Monitoring network traffic with vnStat and vnStati

Efficiently monitor network traffic with vnStat and vnStati.

Welcome back to AZDIGI. In today’s article, AZDIGI will guide you through a tool that I frequently use to monitor network traffic, which is vnStat. To proceed, please take a look at this article.

Introduction

VnStat is a network traffic monitoring tool with a command-line interface for Linux and BSD. It keeps track of network traffic records for selected network interfaces, generates logs, and utilizes information provided by the kernel.

Features

• Statistics are available even after the system reboots.
• Monitor multiple network interfaces simultaneously.
• Various output options.
• Sort data by hour, day, month, week, or display the top 10 days.
• Generate output in PNG graphs.
• Lightweight application with minimal system resource consumption.
• Low CPU usage regardless of the amount of traffic generated.
• Can be used by any user, not necessarily root.
• Customizable units (KB, MB, etc.).
• vnStati provides additional options such as:
  • -nl / –nolegend
  • –Altdate
  • –Headertext
• You can generate output in image format.
• Interface bandwidth is automatically detected.
• Supports JSON output.

Installing vnStat on a Linux server

There are several ways to install vnStat, but in this guide, I will show you how to install it from the source using the direct installation command. To start, you need to SSH into your server/VPS. If you don’t know how to SSH, please refer to the following article:

• How to login to Linux VPS with SSH protocol.

1. Installing vnStat on RHEL/CentOS

1.1. Installing vnStat using YUM

yum install vnstat -y
    

1.2. Installing vnStat from source

To install vnStat from source, follow these commands:

yum group install "Development Tools"
yum install gd gd-devel sqlite-devel 
wget https://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-2.6.tar.gz
tar -xvf vnstat-2.6.tar.gz
cd vnstat-2.6/
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
make
make install
    

2. Installing vnStat on Debian/Ubuntu

2.1. Installing vnStat using apt

sudo apt install vnstat -y
    

2.2. Installing vnStat from source

sudo apt-get install build-essential gd gd-devel libsqlite3-dev
wget https://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-2.6.tar.gz
tar -xvf vnstat-2.6.tar.gz
cd vnstat-2.6/
sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
sudo make
sudo make install
    

3. Configuring vnStat

By default, after installing vnStat, it will run on the network interface with eth0 as the interface. If your device is not using “eth0“, you need to change the network interface in the configuration file.

vi /etc/vnstat.conf
    

• Next, you need to create the database and specify the storage location.

vnstat -i eth0
chown vnstat:vnstat /var/lib/vnstat/eth0
    

• Then, restart vnstat to start using it.

systemctl start vnstat
systemctl enable vnstat
    

Using vnStat Guide

Before you start using vnStat, familiarize yourself with the syntax and options available.

Syntax of execution

vnstat
vnstat -i {interface} 
vnstat -i {interface} -option
vnstat -i {interface} -option1 -option2
    

Explanation of options:

• -q, –query: Query the database
• -h, –hours: Display hours
• -d, –days: Display days
• -m, –months: Display months
• -w, –weeks: Display weeks
• -t, –top10: Display top 10 days
• -s, –short: Display short output
• -u, –update: Update the database
• -i, –iface: Specify interface (default is eth0)
• -?, –help: Display help
• -v, –version: Display version
• -tr, –traffic: Calculate traffic
• -ru, –rateunit: Swap configured rate unit
• -l, –live: Display real-time transfer rate

For example

• Display daily statistics

vnstat -d
    

• Display hourly statistics

vnstat -h
    

• Display real-time statistics

vnstat -l
    

Using vnStati Guide

To visualize the statistical data more conveniently, you can use the vnStati tool to generate .png images for vnStat.

vnStati is automatically installed along with vnStat, so there is no need for any additional installation steps. To create an image, follow these instructions:

vnstati -s -i eth0 -o /home/quandt/domains/dotrungquan.info/public_html/network-log.png    

In there:

• vnstati: the command to execute
• -s: summary
• -i: interface
• /home/quandt/domains/dotrungquan.info/public_html/network-log.png: path and file

Illustrative example image:

To use and learn more about vnStati, you can use the command vnStati --help to display the available options.

[root@centos-s-2vcpu-4gb-sgp1-01 ~]# vnstati --help
 vnStat image output 1.15 by Teemu Toivola 
         -h,  --hours          output hours
         -d,  --days           output days
         -m,  --months         output months
         -t,  --top10          output top10
         -s,  --summary        output summary
         -hs, --hsummary       output horizontal summary with hours
         -vs, --vsummary       output vertical summary with hours
         -nh, --noheader       remove header from output
         -ne, --noedge         remove edge from output
         -nl, --nolegend       remove legend from output
         -ru, --rateunit       swap configured rate unit
         -o,  --output         select output filename
         -c,  --cache          update output only when too old
         -i,  --iface          used interface (default: eth0)
         -?,  --help           this help
         -D,  --debug          show some additional debug information
         -v,  --version        show version
         --dbdir               select database directory
         --style               select output style (0-3)
         --locale              set locale
         --config              select config file
         --altdate             use alternative date location
         --headertext          specify header text string
         --transparent         toggle background transparency
See also "man vnstati".
    

Summary

Through this tutorial, we hope this article has helped you successfully install and effectively manage network traffic on your server devices.

If you need assistance, you can contact support in the ways below:

• Hotline 247: 028 888 24768 (Ext 0)
• Ticket/Email: You use the email to register for the service and send it directly to: support@azdigi.com .