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Nagios is an awesome Open Source monitoring tool, its provides you more comprehensive monitoring environment to always keep an eye on your all machines / networks whether you are in a your data center or just your small labs.

With Nagios, you can monitor your remote hosts and their services remotely on a single window. It shows warnings and indicates if something goes wrong in your servers which eventually helps us to detect some problems before they occur. It helps us to reduce downtime and business losses.

Recently, Nagios released its latest versions Nagios Core 4.3.4 and its latest stable release of Nagios plugins 2.2.1 on April 19, 2017.

This article is intended to guide you with easy instructions on how to install latest Nagios Core 4.3.4 from source (tarball) on RHEL 7.x/6.x/5.x, CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x and Fedora 26-20 distributions.

Within 30 minutes you will be monitoring your local machine, no any advanced installation procedure only basic installation that will work 100% on most of the today’s Linux servers.

Please Note: The installation instructions were shown in here are written based on CentOS 7.2 Linux distribution.

Installing Nagios 4.3.4 and Nagios Plugin 2.2.1

If you follow these instructions correctly, you will end up with following information.

1. Nagios and its plugins will be installed under /usr/local/nagios directory.
2. Nagios will be configured to monitor few services of your local machine (Disk Usage, CPU Load, Current Users, Total Processes, etc.)
3. Nagios web interface will be available at http://localhost/nagios

Step 1: Install Required Dependencies

We need to install Apache, PHP and some libraries like gcc, glibc, glibc-common and GD libraries and its development libraries before installing Nagios 4.3.4 with source. And to do so, we can use yum default package installer.

[root@tecmint]# yum install -y httpd httpd-tools php gcc glibc glibc-common gd gd-devel make net-snmp

-------------- On Fedora 22+ Onwards -------------- 
[root@tecmint]# dnf install -y httpd httpd-tools php gcc glibc glibc-common gd gd-devel make net-snmp

Step 2: Create Nagios User and Group

Create a new nagios user and nagcmd group account and set a password.

[root@tecmint]# useradd nagios
[root@tecmint]# groupadd nagcmd

Next, add both the nagios user and the apache user to the nagcmd group.

[root@tecmint]# usermod -G nagcmd nagios
[root@tecmint]# usermod -G nagcmd apache

Step 3: Download Nagios Core 4.3.4 and Nagios Plugin 2.2.1

Create a directory for your Nagios installation and all its future downloads.

[root@tecmint]# mkdir /root/nagios
[root@tecmint]# cd /root/nagios

Now download latest Nagios Core 4.3.4 and Nagios plugins 2.2.1 packages with wget command.

[root@tecmint nagios~]# wget https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagioscore/releases/nagios-4.3.4.tar.gz
[root@tecmint nagios~]# wget https://nagios-plugins.org/download/nagios-plugins-2.2.1.tar.gz

Step 4: Extract Nagios Core and its Plugins

We need to extract downloaded package with tar command as follows.

[root@tecmint nagios~]# tar -xvf nagios-4.3.4.tar.gz
[root@tecmint nagios~]# tar -xvf nagios-plugins-2.2.1.tar.gz

When you extract these tarballs with tar command, two new folders will appear in that directory.

[root@tecmint nagios ~]# ls -l
total 13520
drwxrwxr-x 18 root root     4096 Aug 24 17:43 nagios-4.3.4
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 11101966 Aug 24 17:48 nagios-4.3.4.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root     4096 Apr 19 12:04 nagios-plugins-2.2.1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  2728818 Apr 19 12:04 nagios-plugins-2.2.1.tar.gz

Configure Nagios Core

Now, first we will configure Nagios Core and to do so we need to go to Nagios directory and run configure file and if everything goes fine, it will show the output in the end as sample output. Please see below.

[root@tecmint nagios~]# cd nagios-4.3.4/
[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# ./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd

Sample output:

Creating sample config files in sample-config/ ...


*** Configuration summary for nagios 4.3.4 2017-08-24 ***:

 General Options:
 -------------------------
        Nagios executable:  nagios
        Nagios user/group:  nagios,nagios
       Command user/group:  nagios,nagcmd
             Event Broker:  yes
        Install ${prefix}:  /usr/local/nagios
    Install ${includedir}:  /usr/local/nagios/include/nagios
                Lock file:  /run/nagios.lock
   Check result directory:  ${prefix}/var/spool/checkresults
           Init directory:  /etc/rc.d/init.d
  Apache conf.d directory:  /etc/httpd/conf.d
             Mail program:  /usr/bin/mail
                  Host OS:  linux-gnu
          IOBroker Method:  epoll

 Web Interface Options:
 ------------------------
                 HTML URL:  http://localhost/nagios/
                  CGI URL:  http://localhost/nagios/cgi-bin/
 Traceroute (used by WAP):  /usr/bin/traceroute


Review the options above for accuracy.  If they look okay,
type 'make all' to compile the main program and CGIs.

After configuring, we need to compile and install all the binaries with make all and make install command, it will install all the needed libraries in your machine and we can proceed further.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make all
[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make install

Sample output:

*** Exfoliation theme installed ***
NOTE: Use 'make install-classicui' to revert to classic Nagios theme

make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/nagios/nagios-4.3.4'
make install-basic
make[1]: Entering directory `/root/nagios/nagios-4.3.4'
/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios/libexec
/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios/var
/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios/var/archives
/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagcmd -d /usr/local/nagios/var/spool/checkresults
chmod g+s /usr/local/nagios/var/spool/checkresults

*** Main program, CGIs and HTML files installed ***

You can continue with installing Nagios as follows (type 'make'
without any arguments for a list of all possible options):

  make install-init
     - This installs the init script in /etc/rc.d/init.d

  make install-commandmode
     - This installs and configures permissions on the
       directory for holding the external command file

  make install-config
     - This installs sample config files in /usr/local/nagios/etc

make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/nagios/nagios-4.3.4'

Following command will install the init scripts for Nagios.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make install-init

To make nagios work from command line we need to install command-mode.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make install-commandmode

Next, install sample nagios files, please run following command.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make install-config

Sample output:

/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios/etc
/usr/bin/install -c -m 775 -o nagios -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/nagios.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/cgi.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/cgi.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 660 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/resource.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/resource.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/templates.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/templates.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/commands.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/commands.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/contacts.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/timeperiods.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/timeperiods.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/localhost.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/localhost.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/windows.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/windows.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/printer.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/printer.cfg
/usr/bin/install -c -b -m 664 -o nagios -g nagios sample-config/template-object/switch.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/switch.cfg

*** Config files installed ***

Remember, these are *SAMPLE* config files.  You'll need to read
the documentation for more information on how to actually define
services, hosts, etc. to fit your particular needs.

Step 5: Customizing Nagios Configuration

Open the “contacts.cfg” file with your choice of editor and set the email address associated with the nagiosadmin contact definition to receiving email alerts.

# vi /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg

Sample Output

###############################################################################
###############################################################################
#
# CONTACTS
#
###############################################################################
###############################################################################

# Just one contact defined by default - the Nagios admin (that's you)
# This contact definition inherits a lot of default values from the 'generic-contact'
# template which is defined elsewhere.

define contact{
       contact_name                    nagiosadmin             ; Short name of user
       use                             generic-contact         ; Inherit default values from generic-contact template (defined above)
       alias                           Nagios Admin            ; Full name of user

       email                           admin@tecmint.com     ; *** CHANGE THIS TO YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS ****
       }

Step 6: Install and Configure Web Interface for Nagios

We are done with all configuration in the backend, now we will configure Web Interface For Nagios with following command. The below command will Configure Web interface for Nagios and a web admin user will be created “nagiosadmin”.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4 ]# make install-webconf

In this step, we will be creating a password for “nagiosadmin”. After executing this command, please provide a password twice and keep it remember because this password will be used when you login in the Nagios Web interface.

[root@tecmint nagios-4.3.4]# htpasswd -s -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin
New password:
Re-type new password:
Adding password for user nagiosadmin

Restart Apache to make the new settings take effect.

