Ntop - Revision history

Christoph at 07:25, 5 September 2007

2007-09-05T07:25:03Z

Christoph at 07:21, 5 September 2007

2007-09-05T07:21:31Z

Christoph at 07:20, 5 September 2007

2007-09-05T07:20:45Z

Christoph at 07:18, 5 September 2007

2007-09-05T07:18:47Z

New page

ntop is a network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user's terminal. In Web mode, it acts as a Web server, creating an HTML dump of the network status. It sports a NetFlow/sFlow emitter/collector, an HTTP-based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRD for persistently storing traffic statistics.

==Install==
Using svn is probably the easiest way to download the source:
mkdir my_ntop_goes_here
cd my_ntop_goes_here
svn co https://svn.ntop.org/svn/ntop/trunk/ntop

Now you need to compile ntop:
cd ntop
./autogen.sh
make
make install # as root

==Usage==
''Note:After installing <code>ntop</code> one must provide an admin password (first run only).''
Once <code>ntop</code> is installed, you must provide an administrative password on the first run.

*Run <code>ntop</code> directly:
ntop -A

This will start <code>ntop</code>, ask you for the admin password, and then exit. After that, you can start <code>ntop</code> and begin monitoring network traffic.

*basic invocation:
ntop -P /var/lib/ntop

This will start <code>ntop</code> and write the database files to the directory <code>/var/lib/ntop</code> (note: You must start <code>ntop</code> as root, however, you can give users permission as well).

Instead of running <code>ntop</code> as root all the time, run it as a dedicated user. To create the user ntop, execute:
groupadd ntop
useradd -M -s /bin/false -d /var/lib/ntop -c "ntop user" -g ntop ntop

These two commands will create the user and group for <code>ntop</code> (you can also add the group to <code>/etc/group</code>).

Finally, start <code>ntop</code> and tell which user to drop privileges:
ntop -P /var/lib/ntop -u ntop

*have <code>ntop</code> listen to port 4000 and only accept HTTPS traffic
ntop -w 0 -W 4000

*have <code>ntop</code> listen on port 3000 for HTTP traffic and port 4000 for HTTPS traffic
ntop -w 3000 -W 4000.

To have <code>ntop</code> start at boot and constantly watch traffic, add the following to <code>/etc/init.d/rc.local</code> (or a similar script that is started at boot, depending on your distribution):
ntop -P /var/lib/ntop -u ntop -d

Specifying the <code>-d</code> option tells <code>ntop</code> to daemonise and fork to the background.

==External links==
*[http://www.ntop.org/ ntop homepage]
*[http://wiki.ntop.org/ ntop wiki]

[[Category:Linux Command Line Tools]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:20, 5 September 2007
Line 1:		Line 1:
−	ntop is a network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user's terminal. In Web mode, it acts as a Web server, creating an HTML dump of the network status. It sports a NetFlow/sFlow emitter/collector, an HTTP-based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRD for persistently storing traffic statistics.	+	'''ntop''' is a network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user's terminal. In Web mode, it acts as a Web server, creating an HTML dump of the network status. It sports a NetFlow/sFlow emitter/collector, an HTTP-based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRD for persistently storing traffic statistics.

	==Install==		==Install==

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 ==Install==
 Using svn is probably the easiest way to download the source:
   mkdir my_ntop_goes_here

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
   mkdir my_ntop_goes_here
   cd my_ntop_goes_here
-  svn co https://svn.ntop.org/svn/ntop/trunk/ntop
+  svn co <nowiki>https://svn.ntop.org/svn/ntop/trunk/ntop</nowiki>
 Now you need to compile ntop: