doc/src/how_to_start/running_as_a_daemon.rst
Ntopng can be run in daemon mode on Unix systems and optionally be run automatically on system startup. Daemon execution and status are controlled with systemd using the :code:systemctl script.
The systemd script is installed automatically on Unix systems as it is part of any standard ntopng installation procedure.
Ntopng configuration file is required when running it as a daemon. The configuration file has to be named :code:ntopng.conf and must be placed under :code:/etc/ntopng/. The interested reader can find above and example of a configuration file. A default configuration file is created by default when installing ntopng from any binary package.
In order to launch ntopng daemon automatically on system startup, an empty file ntopng.start must be created in the same directory of the configuration files. Therefore, the directory will contain both the configuration and the startup files
.. code:: bash
root@devel:/etc/ntopng$ ls -lha total 28K drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Mar 17 15:44 . drwxr-xr-x 117 root root 12K Mar 11 12:16 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 211 Mar 15 17:54 ntopng.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 17 15:44 ntopng.start
The existence of the :code:ntopng.start file is no longer required on systems that have systemd. On those systems, automatic ntopng daemon startup is controlled by enabling/disabling the ntopng service as
.. code:: bash
systemctl enable ntopng systemctl disable ntopng
On Unix systems the ntopng daemon can be controlled with systemd using the :code:systemctl tool. All the standard options are accepted. The options and the usage of the daemon control script are discussed below.
start ^^^^^
This option is used to start the ntopng daemon
.. code:: bash
systemctl start ntopng
stop ^^^^
This option is used to stop an ntopng daemon instance. For example
.. code:: bash
systemctl stop ntopng
restart ^^^^^^^
This option causes the restart of the ntopng instance.
.. code:: bash
systemctl restart ntopng
status ^^^^^^
This options prints the status of the ntopng daemon.
.. code:: bash
systemctl status ntopng
Multiple ntopng daemons can be run on the same machine when
:code:systemd is available. In general, this is not necessary as a
single ntopng is multi-tenant and can handle multiple
interfaces. However, there are circumstances under which it is
desirable to have multiple ntopng instances running.
To run multiple ntopng daemons, :code:systemctl can be used. Each
daemon is identified by a :code:<name> so that :code:systemctl can
be used with this identifier when controlling the daemon. For example:
.. code:: bash
systemctl start ntopng@eno1 systemctl stop ntopng@eno1 systemctl start ntopng@lo systemctl stop ntopng@lo
Each daemon must have its own configuration file under
:code:/etc/ntopng and the configuration file name must be named as
:code:ntopng-<name>.conf. The example above assumes two files
:code:ntopng-eno1.conf and :code:ntopng-lo.conf exist under
:code:/etc/ntopng.
In order to run multiple daemons on the same machine, each daemon
must be guaranteed to have its own Redis database (option :code:-r), its
own HTTP/HTTPS ports (options :code:-w and :code:-W), and its own
data directory (option :code:-d). Those options must be specified in
each daemon's configuration file.
In order to start daemons on boot, it is necessary to enable them as
.. code:: bash
systemctl enable ntopng@eno1 systemctl enable ntopng@eno1
Daemons which have been :code:enable d, will be automatically
restarted after each ntopng update. Note that backup and restore of
ntopng configuration is not supported when multiple daemons are in use.
If you have many ntopng instances that you want to mask behind a proxy the
-Z option is what you look for. See the man page for more information.
If ntopng is behind a proxy which is used to access the Internet, proxy information should be configured into standard environment variables to let ntopng detect them and connect to the internet (e.g. for downloading blacklists). Both HTTP and HTTPS are supported.
.. code:: bash
export HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:3128 ntopng -i eth0
When ntopng runs as a service from systemd, environment variables should be configured in /etc/systemd/system.conf as below:
.. code:: text
DefaultEnvironment="http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128" DefaultEnvironment="https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128"
Then run systemctl daemon-reexec to apply the change:
.. code:: bash
sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
Alternatively, proxy information can be added the the ntopng service only by configuring /etc/systemd/system/ntopng.service as below:
.. code:: text
[Service] Type=simple Environment="http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128" Environment="https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128"
Then run systemctl daemon-reload to apply the change
.. code:: bash
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Then restart ntopng
.. code:: bash
sudo systemctl restart ntopng