[root@tecmint ]# service httpd start               [On RHEL/CentOS 6/5 and Fedora]
[root@tecmint ]# systemctl start httpd.service     [On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 19 Onwards]

Step 7: Compile and Install Nagios Plugin

We have downloaded nagios plugins in /root/nagios, Go there and configure and install it as directed below.

[root@tecmint nagios]# cd /root/nagios
[root@tecmint nagios]# cd nagios-plugins-2.2.1/
[root@tecmint nagios]# ./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios
[root@tecmint nagios]# make
[root@tecmint nagios]# make install

Step 8: Verify Nagios Configuration Files

Now we are all done with Nagios configuration and its time to verify it and to do so please insert following command. If everything goes smooth it will show up similar to below output.

[root@tecmint nagios]# /usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

Sample Output

Nagios Core 4.3.4
Copyright (c) 2009-present Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors
Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad
Last Modified: 2017-08-24
License: GPL

Website: https://www.nagios.org
Reading configuration data...
   Read main config file okay...
   Read object config files okay...

Running pre-flight check on configuration data...

Checking objects...
	Checked 8 services.
	Checked 1 hosts.
	Checked 1 host groups.
	Checked 0 service groups.
	Checked 1 contacts.
	Checked 1 contact groups.
	Checked 24 commands.
	Checked 5 time periods.
	Checked 0 host escalations.
	Checked 0 service escalations.
Checking for circular paths...
	Checked 1 hosts
	Checked 0 service dependencies
	Checked 0 host dependencies
	Checked 5 timeperiods
Checking global event handlers...
Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands...
Checking misc settings...

Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors:   0

Things look okay - No serious problems were detected during the pre-flight check

Step 9: Add Nagios Services to System Startup

To make Nagios work across reboots, we need to add nagios and httpd with chkconfig and systemctlcommand.

On RHEL/CentOS 6/5 and Fedora

[root@tecmint ]# chkconfig --add nagios
[root@tecmint ]# chkconfig --level 35 nagios on
[root@tecmint ]# chkconfig --add httpd
[root@tecmint ]# chkconfig --level 35 httpd on

On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 19-26

[root@tecmint ]# systemctl enable nagios
[root@tecmint ]# systemctl enable httpd

Restart Nagios to make the new settings take effect.

[root@tecmint ]# service nagios start              [On RHEL/CentOS 6/5 and Fedora]
[root@tecmint ]# systemctl start nagios.service    [On RHEL/CentOS 7 and Fedora 19-24]

Step 10: Login to the Nagios Web Interface

Your nagios is ready to work, please open it in your browser with “http://Your-server-IP-address/nagios” or “http://FQDN/nagios” and Provide the username “nagiosadmin” and password.

Nagios Web Dashboard

Host View

Nagios Overview

Service View

Process View

Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed and configured Nagios and its Plugins. You’ve just begin your journey into monitoring.

Upgrade Nagios 3.x to Nagios 4.3.4

If you are already running an older version of Nagios, you can upgrade it anytime. To do so, you just need to download the latest tar archive of it and configure it as shown below.

[root@tecmint ]# service nagios stop
[root@tecmint ]# wget https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagioscore/releases/nagios-4.3.4.tar.gz
[root@tecmint ]# tar -zxvf nagios-4.3.4.tar.gz
[root@tecmint ]# cd nagios-4.3.4
[root@tecmint ]# ./configure
[root@tecmint ]# make all
[root@tecmint ]# make install
[root@tecmint ]# service nagios start

That’s it for now, in my upcoming articles, I will show you how to add Linux, Windows, Printers, Switches and Devices to Nagios monitoring Server. If you’re having any trouble while installing, please do contact us via comments. Till then stay tuned and connected to Tecmint and don’t forget to Like and Share us to spread around.

Read Also:

1. How to Add Linux Host to Nagios Monitoring Server
2. How to Add Windows Host to Nagios Monitoring Server

Source

The most important duty of a Linux system administrator is to make sure the system he/she is administering is in a very good condition. There are many tools available for a Linux system admins that can help to monitor and display processes in a system such as top and htop, but none of these tools can compete with collectl.

collectl is a very nice feature rich command-line utility that can be used to collect performance data that describes the current system status. Unlike most of the other monitoring tools, collectl does not focus in a limited number of system metrics, instead it can gather information on many different types of system resources such as cpu, disk, memory, network, sockets, tcp, inodes, infiniband, lustre, memory, nfs, processes, quadrics, slabs and buddyinfo.

A very good thing about using collectl is that it can also play the role of utilities that are designed with only a specific purpose such as top, ps, iotop and many others. What are some features that make colleclt a useful tool?

After doing a lot of research I have compiled a list with some of the most important features of the collectl command-line utility for you guys.

Collectl Features

1. It can run interactively, as a daemon or both.
2. It can display the output in many formats.
3. It has the ability to monitor almost any subsystem.
4. It can play the role of many other utilities such as ps, top, iotop, vmstat.
5. It has the ability to record and playback the captured data.
6. It can export the data in various file formats. (this is very useful when you want to analyse the data with external tools).
7. It can run as a service to monitor remote machines or an entire server cluster.
8. It can display the data in the terminal, write to a file or a socket.

How to Install collectl in Linux

The collectl utility runs on all Linux distributions, the only thing it requires to run is perl, so make sure that you have Perl installed in your machine before installing collectl in your machine.

On Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint

The following command can be used to install the collectl utility in Debian based machines such as Ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install collectl

On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

If you are using Red Hat based distro, you can easily grab it from the repos with the yum command.

# yum install collectl

Some Practical Examples Of The collectl Utility

Once the installation of the collectl tool is finished, you can easily run it from the terminal, even without any option. The following command will display information on cpu, disk and network stats in a very short and human readable format.

# collectl

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#cpu sys inter  ctxsw KBRead  Reads KBWrit Writes   KBIn  PktIn  KBOut  PktOut 
  13   5   790   1322      0      0     92      7      4     13      0       5 
  10   2   719   1186      0      0      0      0      3      9      0       4 
  12   0   753   1188      0      0     52      3      2      5      0       6 
  13   2   733   1063      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  25   2   834   1375      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  28   2   870   1424      0      0     36      7      1      1      0       1 
  19   3   949   2271      0      0     44      3      1      1      0       1 
  17   2   809   1384      0      0      0      0      1      6      0       6 
  16   2   732   1348      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  22   4   993   1615      0      0     56      3      1      2      0       3

As you guys can see from the above output displayed in the terminal screen, it is very easy to work with the system metrics values present in the command output because it appears on a single line.

When the collectl utility is executed without any option it displays information about the following subsystems:

1. cpu
2. disks
3. network

Note: In our case, a subsystem is every type of a system resource that can be measured.

You can also display statistics for all subsystems except slabs by combining the command with the –all option like shown below.

# collectl --all

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#cpu sys inter  ctxsw Cpu0 Cpu1 Free Buff Cach Inac Slab  Map   Fragments KBRead  Reads KBWrit Writes   KBIn  PktIn  KBOut  PktOut   IP  Tcp  Udp Icmp  Tcp  Udp  Raw Frag Handle Inodes  Reads Writes Meta Comm 
  16   3   817   1542  430  390   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G nsslkjjebbk      0      0     24      3      1      1      0       1    0    0    0    0  623    0    0    0   8160 240829      0      0    0    0 
  11   1   745   1324  316  426   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G nsslkjjebbk      0      0      0      0      0      3      0       2    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240828      0      0    0    0 
  15   2   793   1683  371  424   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G ssslkjjebbk      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240829      0      0    0    0 
  16   2   872   1875  427  446   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G ssslkjjebbk      0      0     24      3      1      1      0       1    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240828      0      0    0    0 
  24   2   842   1383  473  368   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G ssslkjjebbk      0      0    168      6      1      1      0       1    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240828      0      0    0    0 
  27   3   844   1099  478  365   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G nsslkjjebbk      0      0      0      0      1      6      1       9    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240828      0      0    0    0 
  26   5   823   1238  396  428   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G ssslkjjebbk      0      0      0      0      2     11      3       9    0    0    0    0  622    0    0    0   8160 240828      0      0    0    0 
  15   1   753   1276  361  391   1G 175M   1G 683M 193M   1G ssslkjjebbk      0      0     40      3      1      2      0       3    0    0    0    0  623    0    0    0   8160 240829      0      0    0    0

But, how do you monitor the cpu usage with the help of the utility? The ‘-s‘ option should be used to controls which subsystem data is to be collected or played back.

