TronProg: Programming and Computers

Since I started using my mobile connection to connect to Internet (now and then), I felt the need to keep track of my network usage (since I only have 500mb a month, and my provider doesn't seem to provide the usage on a website). And of course, I'm talking Linux OS ;-)

I stumbled upon this nice software, vnstat, http://humdi.net/vnstat, which really suits my needs.

Unfortunately, the version that comes with Ubuntu is quite old, so I was suggested in the forum, to download and compile from sources the latest version from the website.

After unpackaged the tarbal, it's just a matter of running make install (as a superuser)

sudo make install
Installing vnStat...
Installing config to /etc/vnstat.conf
install -d -m 755 /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/share/man/man1 /usr/share/man/man5 /var/lib/vnstat
install -s -m 755 src/vnstat /usr/bin
install -s -m 755 src/vnstatd /usr/sbin
install -m 644 man/vnstat.1 /usr/share/man/man1
install -m 644 man/vnstatd.1 /usr/share/man/man1
install -m 644 man/vnstat.conf.5 /usr/share/man/man5

Then, the first time, you need to create the database; since I'm interested in my ppp0 mobile connection, I did

sudo vnstat --force -u -i ppp0

Before starting, I prefered to tweak the configuration a bit, so I created $HOME/.vnstatrc and I added this option

# interface specific limits
# example 8Mbit limit for eth0 (remove # to activate):
#MaxBWeth0 8
MaxBWppp0 8

This seemed to help getting rid of those annoying 4gb spikes. (On a side note, I often use the application that came with my Internet Huawei card, which often, very often, suffer from those 4gb spikes which definitely spoil the statistics of network usage, that's why I had to find a better solution to keep track of that.)

Now you can setup the vnstat daemon so that it starts automatically when the computer starts

sudo cp examples/init.d/ubuntu/vnstat /etc/init.d/
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/vnstat
sudo update-rc.d vnstat defaults

And if you want to start it right now

sudo /etc/init.d/vnstat start

Every 5 minutes the daemon updates the database with the statistics (of course you can configure many things, see the vnstat documentation).

You can see the current statistics

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat
Database updated: Sat Oct 10 15:37:54 2009

 ppp0 since 04.09.09

 rx: 292.90 MiB tx: 104.48 MiB total: 397.38 MiB

 monthly
 rx | tx | total | avg. rate
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 Sep '09 243.74 MiB | 88.89 MiB | 332.62 MiB | 1.05 kbit/s
 Oct '09 49.16 MiB | 15.59 MiB | 64.76 MiB | 0.64 kbit/s
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 estimated 157 MiB | 48 MiB | 205 MiB |

 daily
 rx | tx | total | avg. rate
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 yesterday 329 KiB | 172 KiB | 501 KiB | 0.05 kbit/s
 today 7.91 MiB | 2.25 MiB | 10.16 MiB | 1.48 kbit/s
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 estimated 10 MiB | 3 MiB | 13 MiB |

The daily statistics

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat -d

ppp0 / daily

 day rx | tx | total | avg. rate
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 04.09. 8.96 MiB | 6.99 MiB | 15.94 MiB | 1.51 kbit/s
 05.09. 12.05 MiB | 4.37 MiB | 16.42 MiB | 1.56 kbit/s
 06.09. 9.21 MiB | 4.14 MiB | 13.35 MiB | 1.27 kbit/s
 08.09. 25.17 MiB | 9.68 MiB | 34.86 MiB | 3.30 kbit/s
 09.09. 6.64 MiB | 2.74 MiB | 9.38 MiB | 0.89 kbit/s
 10.09. 22.53 MiB | 7.88 MiB | 30.41 MiB | 2.88 kbit/s
 12.09. 10.58 MiB | 4.64 MiB | 15.22 MiB | 1.44 kbit/s
 13.09. 5.13 MiB | 2.07 MiB | 7.21 MiB | 0.68 kbit/s
 14.09. 7.67 MiB | 2.18 MiB | 9.86 MiB | 0.93 kbit/s
 18.09. 12.54 MiB | 2.31 MiB | 14.85 MiB | 1.41 kbit/s
 19.09. 16.28 MiB | 5.14 MiB | 21.42 MiB | 2.03 kbit/s
 20.09. 4.76 MiB | 1.47 MiB | 6.24 MiB | 0.59 kbit/s
 22.09. 11.99 MiB | 4.29 MiB | 16.27 MiB | 1.54 kbit/s
 23.09. 17.75 MiB | 8.66 MiB | 26.41 MiB | 2.50 kbit/s
 24.09. 8.80 MiB | 2.94 MiB | 11.74 MiB | 1.11 kbit/s
 26.09. 15.72 MiB | 4.99 MiB | 20.71 MiB | 1.96 kbit/s
 27.09. 383 KiB | 108 KiB | 491 KiB | 0.05 kbit/s
 29.09. 23.36 MiB | 6.18 MiB | 29.55 MiB | 2.80 kbit/s
 30.09. 24.23 MiB | 8.09 MiB | 32.32 MiB | 3.06 kbit/s
 01.10. 9.90 MiB | 5.62 MiB | 15.52 MiB | 1.47 kbit/s
 04.10. 22.22 MiB | 5.15 MiB | 27.37 MiB | 2.60 kbit/s
 05.10. 8.81 MiB | 2.40 MiB | 11.21 MiB | 1.06 kbit/s
 09.10. 329 KiB | 172 KiB | 501 KiB | 0.05 kbit/s
 10.10. 7.91 MiB | 2.25 MiB | 10.16 MiB | 1.48 kbit/s
 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
 estimated 10 MiB | 3 MiB | 13 MiB |

for months

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat -m

ppp0 / monthly

 month rx | tx | total | avg. rate
 ------------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------
 Sep '09 243.74 MiB | 88.89 MiB | 332.62 MiB | 1.05 kbit/s
 Oct '09 49.25 MiB | 15.68 MiB | 64.93 MiB | 0.64 kbit/s
 ------------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------
 estimated 157 MiB | 48 MiB | 205 MiB |

and so on.

Very nice! :-)

Pubblicato da betto a 3:26 PM 0 commenti

Etichette: linux, networking

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