Smokeping is the old-school tool for monitoring website/IP by using PING. Many ISP around the world rely on Smokeping to monitor their upstream/downstream IP. The stability and low memory foodprint have been my favorite since I know the Smokeping.
The latest version of Smokeping (2.8) 2.8.2 at this time, not available on Ubuntu 20.04, so we need to install it from the source. Since most of the command copy-and-paste mode, you can finish this installation in under 10 minutes. We don’t cover SSL/TLS installation on this tutorial, but let me know if you need one, so we can update that part on a later revision.
Install and Update Ubuntu
To keep the Ubuntu installation secure, remember to run this command on weekly basis.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
Install Dependency
Since we’ll build the smokeping from the source, we’ll need to install some dependency.
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gcc make libwww-perl libcgi-fast-perl libtext-soundex-perl libio-pty-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl \ rrdtool librrds-perl libssl-dev libc6-dev wget autoconf fping -y
these packages need by smokeping, so we must install them.
Download Smokeping 2.8.2
At the time I wrote this tutorial, the latest version of smokeping is 2.8.2.
wget https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/pub/smokeping-2.8.2.tar.gz
extract and build these package
tar zxf smokeping-2.8.2.tar.gz cd smokeping-2.8.2 LC_ALL=C ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/smokeping sudo make install
it’ll take some time until the process is done, at the end of the process you’ll show this output
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2/htdocs' make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2/htdocs' make[1]: Entering directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2' make[2]: Entering directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2' make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-exec-am'. make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-data-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2' make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/jack/smokeping-2.8.2/smokeping-2.8.2'
verify if the instalation success, by check the version
/usr/local/smokeping/bin/smokeping --version # output 2.008002
at this step our instalation already completed, now it’s time to configure Smokeping.
Smokeping Config
Create folder to store data and cache
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/smokeping/{cache,data,var}
Create config file /usr/local/smokeping/etc/config, we’ll put all domain that we monitor here.
sudo nano /usr/local/smokeping/etc/config
copy following code
*** General *** owner = Atetux contact = hello.darling@atetux.com mailhost = my.mail.host imgcache = /usr/local/smokeping/cache imgurl = cache datadir = /usr/local/smokeping/data piddir = /usr/local/smokeping/var cgiurl = http://some.url/smokeping.cgi smokemail = /usr/local/smokeping/etc/smokemail.dist tmail = /usr/local/smokeping/etc/tmail.dist syslogfacility = smokeping *** Alerts *** to = alertee@address.somewhere from = smokealert@company.xy +someloss type = loss pattern = >0%,*12*,>0%,*12*,>0% comment = loss 3 times in a row *** Database *** step = 300 pings = 20 AVERAGE 0.5 1 1008 AVERAGE 0.5 12 4320 MIN 0.5 12 4320 MAX 0.5 12 4320 AVERAGE 0.5 144 720 MAX 0.5 144 720 MIN 0.5 144 720 *** Presentation *** template = /usr/local/smokeping/etc/basepage.html.dist charset = utf-8 + charts menu = Charts title = The most interesting destinations ++ stddev sorter = StdDev(entries=>4) title = Top Standard Deviation menu = Std Deviation format = Standard Deviation %f ++ max sorter = Max(entries=>5) title = Top Max Roundtrip Time menu = by Max format = Max Roundtrip Time %f seconds ++ loss sorter = Loss(entries=>5) title = Top Packet Loss menu = Loss format = Packets Lost %f ++ median sorter = Median(entries=>5) title = Top Median Roundtrip Time menu = by Median format = Median RTT %f seconds + overview width = 600 height = 50 range = 10h + detail width = 600 height = 200 unison_tolerance = 2 "Last 3 Hours" 3h "Last 30 Hours" 30h "Last 10 Days" 10d "Last 360 Days" 360d *** Probes *** + FPing binary = /usr/bin/fping *** Targets *** probe = FPing menu = Top title = Network Latency Grapher remark = Welcome to the SmokePing atetux.com + SearchEngine menu = Search-Engine title = Search Engine ++ Google menu = Google title = google.com host = google.com ++ Bing menu = Bing title = Bing.com host = bing.com ++ DuckDuckGo menu = DuckDuckGo title = DuckDuckGo.com host = duckduckgo.com
run smokeping in debug mode, to check if something goes wrong
sudo /usr/local/smokeping/bin/smokeping --debug
Smokeping Systemd Service
To manage smokeping processes such as start, stop, and status. We will use systemd service which is the default in many Linux distros.
Create new file
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/smokeping.service
add following config
[Unit] Description=Smokeping Server After=network.target [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/local/smokeping/bin/smokeping --nodaemon /usr/local/smokeping/etc/config --logfile=/var/log/smokeping.log [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
after that we can manage the smokeping using systemd systemctl as usual
# enable smokeping on boot (only need to run this once) sudo systemctl enable smokeping # start the smokeping sudo systemctl start smokeping # check the status sudo systemctl status smokeping # stop the smokeping service (you don't need to run this command) sudo systemctl stop smokeping
Enable the Web UI
Smokeping had a web UI which is the preferred method to view smokeping for many people. To enable this feature we need to install webserver, because usually smokeping run on it’s own instance so we can just use the famous Apache Web Server for serving the HTTP.
Install Apache
Install apache with fcgi module
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid -y
after installing Apache, change the Smokeping directory permission, so it’s accessible by Apache
sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /usr/local/smokeping
Apache Virtual Host
Create new config file for Apache in /etc/apache2/conf-available/smokeping.conf with following content
Alias /smokeping/cache /usr/local/smokeping/cache Alias /smokeping /usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/ <Directory "/usr/local/smokeping/cache"> AllowOverride all Require all granted </Directory> <Directory "/usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/"> Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI AllowOverride all Require all granted </Directory>
enable the smokeping config that just created
sudo a2enconf smokepingEnable CGI Module and Restart Apache
The last step is to enable CGI module in Apache, and restart the Apache services
sudo a2enmod cgi sudo systemctl restart apache2
Open http://SERVER-IP/smokeping/smokeping.fcgi.dist in browser you should see the similar result with picture below
Hallo,
danke für die ausführliche Anleitung. Leider bekomme ich unter Debian 11 bereits beim make install folgende Fehlermeldung:
ERROR: read timeout at /usr/share/perl5/Net/HTTP/Methods.pm line 243. at /usr/share/perl5/LWP/UserAgent.pm line 1008.
Was kann ich da machen?
Danke!
Viele Grüße,
Jens
thank you very much for this walk through. very clear and easy to follow steps for a fellow that has just enough Ubuntu knowledge to get into serious trouble.
that was the longest 10 minutes in my life! Lol!! but it works. Thanks.
This worked well for me. Thanks
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Apache/2.4.52 (Ubuntu) Server at 172.26.51.141 Port 80
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