For example the following command can be used to monitor the summary of the cpu usage.

# collectl -sc

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#cpu sys inter  ctxsw 
  15   2   749   1155 
  16   3   772   1445 
  14   2   793   1247 
  27   4   887   1292 
  24   1   796   1258 
  16   1   743   1113 
  15   1   743   1179 
  14   1   706   1078 
  15   1   764   1268

What happens when you combine the command with “scdn“? The best way to learn how to use command-line tools is to practice as much as possible, so run the following command in your terminal and see what is going to happen.

# collectl -scdn

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#cpu sys inter  ctxsw KBRead  Reads KBWrit Writes   KBIn  PktIn  KBOut  PktOut 
  25   4   943   3333      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       2 
  27   3   825   2910      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  27   5   886   2531      0      0      0      0      0      0      0       1 
  20   4   872   2406      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  26   1   854   2091      0      0     20      2      1      1      0       1 
  39   4  1004   3398      0      0      0      0      2      8      3       6 
  41   6   955   2464      0      0     40      3      1      2      0       3 
  25   7   890   1609      0      0      0      0      1      1      0       1 
  16   2   814   1165      0      0    796     43      2      2      0       2 
  14   1   779   1383      0      0     48      6      1      1      0       1 
  11   2   795   1285      0      0      0      0      2     14      1      14

You can easily understand that the default option is “cdn“, it stands for cpu, disks and network data. The result of the command is the same with the output of “collectl -scn”

If you want to collect data about the memory, use the following command.

# collectl -sm

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#Free Buff Cach Inac Slab  Map 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G 
   1G 177M   1G 684M 193M   1G

The above output is very useful when you want to get some detailed information on your memory usage, free memory and other important stuff for the performance of your system.

How about some data on tcp? Use the following command to do it.

# collectl -st

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#  IP  Tcp  Udp Icmp 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0 
    0    0    0    0

After you have gained some experience you can easily combine options to get the results you want. For example you can combine the “t” for tcp and “c” for cpu. The following command does that.

# collectl -stc

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#cpu sys inter  ctxsw   IP  Tcp  Udp Icmp 
  23   8   961   3136    0    0    0    0 
  24   5   916   3662    0    0    0    0 
  21   8   848   2408    0    0    0    0 
  30  10   916   2674    0    0    0    0 
  38   3   826   1752    0    0    0    0 
  31   3   820   1408    0    0    0    0 
  15   5   781   1335    0    0    0    0 
  17   3   802   1314    0    0    0    0 
  17   3   755   1218    0    0    0    0 
  14   2   788   1321    0    0    0    0

It is hard for us humans to remember all the available options so I am posting the summary list of subsystems supported by the tool.

1. b – buddy info (memory fragmentation)
2. c – CPU
3. d – Disk
4. f – NFS V3 Data
5. i – Inode and File System
6. j – Interrupts
7. l – Lustre
8. m – Memory
9. n – Networks
10. s – Sockets
11. t – TCP
12. x – Interconnect
13. y – Slabs (system object caches)

A very important piece of data for a system administrator or a Linux user is the data collected on disk usage. The following command will help you to monitor the disk usage.

# collectl -sd

waiting for 1 second sample...
#
#KBRead  Reads KBWrit Writes 
      0      0      0      0 
      0      0      0      0 
      0      0     92      7 
      0      0      0      0 
      0      0     36      3 
      0      0      0      0 
      0      0      0      0 
      0      0    100      7 
      0      0      0      0

You can also use the “-sD” option to collect data on individual disks, but you have to know that information on total disks will not be reported.

# collectl -sD

waiting for 1 second sample...

# DISK STATISTICS (/sec)
#           Pct
#Name       KBytes Merged  IOs Size  KBytes Merged  IOs Size  RWSize  QLen  Wait SvcTim Util
sda              0      0    0    0      52     11    2   26      26     1     8      8    1
sda              0      0    0    0       0      0    0    0       0     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0      24      0    2   12      12     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0     152      0    4   38      38     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0     192     45    3   64      64     1    20     20    5
sda              0      0    0    0     204      0    2  102     102     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0       0      0    0    0       0     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0     116     26    3   39      38     1    16     16    4
sda              0      0    0    0       0      0    0    0       0     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0       0      0    0    0       0     0     0      0    0
sda              0      0    0    0      32      5    3   11      10     1    16     16    4
sda              0      0    0    0       0      0    0    0       0     0     0      0    0

You can also use other detail subsystems to collect detailed data. The following is a list of the detail subsystems.

1. C – CPU
2. D – Disk
3. E – Environmental data (fan, power, temp), via ipmitool
4. F – NFS Data
5. J – Interrupts
6. L – Lustre OST detail OR client Filesystem detail
7. N – Networks
8. T – 65 TCP counters only available in plot format
9. X – Interconnect
10. Y – Slabs (system object caches)
11. Z – Processes

There are many available options in the collectl utility, but there is not enough time and space to cover them all in only one article. However it is worth mentioning and teaching how to use the utility as top and ps.

It is very easy to make collectl work as the top utility, just run the following command in your terminal and you will see the similar output the top tool gives you when it is executed in your Linux system.

# collectl --top

# TOP PROCESSES sorted by time (counters are /sec) 13:11:02
# PID  User     PR  PPID THRD S   VSZ   RSS CP  SysT  UsrT Pct  AccuTime  RKB  WKB MajF MinF Command
^COuch!tecmint  20     1   40 R    1G  626M  0  0.01  0.14  15  28:48.24    0    0    0  109 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox 
 3403  tecmint  20     1   40 R    1G  626M  1  0.00  0.20  20  28:48.44    0    0    0  600 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox 
 5851  tecmint  20  4666    0 R   17M   13M  0  0.02  0.06   8  00:01.28    0    0    0    0 /usr/bin/perl 
 1682  root     20  1666    2 R  211M   55M  1  0.02  0.01   3  03:10.24    0    0    0   95 /usr/bin/X 
 3454  tecmint  20  3403    8 S  216M   45M  1  0.01  0.02   3  01:23.32    0    0    0    0 /usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container 
 4658  tecmint  20  4657    3 S  207M   17M  1  0.00  0.02   2  00:08.23    0    0    0  142 gnome-terminal 
 2890  tecmint  20  2571    3 S  340M   68M  0  0.00  0.01   1  01:19.95    0    0    0    0 compiz 
 3521  tecmint  20     1   24 S  710M  148M  1  0.01  0.00   1  01:47.84    0    0    0    0 skype 
    1  root     20     0    0 S    3M    2M  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:02.57    0    0    0    0 /sbin/init 
    2  root     20     0    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kthreadd 
    3  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.60    0    0    0    0 ksoftirqd/0 
    5  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/0:0H 
    7  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/u:0H 
    8  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:04.42    0    0    0    0 migration/0 
    9  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 rcu_bh 
   10  root     20     2    0 R     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:02.22    0    0    0    0 rcu_sched 
   11  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.05    0    0    0    0 watchdog/0 
   12  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.07    0    0    0    0 watchdog/1 
   13  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.73    0    0    0    0 ksoftirqd/1 
   14  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:01.96    0    0    0    0 migration/1 
   16  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/1:0H 
   17  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 cpuset

And now last but not least, to use the collectl utility as the ps tool run the following command in your terminal. You will get information about processes in your system the same way as you do when you run the “ps” command in your terminal.

# collectl -c1 -sZ -i:1

waiting for 1 second sample...

