FREESCO iptotal howto

This page will describe the installation and use of the iptotal package for FREESCO.
The iptotal package is a network usage monitor without the need for an SNMP daemon.
It is based on an *extremely* simple network sniffer using the libpcap library.
I have developed this tool because the numbers reported by the SNMP daemon on my FREESCO box where way too low (about 3 to 5 times too low).

Requirements

A hard disk based FREESCO router (sorry no floppy support...)
preferable a Pentium based FREESCO box (the CPU load for the runtime generated graphs is rather high).
the utils-1 and utils-2 package (but who hasn't installed these?)
the RRDTool package for FREESCO
an HTTP server with CGI support (this can be the standard HTTPD daemon, THTTPD or Apache)
A human (preferably...) sysadmin to do the install + configuration
A little time.

Package installation

The screenshot below shows a sample installation from my server.

[Linux]installpkg http://dingetje.homeip.net/packages/iptotal
Now downloading the install script for iptotal...
Warning: installing software from a 3rd party package could damage your
router's configuration or make it insecure. You should only install a
package from an author/site you trust.
http://dingetje.homeip.net/packages/iptotal.sh (1K)
iptotal.sh [########################] 1K | 438.96K/s
1179 bytes transferred in 0.00 sec (246.39k/sec)
Do you want to view the install script before executing it [y/n]? n
Continue installing [y/n]? y
http://dingetje.homeip.net/packages/iptotal.tgz (54K)
iptotal.tgz [########################] 54K | 667.37K/s
55325 bytes transferred in 0.08 sec (659.65k/sec)
Starting iptotal network monitor... Done

Installation is complete.
Now you can use - iptotal
Usage graph is at http://your.freesco.ip/iptotal/iptotal.cgi

Usage

After the installation you should wait a few minutes to allow the tool to create the initial database and capture the first few samples.
Then point your favorite browser to http://your.freesco.ip/iptotal/iptotal.cgi
A page similar to this one should appear. It will take a full day to fill the entire graph.
Verify the measured values by performing a download of a big file (several Mb) on one of the clients behind your FREESCO box.

The package is controlled in the familiar way:

rc_iptotal [ start | stop ]

When iptotal is executing is will update the RRD database in /mnt/router/packages/iptotal/dbase/iptotal.rrd
This database should allow read access to user nobody which is the default user your HTTP server is running with.
The process ID is written to /var/run/iptotal.pid The monitored network interface is default eth0
If you want to change this then edit /mnt/router/packages/iptotal/bin/iptotald
When the RRD database location is changed, you will also have to change the graph display script in /www/iptotal/iptotal.cgi
The created graph images will be written at /www/iptotal/images
This graph directory should be owned by the same user that is running your HTTP daemon (usually nobody).

Enjoy ;-)

Tha....tha....that's all folks!

written by dingetje for FREESCO

Last edited: December 18, 2001 09:30