MRTG, a tool to monitor your network

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Network traffic analysis with MRTG on Linkstation


This article describes the setup of mrtg http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/ It is assumed you do this on a debianized linkstation.


Contents

Ensure you have mrtg and snmpd (If you do not have them:) 

apt-get install snmpd  
apt-get install mrtg

Setup snmpd

Move the original /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf to a save place, e.g. 

mv /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf.original

Create a new snmpd.conf with the following content:

(This example creates a community named "test" for the SNMP Daemon) 

com2sec                         local     localhost        test       
group MyROGroup v1              local                                 
group MyROGroup v2c             local                                 
group MyROGroup usm             local                                 
view all    included  .1        80                                    
access MyROGroup ""      any    noauth    exact  all    none   none

Restart the snmpd daemon 

/etc/init.d/snmpd restart

Setup mrtg 

cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir: /var/www/apache2-default/mrtg/' --global 'Options[_]: bits,growright' --output /root/mrtg.cfg test@localhost

This will setup mrtg. The html files will be created in the directory /var/www/apache2-default/mrtg/. The config file for mrtg will be stored in the directory /root and is named as mrtg.conf

Start mrtg 

/usr/bin/mrtg /root/mrtg.cfg

After the first & second start you will get messages like 

Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup could not read the primary log file for localhost_2
Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup The backup log file for localhost_2 was invalid as well
Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup Can't remove localhost_2.old updating log file
Rateup WARNING: /usr/bin/rateup Can't rename localhost_2.log to localhost_2.old updating log file

The messages will disappear after the 3rd start

Automize the start 

crontab -e

insert the line 

0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * /usr/bin/mrtg /root/mrtg.cfg

This will update your page every 5 Minutes

The results

You can see your networktraffic if you have a look on /var/www/apache2-default/mrtg/localhost_2.html (or similar)

More details 

man mrtg        
man smnpd       
man snmpd.conf  
man crontab

HTH Knatterman

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