### RECORD    1 >>> tecmint-vgn-z13gn <<< (1397979716.001) (Sun Apr 20 13:11:56 2014) ###

# PROCESS SUMMARY (counters are /sec)
# PID  User     PR  PPID THRD S   VSZ   RSS CP  SysT  UsrT Pct  AccuTime  RKB  WKB MajF MinF Command
    1  root     20     0    0 S    3M    2M  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:02.57    0    0    0    0 /sbin/init 
    2  root     20     0    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kthreadd 
    3  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.60    0    0    0    0 ksoftirqd/0 
    5  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/0:0H 
    7  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/u:0H 
    8  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:04.42    0    0    0    0 migration/0 
    9  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 rcu_bh 
   10  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:02.24    0    0    0    0 rcu_sched 
   11  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.05    0    0    0    0 watchdog/0 
   12  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.07    0    0    0    0 watchdog/1 
   13  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.73    0    0    0    0 ksoftirqd/1 
   14  root     RT     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:01.96    0    0    0    0 migration/1 
   16  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kworker/1:0H 
   17  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 cpuset 
   18  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  1  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 khelper 
   19  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kdevtmpfs 
   20  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 netns 
   21  root     20     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 bdi-default 
   22  root      0     2    0 S     0     0  0  0.00  0.00   0  00:00.00    0    0    0    0 kintegrityd

I am very sure that many Linux system administrators will like this tool and will feel its power when using it to the fullest. If you like to advance your knowledge about collectl to the next level refer to its manual pages and keep practicing.

Just type the following command in your terminal and start reading.

# man collectl

Reference Links

collectl Homepage

Source

LibreNMS is an open source, powerful and feature-rich auto-discovering PHP based network monitoring system which uses the SNMP protocol. It supports a broad range of operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, as well as network devices including Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Foundry, HP and many more.

LibreNMS Features:

1. It auto-discovers a whole network using these protocols: CDP, FDP, LLDP, OSPF, BGP, SNMP and ARP.
2. It has a mobile friendly Web UI, with customizable dashboards.
3. Supports a Unix agent.
4. Supports horizontal scaling to expand with your network.
5. Supports a highly flexible and customizable alerting system; sends notifications through email, irc, slack and more.
6. Supports an API for managing, graphing and retrieving data from your system.
7. Offers a traffic billing system.
8. Also supports an Android and iOS apps which offer core functionalities.
9. Supports integration with NfSen, collectd, SmokePing, RANCID and Oxidized.
10. Supports multiple authentication methods such as MySQL, HTTP, LDAP, Radius and Active Directory.
11. Allows for auto updating and many other features.

An online demo is available for you to try before installing LibreNMS on Linux systems.

Demo URL: https://demo.librenms.org/
Username: demo
Password: demo

Test Environment:

1. Ubuntu 16.04 with LEMP Stack
2. CentOS 7 with LEMP Stack

In this tutorial we will learn how to install LibreNMS Network Monitoring Tool on a freshly installed Ubuntu or CentOS Linux (same instructions also works on Debian and RHEL based distributions).

NOTE: All these instructions in this article should be run as the root user, if you are not, use the sudo commandto gain root user privileges.

Step 1: Install Required Packages

1. First start by installing all the required packages using the default package manager as shown.

On Ubuntu/Debian

$ sudo apt install composer fping git graphviz imagemagick mariadb-client mariadb-server mtr-tiny nginx-full nmap php7.0-cli php7.0-curl php7.0-fpm php7.0-gd php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-snmp php7.0-xml php7.0-zip python-memcache python-mysqldb rrdtool snmp snmpd whois

On CentOS/RHEL

# yum install epel-release
# rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm
# yum install composer cronie fping git ImageMagick jwhois mariadb mariadb-server mtr MySQL-python net-snmp net-snmp-utils nginx nmap php72w php72w-cli php72w-common php72w-curl php72w-fpm php72w-gd php72w-mysql php72w-process php72w-snmp php72w-xml php72w-zip python-memcached rrdtool

2. Once all the packages are installed, nginx, php-fpm, mariadb and snmp services will be started and enabled to auto-start at boot time (this is normally the case with Ubuntu), otherwise, you can run the commands below to start and enable them.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo systemctl nginx start php7.0-fpm mysql snmp 
$ sudo systemctl enable nginx php7.0-fpm mysql snmp

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# systemctl nginx start php-fpm mariadb snmpd 
# systemctl enable nginx php-fpm mariadb snmpd

Step 2: Install LibreNMS Monitoring Tool

3. Next, create a system user called librenms, with the useradd command; where the -M flag disables creation of user’s home directory, and -r enables creating of a system account. Then add the librenms user to the group www-data (on Ubuntu) or nginx (on CentOS) as follows.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo useradd librenms -d /opt/librenms -M -r
$ sudo usermod -a -G librenms www-data   

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# useradd librenms -d /opt/librenms -M -r
# usermod -a -G librenms nginx           

4. Then install LibreNMS via composer command as shown.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ cd /opt
$ sudo composer create-project --no-dev --keep-vcs librenms/librenms librenms dev-master

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# cd /opt
# composer create-project --no-dev --keep-vcs librenms/librenms librenms dev-master

Step 3: Create LibreNMS Database

5. Before you can start using the MariaDB server, you need to secure your installation, run the security script provided in the binary package. It will ask you set a root password, remove anonymous users, disable root login remotely and remove test database.

You can launch the script by issuing the below command and answer all questions with yes/y.

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation   [On Debian/Ubuntu]
# mysql_secure_installation        [On CentOS/RHEL]

6. Then login to MariaDB database to create a database for LibreNMS (remember to use a strong/secure password in a production environment).

$ sudo mysql -u root -p
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE librenms CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'librenms'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '=@!#@%$libre';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON librenms.* TO 'librenms'@'localhost';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit

7. Afterwards, disable MySQL strict mode for now (compatibility with MySQL strict mode is yet to be added).

$ sudo vim /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf    [On Debian/Ubuntu]
# vi /etc/my.cnf        [On CentOS/RHEL]

Within the [mysqld] section please add.

innodb_file_per_table=1
sql-mode=""
lower_case_table_names=0

Then restart the database server to effect the changes.

$ sudo systemctl restart mysql     [On Debian/Ubuntu]
# systemctl restart mariadb        [On CentOS/RHEL]

Step 4: Configure and Start PHP-FPM

8. Next, set your date.timezone in the php.ini to your current time zone, for example “Africa/Kampala”, as shown in the following screenshot.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo vim /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
$ sudo vim /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# vi /etc/php.ini

9. Next enable the mcrypt PHP module in Ubuntu and restart php-fpm as shown.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo phpenmod mcrypt
$ sudo systemctl restart php7.0-fpm

10. On CentOS/RHEL you need to make following changes in php-fpm configuration file.

# vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Make following changes.

;user = apache
user = nginx

group = apache   ; keep group as apache

;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
listen = /var/run/php-fpm/php7.2-fpm.sock

listen.owner = nginx
listen.group = nginx
listen.mode = 0660

11. Restart php-fpm service as shown.

# systemctl restart php-fpm

Step 5: Configure Nginx for LibreNMS

12. In this step, you need to configure a Nginx server block for librenms in order to access the web UI. Create a .conf file for it as shown.

$ sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/librenms.conf     [On Debian/Ubuntu]
# vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/librenms.conf           [On CentOS/RHEL]         

Add the following config, edit server_name as required.

server {
 listen      80;
 server_name librenms.example.com;
 root        /opt/librenms/html;
 index       index.php;

 charset utf-8;
 gzip on;
 gzip_types text/css application/javascript text/javascript application/x-javascript image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon;
 location / {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
 }
 location /api/v0 {
  try_files $uri $uri/ /api_v0.php?$query_string;
 }
 location ~ \.php {
  include fastcgi.conf;
  fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
  fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
 }
 location ~ /\.ht {
  deny all;
 }
}

13. Then save and exit the file. Also remove the default server block configuration and restart the Nginx server.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# systemctl restart nginx

NOTE: On CentOS/RHEL, you will need to disable the default site section, if this is the only site you are hosting. Delete the server section from /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file.

14. Also on CentOS/RHEL, you need to install the policy tool for SELinux and Configure the contexts needed by LibreNMS using following commands.

