 rt r
|                                                                 rt rt
|                                                                 rt rt
|                                                              r rt rt
|     rt                                                       r rt rt
|     rt                                                 rt    rt rt rt
| rt rt rt                                  r r rt r rt r rt rt rt
| rt rt rt                               r rt rt rt rt rt rt rt rt rt
| rt rt rt rt r              r     r r r rt rt rt rt rt rt rt rt rt rt
-+—————————————————————————>
| 23 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

h   rx (kB)    tx (kB)      h   rx (kB)    tx (kB)      h   rx (kB)    tx (kB)
23      1,352      1,219    07        277        151    15      1,352      1,165
00      2,281      2,140    08        402        158    16      1,487        878
01      1,485      1,261    09        290        155    17      1,752      1,559
02        648        522    10        589        185    18      1,455      1,001
03        392        261    11        650        202    19      2,332      1,835
04        323        240    12        907        350    20      3,881      3,619
05        311        179    13      1,234      1,044    21      3,695      3,237
06        281        173    14      1,221        812    22        675        591

Other options are

   -q, –query        query database
-h, –hours        show hours
-d, –days        show days
-m, –months        show months
-w, –weeks        show weeks
-t, –top10        show top10
-s, –short        use short output
-u, –update        update database
-i, –iface        change interface (default: eth0)
-?, –help        short help
-v, –version        show version
-tr, –traffic        calculate traffic
-l, –live        show transfer rate in real time

OpenSource NetMonitoring » Bandwidth-Monitoring

DarkStat – Network Bandwidth/Traffic monitoring for Linux *NIX

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