Introduction
Monitorix is a free, open source, lightweight system monitoring tool designed to monitor as many services and system resources as possible.It has been created to be used under production Linux/UNIX servers, but due to its simplicity and small size can be used on embedded devices as well.
Contributing
There are many ways of contributing to this project. Just install the software and test it. If you encounter any error, please notify it. If you think there are some parts that could be improved, please share your ideas.
You can contribute in any of the following ways:
- Submitting patches.
- Adding new features.
- Improving project documentation.
- Sending suggestions and new ideas.
- Porting the project to other GNU/Linux distributions or other UNIX systems.
Advantages
One of its main advantages is that it is open-source and free.So, we can use it under almost any circumstances or project. In addition to this, it is quite lightweight so it will not be a nuisance on servers or computers with a rather short performance.
It is currently in active development adding new features, new graphs, and correcting bugs in the attempt to offer a great tool for daily systems administration of any professional server.
Although it was intended for Linux systems like CentOS or RHEL, it is perfectly compatible with many Linux distributions and BSD based systems like FreeBSD, OpenBSD and others,
Install Monitorix on Ubuntu
The first thing we have to do for this post is to open the server and update it.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
You can also install it from a local computer.
Now, Monitorix is available from the official repositories of the distribution, so to install it, just run the following command
sudo apt install monitorix
the monitorix service will start, to check it run :
sudo systemctl status monitorix
This way, we will notice that it is running without problems.
Monitorix Configurations
The Monitorix configuration resides in the /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf
file which we need to edit. But first, it is a good idea to back it up.
sudo cp /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf.bak
Now you can do it with the help of the vim editor.
sudo vim /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf
There are many options you can add/remove so it is best to visit Monitorix.
Using Monitorix on Ubuntu 21.04
When you have made all the changes you want, you can open your web browser and go to http://your-server:8080/monitorix to see the Monitorix interface. Remember that this port must be available.
The first thing you will see is the configuration of how the graphs are displayed. In this part, you can define the frequency, and which graphs to display.
Then you will see the first graphs. There you can measure CPU consumption, RAM, and so on.
Keep scrolling down and you will find other interesting graphs like filesystem and kernel usage.
Conclusion
Monitoring your server can be a great way to detect network problems. This tool allows us by day, month, and year to detect behavior far from our ideal.