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# yum install policycoreutils-python
# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t '/opt/librenms/logs(/.*)?'
# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/opt/librenms/logs(/.*)?'
# restorecon -RFvv /opt/librenms/logs/
# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t '/opt/librenms/rrd(/.*)?'
# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/opt/librenms/rrd(/.*)?'
# restorecon -RFvv /opt/librenms/rrd/
# setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail=1
# setsebool -P httpd_execmem 1

15. Allow fping by creating the file http_fping.tt with the following contents.

module http_fping 1.0;

require {
type httpd_t;
class capability net_raw;
class rawip_socket { getopt create setopt write read };
}

#============= httpd_t ==============
allow httpd_t self:capability net_raw;
allow httpd_t self:rawip_socket { getopt create setopt write read };

16. Then run these commands.

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# checkmodule -M -m -o http_fping.mod http_fping.tt
# semodule_package -o http_fping.pp -m http_fping.mod
# semodule -i http_fping.pp

17. If you are using Firewall on CentOS/RHEL, enable HTTP/HTTPS access through firewall.

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# firewall-cmd --zone public --add-service http
# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone public --add-service http
# firewall-cmd --zone public --add-service https
# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone public --add-service https

Step 6: Configure SNMPD for LibreNMS

18. Now use the sample snmp configuration to create your configuration file and open it for editing, as follows.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo cp /opt/librenms/snmpd.conf.example /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
$ sudo vim /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# cp /opt/librenms/snmpd.conf.example /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
# vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Find the string RANDOMSTRINGGOESHERE and change it to your own community string as shown in screenshot.

19. Next, download a shell script on your system, which helps to detect which OS and if it is Linux then it will detect which Linux distribution, you are using:

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------ 
$ sudo curl -o /usr/bin/distro https://raw.githubusercontent.com/librenms/librenms-agent/master/snmp/distro
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/distro
$ sudo systemctl restart snmpd

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# curl -o /usr/bin/distro https://raw.githubusercontent.com/librenms/librenms-agent/master/snmp/distro
# chmod +x /usr/bin/distro
# systemctl restart snmpd

Step 7: Create Cron and Configure Logrotate

20. Now run the command below to setup a cron job for LibreNMS.

# cp /opt/librenms/librenms.nonroot.cron /etc/cron.d/librenms

21. Next, all LibreNMS logs are recorded in /opt/librenms/logs, you can need to configure these logs to be auto-rotated, using the logrotate config file provided, like this.

# cp /opt/librenms/misc/librenms.logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/librenms

Then set the appropriate permissions on the LibreNMS installation root directory and log files.

------------ On Debian/Ubuntu ------------
$ sudo chown -R librenms:librenms  /opt/librenms
$ sudo setfacl -d -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs
$ sudo setfacl -R -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs

------------ On CentOS/RHEL ------------ 
# chown -R librenms:librenms /opt/librenms
# setfacl -d -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs
# setfacl -R -m g::rwx /opt/librenms/rrd /opt/librenms/logs

Step 8: Access LibreNMS Web Installer

22. Next, use the following URL to access the web installer and follow the on-screen instructions.

http://librenms.tecmint.lan/install.php

For this address to work on a local machine, you need to setup a local DNS using the hosts file (/etc/hosts), for local domain resolution or testing purposes before going live.

192.168.43.31 tecmint.lan
192.168.43.31 librenms.tecmint.lan

23. You will see the installation welcome page as shown in the following screenshot, click Next Stage to continue.

24. Then enter the settings (database host, port, username and user password) for the LibreNMS database and click Next Stage to proceed.

25. The web installer will now start importing the MySQL database, this will take some time. Note that the process will try to pause at certain points, simple click on Retry to continue with the importation process.

26. Once the database importation is complete, you should see the message “Database is up to date!”, as shown in the screenshot below. Then click on Goto Add User to proceed.

27. Next, add a LibreNMS user, specify username, password and email, then click on Add User to effect the changes.

28. Now click on create the LibreNMS configuration for your system, by clicking Generate Config.

29. Once the config is generated, as shown in the previous screenhot, copy it and save it in the root directory of your installation, in a file called /opt/librenms/config.php.

# vi /opt/librenms/config.php

<?php
## Have a look in defaults.inc.php for examples of settings you can set here. DO NOT EDIT defaults.inc.php!

### Database config
$config['db_host'] = 'localhost';
$config['db_port'] = '3306';
$config['db_user'] = 'librenms';
$config['db_pass'] = '=@!#@%$libre';
$config['db_name'] = 'librenms';
$config['db_socket'] = '';

// This is the user LibreNMS will run as
//Please ensure this user is created and has the correct permissions to your install
$config['user'] = 'librenms';

### Locations - it is recommended to keep the default
#$config['install_dir']  = "/opt/librenms";

### This should *only* be set if you want to *force* a particular hostname/port
### It will prevent the web interface being usable form any other hostname
#$config['base_url']        = "http://librenms.company.com";

### Enable this to use rrdcached. Be sure rrd_dir is within the rrdcached dir
### and that your web server has permission to talk to rrdcached.
#$config['rrdcached']    = "unix:/var/run/rrdcached.sock";

### Default community
$config['snmp']['community'] = array("public");

### Authentication Model
$config['auth_mechanism'] = "mysql"; # default, other options: ldap, http-auth
#$config['http_auth_guest'] = "guest"; # remember to configure this user if you use http-auth

### List of RFC1918 networks to allow scanning-based discovery
#$config['nets'][] = "10.0.0.0/8";
#$config['nets'][] = "172.16.0.0/12";
#$config['nets'][] = "192.168.0.0/16";

# Update configuration
#$config['update_channel'] = 'release';  # uncomment to follow the monthly release channel
#$config['update'] = 0;  # uncomment to completely disable updates

30. Save and close the file. Then return to the web installer to continue with the installation process, by clicking Finish Install.

31. Now your LibreNMS installation is complete, you can click on “validate your install and fix any issues”, the login page should appear.

32. Next, enter your user credentials to access the validation page.

33. From the installation validation process, LibreNMS has discovered two issues, one is that devices have not been added (this is a warning for now), and secondly, we have not set the appropriate permission on the config file (/opt/librenms/config.php) which was manually added, as shown in the screen shot below.

Now run the following command to set the correct permission on the config file.

$ sudo chown -R librenms:librenms /opt/librenms/config.php 

34. To add devices, go to: http://librenms.tecmint.lan/addhost. After adding devices, you can go to the home page and add various dashboards.

That’s It! You can find more information, including installation and setup on the LibreNMS Documentation at https://docs.librenms.org/.

LibreNMS is a fully featured network monitoring system that supports a variety of network hardware. We hope that this was a lucid installation guide, if you have any questions, reach us via the feedback form below.

Source

In this tutorial we’ll learn how to install and configure Cacti network monitoring tool in the latest version of Debian and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Cacti will be build and installed from source files during this guide.

Cacti is an open source monitoring tool created for monitoring networks, especially network devices, such as switches, routers, servers via SNMP protocol. Cacti interacts with end-users and can be administered via a web tool interface.

