wmnet -- network monitor for WindowMaker using kernel IP accounting
for Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.  version 1.06

Jesse B. Off <joff@iastate.edu>  8/9/1998
Katharine Osborne <kaos@digitalkaos.net> 4/5/2000


This little program polls network statistics and does a few things with
the data it gets.  It has small blinking lights for the rx and tx of IP
packets, a digital speedometer of your polled stat's current
speed and a bar graph like xload et. al which has a
tx speed graph from bottom-up and rx speed graph from the top-down.
The speedometer keeps track of the current speed per second and shows
it in a color corresponding to which of rx or tx that has the highest
speed at the moment.  Also, the graph is drawn in a way that the highest
speed is drawn on top of the other while the other is in the background.
Depending on whether  you are running ppp or ethernet
connections, you should set the -x parameter to about 1.5 times the
high speed of your connection...  the default is 6000 which will be
stupid if you're on a ethernet line with a max of about 800 kb/sec.
I've found the best for an ethernet line is '-x 10000000 -l'  Having
the logarithmic scale lets you see any speed of traffic from a telnet
session to downloadeding something from across the hall at 600 kb/sec.

I tried to keep this is as small and efficient as possible CPU time on my
K5 PR100 with the default poll time of 25000 microseconds (1 microsecond
== 1 millionth of a second.)  is less than 20 seconds per 24 hours
Which is less than even wmmixer uses for me.

wmnet now uses drivers to get stats.  The existing stat driver from previous
versions has been moved to the ipfwadm driver.  To get some generic IP
accounting rules using ipfwadm:

ipfwadm -A in -i -S 0.0.0.0/0
ipfwadm -A out -i -D 0.0.0.0/0


I have also included a couple drivers for Linux 2.1.  You can either use
ipchains or general device stats received from /proc/net/dev.  If you don't
want to fool around with IP chains, use the devstats driver and specify the
interface to monitor useing the --device option.  To get a generic set of ip
chains rules for the ipchains driver:

ipchains -N acctin
ipchains -N acctout
ipchains -I input 1 -j acctin
ipchains -I output 1 -j acctout
ipchains -I acctin 1
ipchains -I acctout 1

There is also the pppstats driver available for both Linux 2.0 and 2.1.
If you just want general monitoring of your ppp devices, use this driver.

In version 1.04+ I have added (among others) the --promisc option.
This makes your IP accounting rules apply across the whole of your
network segment.  This could be useful for monitoring your whole subnet
traffic bandwidth.  However, using this option as a normal user requires
wmnet to be suid root, which is something many people dispise so it is
not suid by default.  To make wmnet suid, as root:

chmod u+s /usr/X11R6/bin/wmnet

Please only do this if you need to.  I did write this program with it
possibly being suid in mind so I am fairly confident that this can be
suid without any security concerns. But then again, thats what they all
say.  Read the code then judge for yourself if need be, I WONT have
it done automatically for you.  Really the only 'if' is the GNU libc
getopt_long() function.

For those afterstep users out there using wmnet, you may have noticed that
when wmnet is swallowed, the whole thing is not visible.  This is due to
the afterstep wharf's inability to swallow a dock.app as large as wmnet.
(Sorry guys, theres nothing I can do about that!)  Theres supposedly an
unofficial patch around for afterstep that allows it to fully display,
consult your local afterstep guru on the what and where.

Much thanks goes to Vladimir Popov for writing the OpenBSD patch.

Consult the man page for additional documentation.

homepage for wmnet:
http://www.digitalkaos.net/linux/wmnet/



TO INSTALL from tar.gz:
tar xfzv wmnet-1.06.tar.gz
cd wmnet-1.06
xmkmf
make
strip wmnet
make install
make install.man

NOTE: you may wanna change config.h to change the compiled in drivers.


ideas/comments/bug reports -----> kaos@digitalkaos.net
http://www.digitalkaos.net/linux/wmnet/

