Spry Methuselah
Charly's Column – darkstat

Thanks to its minimal footprint, 20-year-old darkstat hardly generates any noticeable load even on low-powered systems, making it the perfect monitoring tool for Charly's home utility room.
Next to our kitchen, there is a small utility room. I don't think its floorspace is even two square meters. In addition to the usual building services, such as fuse box, there are two firewalls, a web and mail server, network attached storage (NAS), and a large switch.
The tiny router supplied by my Internet provider sits a little intimidated in the corner. I downgraded it to something like the IT equivalent of a flow heater. It opens the connection to the provider and passes it to the firewall. I have switched off everything else, like WLAN, telephony, and the DHCP server; I prefer to do that myself, on my own hardware.
You need to monitor what you run. For long-term monitoring of loads and latencies, I use Munin and SmokePing. But if I just want to have a quick look at what currently is happening on the firewall interface, darkstat [1] is the hero of the day.
Darkstat, a true Methuselah at the ripe old age of almost 20, has been under the GPL license since 2002. I had my first contact with the software when I tried pfSense [2]. Thanks to its minimal footprint, the monitoring tool generates so little system load that it even runs unobtrusively on my ancient NAS box with 128MB RAM [3].
Darkstat gets its data via libpcap; the output comes courtesy of a built-in, lean web server. The most important parameters are stored in a small configuration file, which resides in /etc/darkstat/
on my Ubuntu test system. Using the configuration file is voluntary; I could ignore it and simply start darkstat at the command line.
The only mandatory parameter is -i <interface>
. The darkstat --help
command lists all the other parameters. Be careful with --syslog
. If you enable this option, darkstat suppresses all console messages. It therefore makes sense not to set this parameter until everything else is working to your satisfaction.
Once darkstat is running as desired, a web server on port 667 displays the current traffic data (Figure 1). It is a pity that darkstat displays the data in bytes, not in bits, but it's fine for a quick overview of what's crossing the wire.
More details can be found in the hosts tab. This is where darkstat lists the devices in a table; you can sort by the column headers. This is how I found out, for example, that music streaming is very popular today. My eldest child is embarking on a career as an Instagram influencer, or whatever the kids call it nowadays (Figure 2).
Also practical: darkstat not only displays live data, but also visualizes sessions that you record with Wireshark or Tcpdump. Conclusions: Methuselah has aged with dignity and is still very much needed.
Infos
- darkstat: https://unix4lyfe.org/darkstat/
- pfSense: https://www.pfsense.org
- darkstat package for Synology NAS: https://synocommunity.com/package/darkstat
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
News
-
GNOME 43 To Bring Some Exciting New Features
GNOME 43 is getting close to the first alpha development release and it promises to add one particular feature that should be exciting to several users.
-
KaOS 2022.06 Now Available With KDE Plasma 5.25
The newest iteration of KaOS Linux not only adds the latest KDE Plasma desktop but sets LibreOffice as the default.
-
Manjaro 21.3.0 Is Now Available
Manjaro “Ruah” has been released and includes the latest Calamares installer, GNOME 42, and much more.
-
SpiralLinux is a New Linux Distribution Focused on Simplicity
A new Linux distribution, from the creator of GeckoLinux, is a Debian-based operating system with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.
-
HP Dev One Linux Laptop is Now Available for Pre-Order
The System76/HP collaboration Dev One laptop, geared toward developers, is now available for pre-order.
-
NixOS 22.5 Is Now Available
The latest release of NixOS with a much-improved package manager and a user-friendly graphical installer.
-
System76 Teams up with HP to Create the Dev One Laptop
HP and System76 have come together to develop a new laptop, powered by Pop!_OS and aimed toward developers.
-
Titan Linux is a New KDE Linux Based on Debian Stable
Titan Linux is a new Debian-based Linux distribution that features the KDE Plasma desktop with a focus on usability and performance.
-
Danielle Foré Has an Update for elementary OS 7
Now that Ubuntu 22.04 has been released, the team behind elementary OS is preparing for the upcoming 7.0 release.
-
Linux New Media Launches Open Source JobHub
New job website focuses on connecting technical and non-technical professionals with organizations in open source.