Multiple IP MRTG or Similar

[Adam Jacob Muller]

MRTG and everything else for that matter monitors at the kernel level.
basically this means that you are monitoring on a per interface  
basis, not a per address basis.
If you plan on having 12 ips on 1 interface you can not break out the  
bandwidth usage per IP.

The solution we use on our virtually hosted machines is to use an  
apache "traffic" log to track the bandwidth usage of apache.
Obviously this does not track bandwidth usage from FTP or SSH however  
we basically consider this bandwidth incidental and ignore it.
That said, if your customers will have root access then it's  
"possible" to compromise this system. It's also useless if they  
intend to have other kinds of servers besides apache running.
All that said, I highly suggest that if you do decide to use MRTG  
that you use the rrdtool backend, rrdtool is basically the gold  
standard in the IT industry. Remember, rrdtool, MRTG and cacti are  
not the same type of thing.
RRDTool is an interface to rrd's that is, round robin databases,  
these binary packed files are used to store data. That's basically  
it. I use it for everything from storing bandwidth to storing the  
data from my hydroponic garden. That said, MRTG is a data gathering  
tool. It is designed to gather data from a SNMP (or other types of)  
query and put it into some kind of storage medium. MRTG is built with  
the basic support for flat ASCII logs but i don't know of anyone that  
uses that anymore. It's highly susceptible to corruption. use the RRD  
logging if  you go with MRTG.
Now, finally, there is cacti. Cacti integrates MRTG and RRDTool to  
create a pretty web interface.

Basically, we need to know exactly what kind of stuff your customers  
plan on doing.
AFAIK this is possible under linux using interface aliases. I'm not  
sure about FreeBSD.


Adam


On Jul 5, 2005, at 10:33 PM, G Felter wrote:

>    I just want to introduce myself to the list.  My name is Greg and I
> have been using FreeBSD for about four years,  I have even swore off
> Windows and use FreeBSD as my workstation.
>
>    I am writing because I have a FreeBSD server which I provide shell
> accounts to customers with.  I soon hope to provide jails after
> working out some glitches.  I need to monitor each customers bandwidth
> usage on a per IP basis.  I know MRTG is basically the standard but I
> am open to suggestions.  I seem to have trouble setting up MRTG myself
> and have consulted several people for the purpose having them set up
> MRTG.  They have told me they can only set up MRTG on FreeBSD for the
> main IP of the server and not for each individual IP.  I know there
> are providers monitoring the bandwidth of each IP in FreeBSD.  Which
> script are they using to do this, MRTG, cacti, RRDTool, cricket?  If
> someone could offer a little guidance to get me started I would be
> grateful.  Thank you
> Greg
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