App/Ntop

Running Ntop Guide

This is a quick guide to getting ntop (network top - http://www.ntop.org) running on your system. Ntop will check all incoming and outgoing traffic on your HDA, giving you nice graphs and metrics.

First you need to install ntop:

 root@localhost# yum install ntop 

To run it you type:

 root@localhost# service ntop start 

To view the statistics gathered by ntop:

 http://hda:3000 

or secure:

 https://hda:3001 

Below you can find a sample configuration file for ntop:

---

 # tells ntop the user id to run as 

 --user ntop 

 #save messages into the system log 

 --use-syslog=daemon 

 # sets the directory that ntop runs from 

 --db-file-path /var/lib/ntop 

 # the amount and severity of messages that ntop will put out 

 --trace-level 3 

 # limit ntop to listening on a specific interface and port 

 --http-server 3000 --https-server 3001 

 # specify the interface 

 --interface eth0 

 # Under certain circumstances, the sched_yield() function causes the ntop web 

 # server to lock up.  It shouldn't happen, but it does.  This option causes 

 # ntop to skip those calls, at a tiny performance penalty. 

 --disable-schedyield 

 # disables "phone home" behavior 

 --skip-version-check=yes 

---

Troubleshooting:
You might need to set a password for ntop before you can access certain parts of the admin panel of ntop. You can set the initial password as described below:

 root@localhost# service ntop stop 

 root@localhost# ntop -A 

 <fill in a password> 

 root@localhost# service ntop start 

tested on fedora9 32-bit