vnStat

vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor that uses the network interface statistics provided by the kernel as the information source. This means that vnStat won’t actually be sniffing any traffic and also ensures light use of system resources.

By default, traffic statistics are stored on a five minute level for the last 48 hours, on an hourly level for the last 4 days, on a daily level for the last 2 full months and on a yearly level forever. The data retention durations are fully user configurable. Total seen traffic and a top days listing are also provided. Optional png image output is available in systems with the gd library installed.

Feature

• quick and simple to install and get running
• gathered statistics persist through system reboots
• can monitor multiple interfaces at the same time
• several output options
  • summary, 5 minutes, hourly, daily, monthly, weekly, yearly, top days
  • optional png image output (using libgd)
• data retention duration is fully user configurable on the fly
• months can be configured to follow the billing period
• light, minimal resource usage
• same low cpu usage regardless of traffic
• can be used without root permissions
• online color configuration editor

Changelog v2.3

• Fixed
  • Traffic rate wasn’t being shown for the last entry of most lists during
    the first update of the next period (first SaveInterval minutes of each
    new hour, day, month and year)
  • Systemd example service file could result in database file write issues
    if the used systemd version supported ProtectSystem=strict but didn’t
    support StateDirectory (issue seen at least with systemd 232 in Debian 9)
  • Debian and Red Hat init.d example files had wrong path for the pid file
  • Interfaces could end up staying marked as ‘disabled’ in the database even
    after becoming back active and monitored, only the shown status was wrong
    without resulting in any data loss
  • Some image outputs didn’t allocate enough height for the image resulting
    in the last row having less space below it than intended
• New
  • Automatic interface selection when the Interface configuration setting
    is left empty (new default)
  • Add configuration option DatabaseWriteAheadLogging to enable SQLite
    Write-Ahead Logging mode which may provide some disk i/o benefits,
    see https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html for more details and note that
    SQLite 3.22.0 or later is required to support read-only operations
  • Add configuration option DatabaseSynchronous for changing the SQLite
    setting of the “synchronous” flag, see
    https://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_synchronous for more details
  • Show warning in log if writing cached data to database is slow
  • Try database query for up to 5 seconds when database is busy or locked
    instead of giving up immediately
  • Continue daemon process execution with data caching if database writes
    fail due to disk being full

Download & Use

Copyright (C) 2017 vergoh