Install smokeping on Raspbian
Install
apt-get -y install smokeping sendmail sipsak
cgi script
a2enmod cgi
smokeping web
vi /etc/smokeping/apache2.conf
add
DirectoryIndex smokeping.cgi
example
<Directory "/usr/share/smokeping/www">
Options FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex smokeping.cgi
</Directory>
enable web
ln -s /etc/smokeping/apache2.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/smokeping.conf
redirection
If you want to redirect your root web site to /smokeping
vi /var/www/html/index.html
An example is here.
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=/smokeping" /> </head> <body></body> </html>
Config Files
Location
/etc/smokeping/config.d/
Alerts
This is simple enough. The email address to send alerts to and the from address.
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Alerts
Database
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Database
Smokeping has a default of 5 minute averages which I don't like. I changed mine to be 1 minute averages.
1 ping every 5 seconds.
step = 60 pings = 12
General
Very general stuff here. Owner, email and SMTP server.
/etc/smokeping/config.d/General
Presentation
This is how the graphs look and the default displaying of graphs.
I didn't like the default at all. I defaulted mine to be 1 Hour, 6 Hours, 1 Day, 30 Days and 1 Year.
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Presentation
"Last 1 Hour" 1h "Last 6 Hours" 6h "Last 1 Day" 1d "Last 1 Week" 7d "Last 30 Days" 30d "Last 1 Year" 365d
I also changed the summary graphs to be double the height for easier reading.
+ overview width = 600 height = 100 range = 6h
Slaves
I haven't played with or understand this as yet.
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Slaves
Targets
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Targets
This for me was the hardest to understand. The official example page is here. Let me start at the top of the file and try to explain each section.
Use the default probe of FPing. You can change the probe to be different for each host. Example sipsak can be use to test SIP servers.
*** Targets *** probe = FPing
This information is displayed on the home page of smokeping.
menu = Top title = Network Latency Grapher remark = SmokePing website for my network. Authorised access only.
The first line will represent the URL. Example myserver.com/smokeping/Menu1
The second line will represent the name of the menu item on the web page.
The third line will be a title of the graphs within this menu.
+ Menu1 menu = Menu title = Description
This next section will ping each node.
The first line will represent the URL. Example myserver.com/smokeping/Menu1/Item1
The second line will represent the name of the menu item on the wen page.
The third line will be a title of the graphs within this menu.
The fourth line will allow an email to be sent if there is any loss based on the configuration of the Alerts file.
the fifth line is only if you are not using the default probe otherwise this line is not required.
The sixth line is the host to ping. You can use IP or FQDN.
++ Item1 menu = Node1 title = Title Name alerts = smoeloss probe = SipSak host = google.com
Structure
- You can only have one probe define globally.
- You can only define one menu, title and remark for the landing page of smokeping.
- The menu structure is:
+url menu title ++ url menu title host ++ url menu title host . . . +url (New menu structure) title ++ url menu title host ++ url menu title host . . . and so forth
This is the basics of Targets. There is a lot more that you can do. Refer to the documentation for more information.
Probes
If you have added additional probes you will need to add them to smokeping here.
As I added sipsak I need to add the following.
/etc/smokeping/config.d/Probes
+ SipSak binary = /usr/bin/sipsak
rrd files
/var/lib/smokeping/
enable changes
Reboot or restart apache and smokeping
systemctl restart apache2 systemctl restart smokeping
Notes
I installed sipsak so I can do a sip ping rather than an ICMP ping to SIP servers. There are other modules you can install like DNS, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, CISCO and others. Refer to smokeping probes.
I noticed the latency was 1 to 10 ms higher when using application probes. Probably because it takes that bit long for a reply to come form the application.
