Linux netowrk monitoring - free package

[srinivassin]

Hi all, i need a monitoring tool,something free one to monitor my network...i already tried netmrg, i need something good and simple to configure. thankz in advance.

[Ross Minkov]

Srinivassin,

I'd recommend Nagios -- http://nagios.org/

Nagios is a program that will monitor hosts, switches, routers, printers, etc. and services on your
network, and will email or page you when a problem arises or is
resolved. Nagios runs on a unix/linux server as a background or daemon
process, intermittently running checks on various services that you
specify. The actual service checks are performed by separate "plugin"
programs which return the status of the checks to Nagios.

For a live demo -- http://nagios.square-box.com/
Username: guest
Password: guest

Nagios is exception monitoring tool (aka alarmer). If you want trending tool (aka tracker) consider one of the following -- Cricket, MRTG, Orca.

HTH,
Ross

[Ross Minkov]

I forgot to mention that all of the tools I mentioned above are "free" open source tools.

[Chris Xu]

I highly recommend MRTG to fit your needs. I use it myself and it works great. Besides, it is easy to set up.
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/

Good luck.

Chris

[NiCK_76]

MRTG
http://howto.aphroland.de/HOWTO/MRTG/FrontPage

[Karsten Breivik_1]

Could also use bigbrother or bigsister for monitoring the hosts, thus implicitly also monitoring your network. Last time I checked, Sitescope from Mercury has also become free for non-commercial use - this is an impressive tool for agentless monitoring!

However, I would like to know if anyone have experiences with free application monitoring tools. I am currently using Topaz from Mercury at work. This is a very nice tool able to do GUI emulation on windows and Java applications and protocol emulation on systems like SAP, Siebel, Baan, HTTP, etc. However the price is high. I would be interested in something free for personal use.

[Bill Thorsteinson]

For lightweight, quick, and free, try MON.
It's what I implemented first.

You may outgrow it and require something like
nagios. As time permits, I am moving to it.
Given that you've implement MTRNG this is
more likely what you are looking for.

Both allow you to add custom monitors, and
distributed services.

I have hacked a couple of the MON monitors
to better meet my requirements.

Web interfaces exist for both. Notifications
can be be email and/or pager.

[Al_56]

All of these suggestions above are good tools.

Another choice is Ethereal.

Ethereal is a great open source tool that we use on all of our clients networks.

Check out http://www.ethereal.com/

[Lee Hundley]

Another one for monitoring interfaces and traffic is ntop. I can't find anything that directly says it *isn't* supported on HP-UX. Should compile fine!

http://www.ntop.org

[Dusan Krasa]

Another one monitoring tool is http://www.cacti.net/. Based on the RRD tool, php , mysql .

[Paul Cross_1]

Of all the above suggestions, nagios is the best. However, "simple to configure" it is not. Like all monitoring tools, it is complex, and needs time and patience to configure. Don't expect a one click install.

-p

[Ross Minkov]

Nagios might not be easy to configure, but it allows for greater flexibility. It's well worth the time spent configuring it, imho.


srinivassin,

Please don't forget to assign some forum points to the people that tried to help.

Thanks,
Ross