Requirements

1. LAMP Stack Installed in Debian 9
2. LAMP Stack Installed in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1: Install and Configure Prerequisites for Cacti

1. In Debian 9, open sources list file for editing and add the contrib and non-free repositories to the file by changing the following lines:

# nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add following lines to sources.list file.

deb http://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ stretch main

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main

# apt update
# apt upgrade

# apt install php7.0-snmp php7.0-xml php7.0-mbstring php7.0-json php7.0-gd php7.0-gmp php7.0-zip php7.0-ldap php7.0-mcrypt

# echo "date.timezone = Europe/Bucharest" >> /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini 

# mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database cacti;
mysql> grant all on cacti.* to 'cactiuser'@'localhost' identified by 'password1';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> exit

# mysql -u root -p mysql < /usr/share/mysql/mysql_test_data_timezone.sql 
# mysql -u root -p -e 'grant select on mysql.time_zone_name to cactiuser@localhost'

# nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf [For MariaDB]
# nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf      [For MySQL] 

max_heap_table_size		= 98M
tmp_table_size			= 64M
join_buffer_size		= 64M
innodb_buffer_pool_size	= 485M
innodb_doublewrite		= off
innodb_flush_log_at_timeout	= 3
innodb_read_io_threads	= 32
innodb_write_io_threads	= 16

innodb_additional_mem_pool_size	= 80M

# systemctl restart mysql apache2
# systemctl status mysql apache2

# wget https://www.cacti.net/downloads/cacti-latest.tar.gz
# tar xfz cacti-latest.tar.gz 
# cp -rf cacti-1.1.27/* /var/www/html/

# rm /var/www/html/index.html
# touch /var/www/html/log/cacti.log
# chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

# nano /var/www/html/include/config.php

$database_type     = 'mysql';
$database_default  = 'cacti';
$database_hostname = 'localhost';
$database_username = 'cactiuser';
$database_password = 'password1;
$database_port     = '3306';
$database_ssl      = false;
$url_path = '/';

# mysql -u cactiuser cacti -p < /var/www/html/cacti.sql 

# apt install snmp snmpd snmp-mibs-downloader rrdtool

# systemctl restart snmpd.service 
# systemctl status snmpd.service
# ss -tulpn| grep snmp

---------------- On Debian 9 ---------------- 
# apt install build-essential dos2unix dh-autoreconf help2man libssl-dev libmysql++-dev librrds-perl libsnmp-dev libmariadb-dev libmariadbclient-dev

---------------- On Ubuntu ---------------- 
# apt install build-essential dos2unix dh-autoreconf help2man libssl-dev libmysql++-dev  librrds-perl libsnmp-dev libmysqlclient-dev libmysqld-dev  

# wget https://www.cacti.net/downloads/spine/cacti-spine-latest.tar.gz
# tar xfz cacti-spine-latest.tar.gz 
# cd cacti-spine-1.1.27/

# ./bootstrap 
# ./configure 
# make
# make install

# chown root:root /usr/local/spine/bin/spine 
# chmod +s /usr/local/spine/bin/spine

# nano /usr/local/spine/etc/spine.conf

DB_Host localhost
DB_Database cacti
DB_User cactiuser
DB_Pass password1
DB_Port 3306
DB_PreG 0

http://your_IP/install

Username: admin
Password: admin

/usr/local/spine/etc/spine.conf 

# crontab -u www-data -e

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/poller.php

Cacti tool is an open source web based network monitoring and system monitoring graphing solution for ITbusiness. Cacti enables a user to poll services at regular intervals to create graphs on resulting data using RRDtool. Generally, it is used to graph time-series data of metrics such as network bandwidth utilization, CPU load, running processes, disk space etc.

In this how-to we are going to show you how to install and setup complete network monitoring application called Cacti using Net-SNMP tool on RHEL 7.x/6.x/5.x, CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x and Fedora 24-12 systems using YUM and DNF (Fedora 23 onwards) package manager tool.

Cacti Required Packages

The Cacti required following packages to be installed on your Linux operating systems like RHEL / CentOS / Fedora.

1. Apache : A Web server to display network graphs created by PHP and RRDTool.
2. MySQL : A Database server to store cacti information.
3. PHP : A script module to create graphs using RRDTool.
4. PHP-SNMP : A PHP extension for SNMP to access data.
5. NET-SNMP : A SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used to manage network.
6. RRDTool : A database tool to manage and retrieve time series data like CPU load, Network Bandwidth etc.

Installing Cacti Required Packages on RHEL / CentOS / Fedora

First, we need to install following dependency packages one-by-one using YUM package manager tool.

Install Apache

# yum install httpd httpd-devel

--------- On Fedora 22+ releases --------- 
# dnf install httpd httpd-devel

Install MySQL

# yum install mysql mysql-server      [On RHEL/CentOS 6/5 and Fedora 12-18]

# yum install mariadb-server -y		[On RHEL/CentOS 7.x and Fedora 19 onwards]
# dnf install mariadb-server -y         [On Fedora 22+ onwards]

# yum install php-mysql php-pear php-common php-gd php-devel php php-mbstring php-cli

--------- On Fedora 22+ releases --------- 
# dnf install php-mysql php-pear php-common php-gd php-devel php php-mbstring php-cli

# yum install php-snmp
# dnf install php-snmp         [On Fedora 22+ onwards]

# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp-libs
# dnf install net-snmp-utils net-snmp-libs         [On Fedora 22+ onwards]

# yum install rrdtool
# dnf install rrdtool         [On Fedora 22+ onwards]

[root@tecmint ~]# service httpd start
[root@tecmint ~]# service mysqld start
[root@tecmint ~]# service snmpd start

[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl start httpd.service
[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl start mariadb.service
[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl start snmpd.service

[root@tecmint ~]# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 httpd on
[root@tecmint ~]# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 mysqld on
[root@tecmint ~]# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 snmpd on

[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl enable httpd.service
[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl enable mariadb.service
[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl enable snmpd.service

# yum install cacti
# dnf install cacti         [On Fedora 22+ onwards]

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
epel/x86_64/metalink                                                                                                                                                  | 4.7 kB  00:00:00
epel                                                                                                                                                                  | 4.4 kB  00:00:00
(1/2): epel/x86_64/group_gz                                                                                                                                           | 250 kB  00:00:03
(2/2): epel/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                                                                         | 4.0 MB  00:02:20
(1/2): epel/x86_64/updateinfo                                                                                                                                         | 315 kB  00:00:09
(2/2): epel/x86_64/pkgtags                                                                                                                                            | 1.4 MB  00:00:59
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: centos.excellmedia.net
 * epel: ftp.cuhk.edu.hk
 * extras: centos.excellmedia.net
 * updates: centos.excellmedia.net
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package cacti.noarch 0:0.8.8b-7.el7 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: rrdtool for package: cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: net-snmp-utils for package: cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch
--> Running transaction check
---> Package net-snmp-utils.x86_64 1:5.7.2-18.el7 will be installed
---> Package rrdtool.x86_64 0:1.4.8-8.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                                           Arch                                      Version                                           Repository                               Size
=============================================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 cacti                                             noarch                                    0.8.8b-7.el7                                      epel                                    2.1 M
Installing for dependencies:
 net-snmp-utils                                    x86_64                                    1:5.7.2-18.el7                                    base                                    195 k
 rrdtool                                           x86_64                                    1.4.8-8.el7                                       base                                    368 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package (+2 Dependent packages)

Total download size: 2.7 M
Installed size: 7.2 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
(1/3): net-snmp-utils-5.7.2-18.el7.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                         | 195 kB  00:00:04
warning: /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7/epel/packages/cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 352c64e5: NOKEY==============-        ]  56 kB/s | 2.4 MB  00:00:05 ETA
Public key for cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch.rpm is not installed
(2/3): cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch.rpm                                                                                                                                  | 2.1 MB  00:00:53
(3/3): rrdtool-1.4.8-8.el7.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                 | 368 kB  00:02:47
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                                                                                                                                         16 kB/s | 2.7 MB  00:02:47
Retrieving key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7
Importing GPG key 0x352C64E5:
 Userid     : "Fedora EPEL (7) <epel@fedoraproject.org>"
 Fingerprint: 91e9 7d7c 4a5e 96f1 7f3e 888f 6a2f aea2 352c 64e5
 Package    : epel-release-7-5.noarch (installed)
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.
  Installing : rrdtool-1.4.8-8.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                                                1/3
  Installing : 1:net-snmp-utils-5.7.2-18.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                                      2/3
  Installing : cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch                                                                                                                                                 3/3
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.mR0t1v: line 1: fg: no job control
warning: %post(cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
Non-fatal POSTIN scriptlet failure in rpm package cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch
  Verifying  : 1:net-snmp-utils-5.7.2-18.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                                      1/3
  Verifying  : rrdtool-1.4.8-8.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                                                2/3
  Verifying  : cacti-0.8.8b-7.el7.noarch                                                                                                                                                 3/3

Installed:
  cacti.noarch 0:0.8.8b-7.el7

Dependency Installed:
  net-snmp-utils.x86_64 1:5.7.2-18.el7                                                              rrdtool.x86_64 0:1.4.8-8.el7

Complete!

