Xymon Mailing List Archive search

bandwidth usage in bytes on Linux

list Henrik Størner
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:45:50 +0100
Message-Id: <user-b6f7d5d40348@xymon.invalid>

On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 09:14:43AM -0500, Scott Walters wrote:
But it might still make some sense to have the Linux hobbitclient
collect the data from /sbin/ifconfig. It does have byte counters:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0E:A6:CE:D6:85
          RX bytes:2210282597 (2.0 GiB)  TX bytes:2268014990 (2.1 GiB)
I dont think Hobbit should use these to populate the tcpOutDataBytes and
tcpInInorderBytes fields in the netstat rrd - the ifconfig counters are
per network interface, where the rest of the netstat data are global
counters.
Correct, and I've never really trusted those counters for 'real bandwidth
usage'.  I think re-transmissions and other TCP counters need to be added.
Yep ... 
But perhaps there should be a completely separate set of RRD files, with
one graph per network interface ?
Yes.  And for the other UNIXes you'll want to to run these local commands
and send them to the server for parsing:

AIX|HP-UX: /usr/bin/netstat -v

Solaris: /usr/bin/kstat -p -s [or]bytes64
Fabulous.

If anyone knows of similar commands to get the interface statistics for 
the *BSD systems, let me know.
And a 'netstat -i' provides ethernet layer stats that can be useful.  Not
for bandwidth, but Input Errors and Output Errors are never a good thing.

Henrik, do you need sample outputs to do the parsing on the server?
I think I can get most of these myself, but if you have them available
do send me a copy - it will save me having to hunt them down.


Regards,
Henrik