[root@tecmint ~]# mysqladmin -u root password YOUR-PASSWORD-HERE

[root@tecmint ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 3
Server version: 5.1.73 Source distribution
Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database cacti;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'tecmint';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> quit;
Bye

[root@tecmint ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 3
Server version: 5.5.41-MariaDB MariaDB Server
Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> create database cacti;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'tecmint';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> quit;
Bye

# rpm -ql cacti | grep cacti.sql

/usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.8b/cacti.sql
OR
/usr/share/doc/cacti/cacti.sql

[root@tecmint ~]# mysql -u cacti -p cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.8b/cacti.sql
Enter password:

# vi /etc/cacti/db.php

/* make sure these values reflect your actual database/host/user/password */
$database_type = "mysql";
$database_default = "cacti";
$database_hostname = "localhost";
$database_username = "cacti";
$database_password = "your-password-here";
$database_port = "3306";
$database_ssl = false;

[root@tecmint ~]# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
[root@tecmint ~]# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
[root@tecmint ~]# service iptables save

[root@tecmint ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
[root@tecmint ~]# firewall-cmd --reload

# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/cacti.conf

Alias /cacti    /usr/share/cacti
 
<Directory /usr/share/cacti/>
        Order Deny,Allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 172.16.16.0/20
</Directory>

Alias /cacti    /usr/share/cacti

<Directory /usr/share/cacti/>
        <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
                # httpd 2.4
                Require all granted
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
                # httpd 2.2
                Order deny,allow
                Deny from all
                Allow from all
        </IfModule>
</Directory>

[root@tecmint ~]# service httpd restart				[On RHEL/CentOS 6.x/5.x and Fedora 18-12]

[root@tecmint ~]# systemctl restart httpd.service		[On RHEL/CentOS 7.x and Fedora 19 onwards]

# vi /etc/cron.d/cacti

#*/5 * * * *    cacti   /usr/bin/php /usr/share/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Are you a Linux system administrator and want to monitor interactive activity of all system users (Linux commands they executes) in real-time. In this brief Linux system security guide, we will explain how to view all Linux shell commands executed by system users in real-time.

Read Also: How to Monitor User Activity with psacct or acct Tools

If your system has bash, the most commonly used shell out there then all commands executed by normal system users will be stored in the .bash_history hidden file which is kept in each user’s home directory. The content of this file can be viewed by users, using the history command.

To view a user aaronkilik’s .bash_history file, type:

# cat /home/aaronkilik/.bash_history

# w

# sysdig -c spy_users

There are plenty of tools to monitor MySQL performance and troubleshoot a server, but they don’t always perfect match for a MySQL developer or administrator’s for their common needs, or may not work in some situations, such as remote or over the web monitoring.

Luckily, there are variety of open source tools created by MySQL community to fill the gaps. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to locate these tools via web searches, that’s the reason we’ve compiled 4 command line toolsto monitor MySQL database uptime, load and performance in Linux.

Uptime means how long the database has been running and up since its last shutdown or restart. Getting information about uptime is very crucial in many situations, as it helps system administrators to check the status of MySQL database about, how many queries per second that MySQL database serves, threads, slow queries and lots of interesting statistics.

1. Mytop

Mytop is one of my classic open source and free console-based (non-gui) monitoring tool for MySQL database was written by Jereme Zawodny using Perl language. Mytop runs in a terminal and displays statistics about threads, queries, slow queries, uptime, load, etc. in tabular format, much similar to the Linux top program. Which indirectly helps the administrators to optimize and improve performance of MySQl to handle large requests and decrease server load.

[root@localhost ~]# mysqladmin -u root -p version
Enter password:

mysqladmin  Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.1.61, for redhat-linux-gnu on i386
Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Server version		5.1.61-log
Protocol version	10
Connection		Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket		/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:			20 days 54 min 30 sec

Threads: 1  Questions: 149941143  Slow queries: 21  Opens: 752  Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 745  Queries per second avg: 86.607

bmon is a simple yet powerful, text-based network monitoring and debugging tool for Unix-like systems, which captures networking related statistics and displays them visually in a human friendly format. It is a reliable and effective real-time bandwidth monitor and rate estimator.

It can read input using an assortment of input modules and presents output in various output modes, including an interactive curses user interface as well as a programmable text output for scripting purposes.

Suggested Read: 20 Command Line Tools to Monitor Linux Performance

Install bmon Bandwidth Monitoring Tool in Linux

Almost all Linux distributions has bmon package in the default repositories and can be easily install from default package manger, but the available version might be little older.

$ sudo yum install bmon      [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora]
$ sudo dnf install bmon      [On Fedora 22+]
$ sudo apt-get install bmon  [On Debian/Ubuntu/Mint]

Alternatively, you can get .rpm and .deb packages for your Linux distribution from https://pkgs.org/download/bmon.

If you wanted to have a most recent version of bmon (i.e version 4.0), you need to build it from source using following commands.

On CentOS, RHEL and Fedora

$ git clone https://github.com/tgraf/bmon.git
$ cd bmon
$ sudo yum install make libconfuse-devel libnl3-devel libnl-route3-devel ncurses-devel
$ sudo ./autogen.sh
$ sudo./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

On Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint

$ git clone https://github.com/tgraf/bmon.git
$ cd bmon
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential make libconfuse-dev libnl-3-dev libnl-route-3-dev libncurses-dev pkg-config dh-autoreconf
$ sudo ./autogen.sh
$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

How to Use bmon Bandwidth Monitoring Tool in Linux

Run it as below (for starters: RX means received bytes per second and TX refers to transmitted bytes per second):

$ bmon

To view more detailed graphical statistics/information of bandwidth usage, press d key and refer screnshot below.

Press [Shift + ?] to view the quick reference below. To exit the interface, press [Shift + ?] again.

To view statistics of a given interface, select it using the Up and Down arrows. However, to monitor a specific interface only, specify it as an argument on the command line as follows.

Suggested Read: 13 Tools to Monitor Linux Performance

The flag -p sets a policy defining which network interfaces to display, in the example below, we will be monitoring the enp1s0 network interface:

$ bmon -p enp1s0

To use bit per second instead of bytes per second, use the -b flag like so:

$ bmon -bp enp1s0

We can also define the intervals per second with the -r flag as follows:

$ bmon -r 5 -p enp1s0

How to Use bmon Input Modules

bmon has a number of input modules that offer statistical data about interfaces, which includes:

1. netlink – employs the Netlink protocol to collect interface and traffic control statistics from the kernel. This is the default input module.
2. proc — reads interface statistics from the /proc/net/dev file. It is considered a legacy interface and offered for backwards compatibly. It is a fallback module in case the Netlink interface is not available.
3. dummy – this is a programmable input module for debugging and testing purposes.
4. null – disables data collection.

To find additional info about a module, invoke the it with the “help” option set as follows:

$ bmon -i netlink:help

The next command will invoke bmon with the proc input module enabled:

$ bmon -i proc -p enp1s0

How to Use bmon Output Modules

bmon also uses output modules to display or export the statistical data collected by the input modules above, which includes:

1. curses – this is an interactive curses based text user interface, it offers real time rate estimations and a graphical representation of each attribute. It is the default output mode.
2. ascii – is a straightforward programmable text output meant for human consumption. It can display list of interfaces, detailed counters and graphs to the console. It is the default fallback output mode when curses is not available.
3. format – is a fully scriptable output mode, it’s meant for consumption by other programs-meaning we can use its output values at a later time in scripts or programs for analysis and more.
4. null – this disables output.

To get more info concerning a module, run the it with the “help” flag set like so:

$ bmon -o curses:help

The command that follows will invoke bmon in ascii output mode:

$ bmon -p enp1s0 -o ascii  

We can run the format output module as well, then use the values obtained for scripting or in another program:

$ bmon -p enp1s0 -o format

For additional usage info, options and examples, read the bmon man page:

$ man bmon 

Visit the bmon Github repository: https://github.com/tgraf/bmon.

That’s all for now, test the various features of bmon in different scenarios and share your thoughts about it with us via the comment section below.

Source

netdata is a extremely optimized Linux utility that provides real-time (per second) performance monitoring for Linux systems, applications, SNMP devices, etc. and shows full interactive charts that absolutely render all collected values over the web browser to analyze them.

Don’t Miss: 20 Useful Command-line Tools to Monitor Linux Performance

It has been developed to be installed on each Linux system, without interrupting the current running applications on it. You can use this tool to monitor and get overview of what is happening in real-time and what just happened, on your Linux systems and applications.

This is what it monitors:

1. Total and Per Core CPU usage, interrupts, softirqs and frequency.
2. Total Memory, RAM, Swap and Kernel usage.
3. Disk I/O (per disk: bandwidth, operations, backlog, utilization, etc).
4. Monitors Network interfaces including: bandwidth, packets, errors, drops, etc).
5. Monitors Netfilter / iptables Linux firewall connections, events, errors, etc.
6. Processes (running, blocked, forks, active, etc).
7. System Applications with the process tree (CPU, memory, swap, disk reads/writes, threads, etc).
8. Apache and Nginx Status monitoring with mod_status.
9. MySQL database monitoring: queries, updates, locks, issues, threads, etc.
10. Postfix email server message queue.
11. Squid proxy server bandwidth and requests monitoring.
12. Hardware sensors (temperature, voltage, fans, power, humidity, etc).
13. SNMP devices.

netdata Installation on Linux Systems

The latest release of netdata can be easily installed on Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, Solus Linux and Alpine Linuxusing your package manager as shown.

$ sudo pacman -S netdata         [Install Netdata on Arch Linux]
$ sudo emerge --ask netdata      [Install Netdata on Gentoo Linux]
$ sudo eopkg install netdata     [Install Netdata on Solus Linux]
$ sudo apk add netdata           [Install Netdata on Alpine Linux]

On Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, there is one line installation script that will install latest netdataand also keep it up to date automatically.

$ bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh            [On 32-bit]
$ bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart-static64.sh)  [On 64-bit]

The above script will:

• discover the distribution and installs the needed software packages for building netdata (will ask for confirmation).
• downloads the latest netdata source tree to /usr/src/netdata.git.
• installs netdata by executing ./netdata-installer.sh from the source tree.
• installs netdata-updater.sh to cron.daily, so your netdata will be updated daily (you will receive a alert from cron only if the update fails).

Note: The kickstart.sh script progress all its parameters to netdata-installer.sh, so you can define more parameters to modify the installation source, enable/disable plugins, etc.

Alternatively, you can also install latest netdata manually by cloning its repository, but before you start installing netdata, make sure you have these basic build environment packages installed on the system, if not install it using your respective distribution package manager as shown:

On Debian / Ubuntu

# apt-get install zlib1g-dev gcc make git autoconf autogen automake pkg-config

On Centos / Redhat / Fedora

# yum install zlib-devel gcc make git autoconf autogen automake pkgconfig

Next, clone the netdata repository from git and run netdata installer script to build it.

# git clone https://github.com/firehol/netdata.git --depth=1
# cd netdata
# ./netdata-installer.sh

Note: The netdata-installer.sh script will build netdata and install it on your Linux system.

Once the netdata installer finishes, the file /etc/netdata/netdata.conf will be created in your system.

Now it’s time to start netdata by executing the following command from the terminal.

# /usr/sbin/netdata

You can also stop netdata by terminating it’s process with killall command as shown.

# killall netdata

Note: Netdata saves on exit its round robbin database information under /var/cache/netdata file, so that when you start again netdata, it will continue from where it was stopped last time.

Starting and Testing netdata

Now open your browser and navigate to the following address to access the web site for all graphs:

# http://127.0.0.1:19999/

Check out the video that shows how Real-time Linux performance monitoring done here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIZXS8A4BvI

You can also view the running configuration of netdata at any time, by going to:

http://127.0.0.1:19999/netdata.conf

Updating netdata

You can update netdata daemon to the most recent version by going into netdata.git directory you downloaded before and running:

# cd /path/to/netdata.git
# git pull
# ./netdata-installer.sh

The above netdata installer script will build new version and restart netdata.

Reference: https://github.com/firehol/netdata/

Source

Darkstat is a cross-platform, lightweight, simple, real-time network statistics tool that captures network traffic, computes statistics concerning usage, and serves the reports over HTTP.

Darkstat Features:

• An integrated web-server with deflate compression functionality.
• Portable, single-threaded and efficient Web based network traffic analyzer.
• The Web interface shows traffic graphs, reports per host and ports for each host.
• Supports asynchronous reverse DNS resolution using a child process.
• Support for IPv6 protocol.

Requirements:

• libpcap – a portable C/C++ library for network traffic capture.

Being small in size, it uses very low system memory resources and it is easy to install, configure and use in Linux as explained below.

How to Install Darkstat Network Traffic Analyzer in Linux

1. Luckily, darkstat is available in the software repositories of mainstream Linux distributions such as RHEL/CentOS and Debian/Ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install darkstat		# Debian/Ubuntu
$ sudo yum install darkstat		# RHEL/CentOS
$ sudo dnf install darkstat		# Fedora 22+

2. After installing darkstat, you need to configure it in the main configuration file /etc/darkstat/init.cfg.

$ sudo vi /etc/darkstat/init.cfg

And also uncoment DIR=”/var/lib/darkstat” and DAYLOG=”–daylog darkstat.log” options to specify its directory and log file respectively.

START_DARKSTAT=yes
INTERFACE="-i ppp0"
DIR="/var/lib/darkstat"
# File will be relative to $DIR:
DAYLOG="--daylog darkstat.log"

3. Start the darkstat daemon for now and enable it to start at system boot as follows.

------------ On SystemD ------------ 
$ sudo systemctl start darkstat
$ sudo /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable darkstat
$ sudo systemctl status darkstat

------------ On SysV Init ------------
$ sudo /etc/init.d/darkstat start
$ sudo chkconfig darkstat on
$ sudo /etc/init.d/darkstat status

4. By default, darkstat listens on port 667, so open the port on firewall to allow access.

------------ On FirewallD ------------
$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=667/tcp
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

------------ On IPtables ------------
$ sudo iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 667 -j ACCEPT
$ sudoiptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 667 -j ACCEPT
$ sudo service iptables save

------------ On UFW Firewall ------------
$ sudo ufw allow 667/tcp
$ sudo ufw reload

5. Finally access the darkstat web interface by going to URL http://Server-IP:667.

You can reload graphs automatically by clicking on and off buttons.

Manage Darkstat From Command Line in Linux

Here, we will explain a few important examples of how you can operate darkstat from the command line.

6. To collect network statistics on the eth0 interface, you can use the -i flag as below.

$ darkstat -i eth0

7. To serve web pages on a specific port, include the -p flag like this.

$ darkstat -i eth0 -p 8080

8. To keep an eye on network statistics for a given service, use the -f or filter flag. The specified filter expression in the example below will capture traffic concerned with SSH service.

$ darkstat -i eth0 -f "port 22"

Last but not least, if you want to shut darkstat down in a clean way; it is recommended to send SIGTERM or SIGINT signal to the darkstat parent process.

First get the darkstat parent process ID (PPID) using the pidof command:

$ pidof darkstat

Then kill the process like so:

$ sudo kill -SIGTERM 4790
OR
$ sudo kill -15 4790

For additional usage options, read through the darkstat manpage:

$ man darkstat

Reference Link: Darkstat Homepage

You may also like to read following related articles on Linux network monitoring.

1. 20 Command Line Tools to Monitor Linux Performance
2. 13 Linux Performance Monitoring Tools
3. Netdata – A Real-Time Linux Performance Monitoring Tools
4. BCC – Dynamic Tools for Linux Performance and Network Monitoring

That’s It! In this article, we have explained how to install and use darkstat in Linux to capture network traffic, calculates usage, and analyze reports over HTTP.

Do you have any questions to ask or thoughts to share, use the comment form below.

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